Hadith: Riyad al-Salihin (AL1)

Description

Course Description:

This course is a study of Imām al-Nawāwī’s famous ḥadīth compilation Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn. The focus of the course is to give students exposure to a corpus of narrations essential for their spiritual development and pertinent to their daily lives. The course will focus on detailed study of selected chapters where students will be expected to memorise, translate, linguistically analyse the narrations studied. Emphasis will be placed on contextualising the narrations, attempting to synthesise and apply the narrations to our daily lives. There will also be a word by word study of each narration ensuring that each and every narration is understood properly (dirāyah).

Level: Alimiyyah Programme Year 1

Context:

This will be the second ḥadīth text to be taught. Unlike the first text Zād al-Ṭālibīn the narrations in Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn are structured according to relevant chapter headings pertaining to everyday Muslim life as opposed to according to Arabic language structures. Hence the focus here is not only to give exposure to ḥadīth literature styles but rather to nurture the prophetic lifestyle in students. The narrations in Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn cover a wide array of styles of narrations sometimes including extremely long narrations where only one line directly correlates to the chapter heading. This in turn provides students with the context to many narrations and also enables one to understand how different lessons can be derived from one single narration.

Learning Outcomes:

Knowledge and Understanding

• Knowledge of the key themes and the relevant Qurānic verses and narrations pertaining to the themes covered,
• Memorise all the small narrations taught.
• A comprehensive understanding of the themes and concepts covered as outlined by the chapter headings and also themes found within individual narrations.
• Deriving lessons, rulings and practical implications of each narration.

Skills

• Ability to and translate all narrations and verses studied.
• Ability to practically contextualise and relate all the narrations to daily life.

Prerequisites:

Students must have studied Ebrahim College’s Arabic Intensive Programme or have studied its equivalent.

Teaching and learning Strategies:

The text would be covered word by word with a detailed explanation on the linguistics of the verses and narrations with a particular focus on the translation of the text. Detailed thematic commentaries would be delivered on the chapter headings. Student will be required to read and translate independently and also memorise over 100 narrations.

Course Delivery:

This course will be delivered on campus and streamed live online using an online live streaming platform called ‘Zoom’. Lessons will be recorded and students provided access to them. Further details will be emailed to students 5 days before the course commences insha Allah.

For more information on how this works, please click here.

Course Teacher: Shaykh Muhammad Sbini