Majma al-Zawa'id

As the Centuries passed, some authors began to compile secondary collections of hadith derived from the primary collections – those with isnads connecting those hadith they contain to their sources. One method of composition of these works was al-zawa'id, the extraction of any 'unique' hadith found in one collection but not in another. Most commonly, the hadith of one collection would be extracted that were not found in six canonical hadith collections.[1]

Majma al-Zawa'id is a prominent example of the al-zawa'id methodology of hadith compilation. It contains 18,776 hadiths[2] extracted from Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Musnad by Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili, the Musnad of Abu Bakr al-Bazzar, and three of al-Tabarani's collections: Al-Mu'jam al-Kabir, Al-Mu'jam Al-Awsat and Al-Mu'jam As-Saghir. The hadith gathered by al-Haythami are those not found in the six canonical hadith collections: Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan al-Sughra, Sunan Abu Dawood, Sunan al-Tirmidhi and Sunan Ibn Majah.”[3]

It is considered secondary because it was collected from previous hadith collections and does not include the isnad of the hadith. In spite of the fact that its source books are primarily arranged as musnads, Majma' al-Zawa'id is arranged in the manner of a sunan collection – by topical chapter titles relating to jurisprudence.[1] The author provides commentary on the authenticity of each hadith and evaluates some of the narrators.[4] He is, however, considered to have been somewhat lenient in his rulings upon the hadith he graded.[1]