Re-evaluation of narrations quoted in Ta’wil al-Mokhtalef al-Hadith in Awali al-Laali

A critical analysis of hadith sources in order to identify valid and reliable narrations issued by the Infallibles (PBUH) is one of the main requisites of research in the sciences of hadith. Therefore, the external critique of narrative sources and classification of their primary sources is of paramount importance. It is because the authors of hadith books do not mention the details of their sources and narrations are usually quoted as Mursal hadiths, which undermines the authenticity of the hadith. This paper takes a fresh look at the narrations of the book Ta’wil al-Mokhtalef al-Hadith by Ibn al-Qutayebah in Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ehsei’s Awali al-Laali. The primary goal is to determine the source of some hadiths in the Awali al-Laali and to filter out unreliable narrations from Shiite books by a comparative study. The comparison of these two works suggests that Ibn Abi Jumhur in the fourth chapter of his book has quoted more than two-thirds (about 70%) of the hadiths by Ibn Qutayebah. Not sufficing to a simple quotation of the hadiths, and like Ibn al-Qutaybah, he has explained interpretations in the footnotes of the Awali al-Laali, which in some cases are exactly the concepts described by Ibn al-Qutayebah. Occasionally his interpretations are different and even inconsistent with those of Ibn al-Qutayebah, whereas in a handful of narrations, he has quoted Ibn Naqtibah verbatim. The reason Ibn Abi Jumhur turned to Ibn al-Qutayebah's book is his defense of the rule "the aggregation of two [different] narrations is preferred to the rejection of either one" and the best work that managed to compile opposing hadiths is the work of Ibn al-Qutayebah.