رسالة د. كهلان الخروصي

… Al-Shamm~kh‚ (d. the ninth/fifteenth century) provides no more information apart from the very important fact that he calls the work >th~r al-Rab‚` b. ™ab‚b and ascribes its collection to Abƒ ^ufra when he talks about him and describes the work as 'a famous one mashhƒr '.<sup>(1)</sup> This popularity of the book mentioned by al-Shamm~kh‚ could mean that it was a widely available source. But this assumption evaporates with the ignorance of the work by al-Darj‚n‚ (d. 670/1271) who would certainly have mentioned the work if he had had access to it. So the most appropriate interpretation of al-Shamm~kh‚’s sentence is that the work had a high reputation but was not necessarily widely available. On these grounds one can understand the fact that the work is rarely cited in the Mashriq‚ Ib~‡‚ references. Despite the abundance among them of early works on fiqh، they hardly refer to this particular work. The only source I found referring to a work by Abƒ ^ufra is to the J~mi` Ab‚ ^ufra in Bay~n al-shar` of Muˆammad b. Ibr~h‚m al-Kind‚ (d. most probably in 508/1114). There seem to be some quotations usually commencing with: “and from — wa-min J~mi` Ab‚ ^ufra”; then al-Kind‚ gives the chain of transmitters followed by the tradition. But when these quotations⁽²⁾ are compared to our book، the dissimilarity between them and the work under focus becomes obvious.