Al-Lu'lu' wal Marjan: The Pearl and the Coral
Al-Lu'lu' wal Marjan (Arabic: اللؤلؤ والمرجان فيما اتفق عليه الشيخان), meaning The Pearl and the Coral in What the Two Shaykhs Agreed Upon, is a distinguished thematic hadith anthology compiled by the Egyptian hadith scholar Muhammad Fu'ad 'Abd al-Baqi (1882–1967 CE).
1. Unique Methodology
The collection is built on a simple but powerful principle: it contains only those hadiths which both Imam al-Bukhari and Imam Muslim independently included in their respective Sahih collections. This intersection of the two highest-authority hadith books results in a corpus of approximately 1,906 hadiths — every single one of which carries the dual-authentication status known as mutafaq 'alayhi (agreed upon).
2. Why This Matters
- Highest certainty: A hadith in both Sahihs has passed two independent rigorous verification chains, making it the most epistemically certain category of prophetic narration.
- Compact reference: Rather than consulting two large works, a scholar can turn to this single volume for the core agreed-upon corpus.
- Thematic arrangement: 'Abd al-Baqi organized the hadiths topically across 54 major Books (Kutub), each subdivided into named Sections (Abwab).
3. The Compiler
Muhammad Fu'ad 'Abd al-Baqi is also famous for his Mu'jam al-Mufahras li-Alfaz al-Quran al-Karim (concordance index to the Quranic vocabulary), one of the most used Quranic reference tools in modern Islamic scholarship.