Coverage of Worship and Religious Obligations

Despite its organization by Companion name rather than by subject, al-Mu'jam al-Kabir contains rich material on all the major domains of Islamic worship and religious obligation. Researchers who have indexed the collection's content find extensive coverage of purification, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage through the traditions attributed to dozens of different Companions, many of whom appear only rarely or not at all in the canonical collections. This cross-Companion coverage is one of the most distinctive features of the collection from a research perspective.

The prayer material in al-Mu'jam al-Kabir is particularly rich. At-Tabarani gathered prayer-related traditions from a wide range of Companions, and the collection therefore preserves regional variants in prayer practice as transmitted through different chains. For scholars interested in understanding the full scope of the prophetic prayer tradition and the variety of early practice, the Mu'jam provides supplementary evidence not available in more selective collections. Many traditions in the Mu'jam on the night prayer, the voluntary prayers, and the Friday prayer have been authenticated by later critics and cited as supporting evidence for legal rulings.

The fasting and Ramadan sections, reconstructed through thematic indexing of the Mu'jam's content, show similarly broad coverage. Traditions on the beginning and end of Ramadan, the performance of the tarawih prayers, the Night of Power, and the voluntary fasts of the year appear through many different Companion chains, allowing researchers to assess the breadth of attestation for specific practices. The consistent citation of these traditions by later hadith scholars such as al-Haythami and al-Mundhiri confirms their value as supplementary evidence.

The coverage of pilgrimage rites in al-Mu'jam al-Kabir is extensive and includes traditions from Companions who participated in various aspects of the farewell pilgrimage and who transmitted detailed accounts of the Prophet's ritual practice. Some of these accounts provide details or phrasings not found in the canonical sources, and scholars working on the precise performance of hajj rites have found them useful for understanding the full range of prophetic practice as remembered across the Companion community.