The Lifting of Secrets Concerning Forged Reports was written over four hundred years ago by a respected and prolific Meccan savant of Afghan origin. Mulla ?Ali al-Qari (d. 1014/1605) was thoroughly familiar with the large body of critical literature on hadith forgery, which he refined and reordered alphabetically into 625 entries. Al-Qari's last work, it is the only catalogue of forgeries with both a transmission-based and content-based critique, illustrating the author's vast erudition as well as his lenient choices in hadith methodology and his classic Hanafi and Sufi views. The translator has added his own study of the forgery and "famous hadith" genres, the life and works of the author, extensive footnotes and exhaustive indices. A total of 3,000 reports are documented in this volume covering doctrinal and juridical forgeries, Shia forgeries, Sufi forgeries, racial forgeries, misogynistic forgeries, food forgeries, "Israelite" forgeries, medical forgeries, sex forgeries, spurious books, spurious grave-spots and more. This is the first and long overdue authentic reference work on hadith forgeries in English.
