Wensinckâs Condordance is an essential research tool for those who are interested in Islamâs Tradition (ḥadÄ«th) literature. This body of texts is a major source for Islamic theology and law and forms an important source for historians of early Islam. The Concordance offers an index of all words found in traditions included in the six canonical ḥadÄ«th collections of Sunni Islam, complemented by MÄlik ibn Anasâs Muwaá¹á¹aʾ and the Musnads of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and al-DÄrimÄ«.
The Concordance is the result of forty years of international scholarly collaboration. Under the guidance of Arent Jan Wensinck and his successors, many thousands of pages of sometimes poorly accessible works were indexed and an enormous amount of catchwords were recorded together with their context. The seventh and final volume of the Concordance appeared in 1969 (followed in 1988 by an eighth volume containing the Indices). Making accessible the most authoritative texts of Islamâs Tradition literature, the Concordance is the main key to this far from homogenous but highly important corpus of texts.
This work has proven to be extremely useful for all those who professionally or otherwise are interested in Islamâs Tradition literature. Even in light of the recent emergence of digital platforms that provide access to these texts, Wensinckâs Concordance remains an essential tool for ḥadÄ«th studies and it will continue to do so for quite some time. Although more modest in size, this paperback edition offers a complete and unabridged reprint of the second edition.
Arent Jan Wensinck (1882-1939) studied Semitic languages in Leiden and wrote a doctoral dissertation on âMuḥammad and the Jews in Medinaâ with Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. After having taught Hebrew at grammar schools and Classical Syriac and Aramaic at Utrecht University, Wensinck was appointed to the chair of Hebrew at Leiden University in 1912. Fifteen years later, he succeeded his former teacher Snouck Hurgronje as head of the Arabic department in Leiden, a position he held until his death in 1939. In addition to his work on the Concordance, his magnum opus, Wensinck was one of the editors-in-chief of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
From 1932, Johan Peter Mari Mensing (1901-1951) assisted Wensinck with the publication of the Concordance and continued working on it after Wensinckâs death. After having finished his doctoral dissertation on aspects of Hanbali law in 1936, Mensing taught modern Arabic as a private tutor in Leiden. From 1948 until his death in 1951, Mensing was an endowed professor of Muslim institutions and Arabic at Utrecht University.