A Study on the Development Course of Writing Arba īns

Based on the Prophet’s (S. A. W.) ḥadīth، “Whoever memorizes forty traditions from which my community benefits in their religious affairs، the Exalted and Almighty Allah will raise him on the Day of Resurrection as a learned jurist and a scholar،” the ḥadīth scholars undertook some compilations that were known as “forty traditions” (arba‘ūna ḥadīthan). Since the 2nd/9th century to the present era، thousands of books have been written in this field. The reporting، categorizing، and analyzing the ups and downs of these ḥadīth components in various centuries of ḥadīth history have been taken into consideration from the perspective of historic-ḥadīth processology. The results achieved suggest that in the early centuries، acting according to the outward aspects of the traditions in personal dimension became important and in later centuries، with the expansion of the domain of these types of books in form، language، and type and also in terms of content and subject in social and ideological dimensions، the ḥadīth experts focused their attention on the actualization of the Holy Prophet’s (S. A. W.) objectives of issuing these traditions. This change of approach to writing arba‘īns brought about redoubled blessings in terms of uplifting the society’s level of ḥadīth knowledge.