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Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj مسلم بن الحجاج | |
|---|---|
| Title | Imām Muslim |
| Personal life | |
| Born | after c. 815 |
| Died | May c. 875 Nasarabad, Abbasid Caliphate |
| Resting place | Nasarabad |
| Era | Islamic Golden Age (Abbasid era) |
| Region | Abbasid Caliphate |
| Main interest(s) | Hadith Aqidah |
| Notable work(s) | Sahih Muslim |
| Occupation | Islamic scholar, Muhaddith |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Sunni |
| School | Shafi'i/Mujtahid |
| Jurisprudence | Ijtihad |
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Islamic history is replete with great muhaddithun (scholars of hadith) who received widespread acclaim for their seminal contributions in the field of hadith. Thus, scholars like Malik ibn Anas, al-Zuhri, al-Awza'i, Abdullah ibn Mubarak, Yahya ibn Ma'in and Ahmad ibn Hanbal left their indelible marks in the annals of hadith literature. Thanks to them, the preservation and dissemination of hadith and wud al-hadith (science of hadith) not only became possible, but also enabled them to become some of the most popular branches of the traditional Islamic sciences (ulum al-din).
Out of all the hadith scholars, the names of two remarkable scholars, al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, have today become household names across the Muslim world on account of their selfless devotion, assiduous scholarship and seminal contributions to the collection and dissemination of the Prophetic traditions. Although al-Bukhari is widely considered to be the most famous scholar in the history of hadith literature, the popularity of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj must not be underestimated. Indeed, according to some scholars of hadith, the hadith anthology of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj is superior to that of al-Bukhari. Nevertheless, the collections of both al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj are today regarded as two of the most authentic and authoritative anthologies of Prophetic traditions ever produced.
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Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj (born c. 817, Nīshāpūr, Iran—died 875, Naṣrābād) was a scholar who was one of the chief authorities on the Ḥadīth, accounts of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muḥammad.
Muslim traveled widely; his great work, the Ṣaḥīḥ (“The Genuine”), is said to have been compiled from about 300,000 traditions, which he collected in Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. The Ṣaḥīḥ has been unanimously acclaimed as authoritative and is one of the six canonical collections of Ḥadīth. Muslim was careful to give a full account of the isnāds (links in the chain of transmission) for each tradition and to record textual variations. The collection also includes a survey on early Islāmic theology and a discussion on the Qurʾān.
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Although Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj composed more than twenty books on different aspects of hadith, only six of his books have survived, including al-Jami al-Sahib (better known as Sahih Muslim). This anthology of hadith is not only his most famous work, but, along with Sahih al-Bukhari, it is today considered to be one of the most authentic books of Islamic teachings after the Qur'an itself. Revered as one of the great works of traditional Islamic learning and scholarship, the importance and relevance of this vast collection of Prophetic traditions cannot be emphasized enough. After fifteen years of meticulous research and investigation in the field of hadith (which involved sifting through hundreds of thousands of Prophetic traditions in order to separate the authentic narrations from the weak or fabricated ones), Muslim incorporated around seven thousand ahadith in his anthology.
A pioneer of Islamic scholarship, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj helped to develop and disseminate a rigorous research methodology in the field of hadith literature. He classified hadith narrators into three broad categories. The first category consisted of narrators who possessed a highly retentive memory, because they maintained consistency in their narrations. This enabled Muslim to compare their narrations with those of other respected and reliable narrators in order to ascertain their veracity. The vast majority of hadith contained in Sahih Muslim falls into this category. By contrast, the second category consisted of those narrators who had weak memories: thus, their narrations were occasionally found to be inconsistent. Muslim accepted their narrations only if their versions of hadith agreed with, or corroborated, the narrations of the first category. On the other hand, the third category consisted of those narrators who were considered to be unreliable and untrustworthy. Muslim completed rejected the third category of narrations.
Using such a rigorous system of checks and counterchecks, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj successfully sifted the sahih (the authentic) traditions from hasan (good) and the daeef (weak) from the mauda (fabricated). In doing so, he produced an anthology of Prophetic hadith which today enjoys the full support and confidence of the Muslim community.
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Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj ibn Muslim ibn Ward al-Qushayrī an-Naysābūrī[note 1] (Arabic: أبو الحسين مسلم بن الحجاج بن مسلم بن وَرْد القشيري النيسابوري; after 815 – May 875 CE / 206 – 261 AH), commonly known as Imam Muslim, was an Islamic scholar from the city of Nishapur, particularly known as a muhaddith (scholar of hadith). His hadith collection, known as Sahih Muslim, is one of the six major hadith collections in Sunni Islam and is regarded as one of the two most authentic (sahih) collections, alongside Sahih al-Bukhari.
Biography
[edit]Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj was born in the town of Nishapur[5] in the Abbasid province of Khorasan, in what is now northeastern Iran. Historians differ as to his date of birth, though it is usually given as 202 AH (817/818),[6][7] 204 AH (819/820),[3][8] or 206 AH (821/822).[6][7][9]
Al-Dhahabi said, "It is said that he was born in the year 204 AH," though he also said, "But I think he was born before that."[3]
Ibn Khallikan could find no report of Muslim's date of birth or age at death by any of the ḥuffāẓ "hadith masters", except their agreement that he was born after 200 AH (815/816). Ibn Khallikan cites ibn al-Salah, who cites al-Hakim al-Nishapuri's Kitab ʿUlama al-Amsar, in the claim that Muslim was 55 years old when he died on 25 Rajab, 261 AH (May 875)[9] and therefore his year of birth must have been 206 AH (821/822).
Ibn al-Bayyiʿ reports that he was buried in Nasarabad, a suburb of Nishapur.
According to scholars, he was of Arab origin.[10][11] The nisba "al-Qushayri" signifies he belonged to the Arab tribe of Banu Qushayr, members of which migrated to the newly conquered Persian territory during the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate. According to two scholars, ibn al-Athīr and ibn al-Salāh, he was a member of that tribe. His family had migrated to Persia nearly two centuries earlier following the conquest.[3]
The author's teachers included Harmala ibn Yahya, Sa'id ibn Mansur, Abd-Allah ibn Maslamah al-Qa'nabi, al-Dhuhali, al-Bukhari, ibn Ma'in, Yahya ibn Yahya al-Nishaburi al-Tamimi, and others. Among his students were al-Tirmidhi, ibn Abi Hatim al-Razi, and Ibn Khuzayma, each of whom also wrote works on hadith. After his studies throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Iraq and Syria, he settled in his hometown of Nishapur, where he met, and became a lifelong friend of al-Bukhari.
Sources
[edit]Several sources became prominent loci for learning about the biography of Muslim. The History of Baghdad by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, produced in the 11th century, formed the basis of all subsequent descriptions of his life in Islamic sources. For example, the complete biography of Muslim in the History of Islam by al-Dhahabi contains 27 reports, 11 of which (41%) come from Al-Baghdadi's History. The second most important source for information about Muslim's life, now lost, was the History of Nishapur of al-Hakim al-Nishapuri. The History of Baghdad itself, which contains 14 reports about Muslim, took half of them (7) from the History of Nishapur.[12]
Sahih Muslim
[edit]In the mid-9th century, Muslim composed a collection of what he considered entirely sahih hadith, now known as Sahih Muslim. Today, it is considered one of the six canonical books of hadith in Sunni Islam. In particular, it along with Sahih al-Bukhari are considered the two pre-eminent collections in this canon; together they are called the Sahihayn. Figures on the number of hadiths in this book vary from three to twelve thousand, depending on whether duplicates are included, or only the text is. Muslim's collection has a substantial overlap with Sahih al-Bukhari: according to Al-Jawzaqi, 2,326 traditions are shared between the two. The collections also roughly share 2,400 narrators; only 430 of the narrators in Sahih al-Bukhari are not found in Sahih Muslim, and only 620 narrators in Sahih Muslim are not found in Sahih al-Bukhari.[13]
Legacy
[edit]The scholar of Ahlus-Sunnah, Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh was first to recommend Muslim's work.[14]
Ishaq's contemporaries did not at first accept this; Abu Zur‘a al-Razi objected that Muslim had omitted too much material which Muslim himself recognised as authentic and that he included transmitters who were weak.[15]
Ibn Abi Hatim (d. 327/938) later accepted Muslim as "trustworthy, one of the hadith masters with knowledge of hadith"; but this contrasts with much more fulsome praise of Abu Zur‘a and also his father Abu Hatim. It is similar with Ibn al-Nadim.[16]
Muslim's book gradually increased in stature such that it is considered among Ahlus-Sunnah the most authentic collections of hadith, second only to Sahih Bukhari.[17]
Works
[edit]- Sahih Muslim: his collection of authentic hadith
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^ Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh (1990). ʻAbd al-Ghafūr ʻAbd al-Ḥaqq Ḥusayn Balūshī (ed.). Musnad Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh (1st ed.). Tawzīʻ Maktabat al-Īmān. pp. 150–165.
- ^ "منهج الإمام مسلم بن الحجاج". www.ibnamin.com. Archived from the original on 2018-10-30. Retrieved 2006-09-23.
- ^ a b c d Salahuddin ʿAli Abdul Mawjood (2007). The Biography of Imam Muslim bin al-Hajjaj. Translated by Abu Bakr Ibn Nasir. Riyadh: Darussalam. ISBN 978-9960988191.
- ^ 'Awālī Muslim: arba'ūna ḥadīthan muntaqātun min Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (عوالي مسلم: أربعون حديثا منتقاتا من صحيح مسلم) (in Arabic). Beirut: Mu’assasat al-kutub ath-Thaqāfīyah (مؤسسة الكتب الثقافية). 1985. Archived from the original on 2016-04-27. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ^ Oriental Scholars. Encyclopaedia Dictionary Islam Muslim World, etc, Gibb, Kramer volume 7. 1960-2004.1875.2009. p. 691.
- ^ a b Abdul Hamid Siddiqui. "Imam Muslim". Archived from the original on 2012-10-31. Retrieved 2012-10-29.
- ^ a b K. J. Ahmad (1987). Hundred Great Muslims. Des Plaines, Illinois: Library of Islam. ISBN 0933511167.
- ^ Syed Bashir Ali (2003). Scholars of Hadith. The Makers of Islamic Civilization Series. Malaysia: IQRAʼ International Educational Foundation. ISBN 1563162040. Archived from the original on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ^ a b Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Khallikan (1868) [Corrected reprint]. Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary. Vol. III. Translated by William McGuckin de Slane. Paris: Oriental translation fund of Great Britain and Ireland. p. 349. Archived from the original on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ^ R.N. Frye, ed. (1975). The Cambridge history of Iran. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 471. ISBN 978-0-521-20093-6.
- ^ al-Qushayrī, Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj; Shahryar, Aftab (2004-01-01). صحيح مسلم. Islamic Book Service. ISBN 9788172315924. Archived from the original on 2021-09-30. Retrieved 2020-12-15.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 274.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 84.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 86.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 91–92, 155.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 88–89.
- ^ Brown 2007, p. 272–274.
Sources
[edit]- Brown, Jonathan (2007). The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. Brill.
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The anthology of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, the Sahih Muslim, is today considered to be one of the two most important collections of hadith, along with that of al-Bukhari. That is why so many famous scholars have written commentaries on Sahih Muslim. As the Sahih Muslim is rated very highly as a source of Islamic teachings, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the world of traditional Islamic learning and scholarship would have been much poorer without this great anthology.
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