tahdhib

Tahdhib, from the Arabic تهذيب (tahdhib), means refinement, polishing, or editing. In Islamic sciences, the term is used for the process of editing or evaluating texts and, especially, people. In the field of hadith studies, tahdhib refers to the systematic critique and verification of narrators and their reports as part of the discipline known as jarh wa ta’dil (criticism and accreditation). Works bearing tahdhib in their titles commonly aim to refine, correct, or supplement earlier biographical or textual sources.

The most famous work titled Tahdhib is Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, authored by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (14th–15th century). This is a major biographical dictionary of hadith transmitters, intended as a refinement and extension of earlier biographical compilations. Ibn Hajar synthesizes and cross-references the judgments of earlier scholars, such as al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, al-Dhahabi, and Ibn Abi Hatim, to provide biographical details and assessments of reliability, memory, and credibility. The entries typically include notes on the narrator’s acceptability, watch for inconsistencies, and the status of specific reports in which they appear, along with chains of transmission.

Tahdhib al-Tahdhib has become a foundational reference for hadith criticism. It is widely cited in scholarly works to determine the authenticity of reports and to understand the scholarly context surrounding a narrator. The text has been published in multiple editions and frequently appears in conjunction with other classic sources in the science of hadith and biographical literature.