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b. al-Ward, Abū Bisṭām al-ʿAtakī, a mawlā from Baṣra with the honorific s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-islām , was an eminent scholar and collector of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.]. Born during the years 82-6/702-7, his death from the plague is generally taken to have occurred in 160/776. Originally from Wāsiṭ, he came to live in Baṣra, where he sought out al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī [ q.v.]. S̲h̲uʿba is recorded to have studied masāʾil (= juridical problems) with him, so if that is historical he may be assumed to have arrived there in or before 110/728, the year in which Ḥasan…

Literally, tradition or report going back to one single authority. Synonyms are k̲h̲abar al-āḥād , k̲h̲abar al-infirād and k̲h̲abar al-k̲h̲āṣṣa . According to the generally-accepted definition, a k̲h̲abar al-wāḥid is a report which falls short of the predicate mutawātir [ q.v.] (or, as certain scholars assert, mas̲h̲hūr [ q.v.]) in that it has only one or a few (from two to five) transmitters in every ṭabaḳa of its isnād . The first classical scholar who writes about the k̲h̲abar al-wāḥid is, according to Nawawī (cf. S̲h̲arḥ ṣaḥīḥ Muslim , Cairo 1349, i, 131),…

, Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā b. Sawra, great collector of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.], the author of one of the Six Books, al-kutub al-sitta. He is said to have been born in 210/825 near the town of Tirmid̲h̲ [ q.v.]. He travelled widely in search of traditions through K̲h̲urāsān, ʿIrāḳ and the Ḥid̲j̲āz. He was among others a pupil of al-Buk̲h̲ārī [ q.v.]. Later in life he became blind, allegedly as a result of excessive weeping, and he died in Tirmid̲h̲ in 279/892. He is famous in the first place for his al-D̲j̲āmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ , a collection generally considered to hold the four…

, D̲j̲amāl al-Dīn abu ’l-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ Yūsuf b. al-Zakī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yūsuf al-Kalbī al-Ḳuḍāʿī, famous Syrian traditionist. Born near Aleppo in 654/1256 of Arab stock, he moved early in life with his parents to al-Mizza [ q.v.], a rich village just outside Damascus where he received a traditional education in Ḳurʾān and some fiḳh . When he was in his early twenties he embarked upon a career as a traditionist hearing ḥadīt̲h̲s with the masters of his time. One of his fellow pupils was Taḳi ’l-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (661-728/1263-1328 [ q.v.]), who remained a life-long friend. Al-Mizzī…

, Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. Dāwūd b. al-D̲j̲ārūd, famous Baṣran collector of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.], nicknamed “the mountain of knowledge”, who died in 203 or 204/819-820 at the age of ca. seventy years. He was a mawlā of the clan of al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām [ q.v.] and originally hailed from Persia. He is said to have owed his nisba to his custom (?) of wearing a certain Persian upper garment or hood ( ṭaylasān , pl. ṭayālisa ), a scarf-like wrapper worn around the head and neck, but the nisba more obviously relates to a maker or seller of ṭaylasāns , the cowl worn by scholars. He w…

(a., the active participle of the Form X verb istamlā “to ask someone for dictation, to take down dictation from someone”), the title of a tradition transmitter’s clerk. From the earliest days when in Islam ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] was transmitted from master ( s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ) to pupil, the writing down of traditions has played a certain role in an attempt to protect them against loss. Although transmitting from memory to a pupil, who then stored what he heard in his memory, was felt in the beginning to be the most meritorious …

(a.). 1. As a term applied to the ancient South Arabian script. In the first couple of centuries AD, Sabaean and ¶ Ḳatabanian inscriptions used the term ms 3 nd for an inscribed bronze plaque affixed ( musnad ) to the wall of a temple; by the 5th-6th centuries AD it came to be applied to inscriptions engraved directly on a rock face. In early Islamic times, musnad designated any inscription in the pre-Islamic South Arabian alphabet, the earliest examples of which date back to the first half of the first millenium BC. This has close affinities both with the scri…

(a.), appellative of legendary as well as historical people who are alleged to have lived to an exceptionally great age. Like Judaism and other ancient religions, Islam knows a category of people, almost always men, who are characterised by extreme longevity granted by God. These persons walked the earth immediately following the Creation and are believed to have done so intermittently until today (for a 20th century example, see H. St. John B. Philby, Arabian days, London 1948, the 23rd photograph between pp. 224 and 225). Whereas for Jews Methuselah is the longest li…

(a.), technical term used in the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] for a well-known tradition transmitted via a minimum of three different isnād s [ q.v.]. ¶ (G.H.A. Juynboll) Bibliography Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, Muʿd̲j̲am al-muṣṭalaḥāt al-ḥadīt̲h̲iyya, Damascus 1976, 98, and the literature quoted there.

, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. K̲h̲allād, often referred to in mediaeval Arabic literature as Ibn al-K̲h̲allād . ḳāḍī and author of various works of adab [ q.v.] ¶ who died in 360/971. His date of birth is unknown, but judging by the death dates of his alleged tradition masters, he must have been born some one hundred years earlier, if credence were to be granted at all to the usual longevity ascribed to transmitters of that period. For references to biographical notices on him, see GAS, i, 193. Of the poetry attributed to him a few lines have been preserved in Yatīmat al-dahr …

(a.), pl. of sunna [ q.v.], “norm”, “custom”, is used separately in the literature of ḥadīt̲h̲ and fiḳh [ q.vv.] as referring to several important collections of traditions and legal pronouncements (= aḳwāl ), thus resulting in this plural being used as a generic book tide of such works, as was the case with the term Ṣaḥīḥ [ q.v.]. The oldest collections called Sunan or Sunan fi ’l-fiḳh have not come down to us, and are only known from references to them in a work like Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist , cf. ed. Riḍā Tad̲j̲addud, index vol., 123, right col., such as the Sunans by Makḥūl (d. 112-16/730-4), …

, verbal noun of form VI of a verb meaning “to come one after another”. This article is meant as an extension of the art. mutawātir [ q.v.], the participle of the same verb. Tawātur is a technical term in the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.], which means roughly “broad authentication”. It is often adverbially used. It indicates that a historical report or a prophetic tradition is supported by such a large number of isnād strands, each beginning with a different Companion or other ancient authority, that its authenticity/truthfulness is thereby assumed…

(a.), a technical term in the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.]. The oldest definition of this term, when applied to an isnād [ q.v.], was that a link was missing. This definition was soon abandoned for a more specific one: mursal is an isnād in which between the Successor and the Prophet the name of the Companion is lacking. In the course of time, the older definition gave rise to the technical term munḳaṭiʿ (lit. “cut up”; its opposite is muttaṣil ). Mediaeval Muslim ḥadīt̲h̲ experts got rid of the confusion by concluding that not every munḳaṭiʿ is mursal, but every mursal is munḳaṭiʿ. (A closely rel…

(a.), a term of Islamic law, verbal noun from Form II verb dallasa which means, according to LʿA , “to conceal a fault in a commodity”, with a not obviously related noun form dalas “darkness”. 1. In the law of sale and contract. According to a generally-accepted view, found e.g. in Coulson, the term stems from the Byzantine Greek word dolos (< Latin dolus ) with the idea of fraudulent concealment of defects in merchandise. Ryner points out that both tadlīs and tag̲h̲rīr [ q.v.] appear to be almost synonymous and used interchangeably by classical ¶ authors. Tadlīs is th…

, Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān , a mawlā of Zaynab bt. Ḳays b. Mak̲h̲rama, was a popular preacher in Kūfa, who is said to have died in 127/745. His reputation as a transmitter of prophetic traditions was a matter of dispute. The opinions of the rid̲j̲āl [ q.v.] experts ranged all the way from neutral ( ṣāliḥ [ q.v.], lā baʾs bihi ) to mendacious ( kad̲h̲d̲h̲āb ). His role in isnāds [ q.v.] supporting canonical traditions is minimal anyway and entirely artificial, i.e. he cannot be held responsible for it. His political stance ( tas̲h̲ayyuʿ ) may be distilled from the acc…

, one of Islam’s outstanding early collectors of Prophetic traditions. Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Muslim b. al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ b. Muslim al-Ḳus̲h̲ayrī al-Naysābūrī was born in Naysābūr (Nīs̲h̲āpūr) in 202/817, but according to another report in 206/821, the latter date tallying better with his alleged age at death in 261/875 given as fifty-five (lunar) years. (Cf. Ibn K̲h̲allikān, Wafayāt , ed. I. ʿAbbās, v, 195, who weighs both dates against each other.) From an early age on, he is reported to have travelled to ʿIrāḳ, the Ḥid̲j̲āz, Syria and Egypt in search of ḥadīt̲h̲ , on so-called ṭalab al-ʿilm …

, ʿĀmir b. S̲h̲arāḥīl b. ʿAbd al-Kūfī, Abū ʿAmr, famous early legal expert and transmitter of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.]. He is said to have been a descendant of a kinglet (Ar. ḳayl ) of Yemen. He was a member of the S̲h̲aʿb clan of the tribe of Hamdān. In isnād s [ q.v.] he is either referred to as al-S̲h̲aʿbī or (less often) as ʿĀmir (without patronymic), but there are no other men called ʿĀmir, at least not in that early slot of isnāds, immediately preceding a Companion or the Prophet, with whom he could have been confused. As is the case with many other leading figures of the first …

(a.), an adjective generally meaning "righteous", "virtuous", "incorrupt", used in the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] criticism as a technical term indicating a transmitter who, although otherwise praised for his upright conduct, is known to have brought into circulation one or more traditions spuriously ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad. It is the contents of such traditions, as well as their underlying meaning, that characterise their recognized inventor as ṣāliḥ rather than as waḍḍāʿ , i.e. "forger", or kad̲h̲d̲h̲āb , "liar". Transmitters labelled ṣāliḥ, or its presumably slig…

(the fatḥa of the ṭ is confirmed in Ibn Durayd, Is̲h̲tiḳāḳ , ed. Hārūn, 310; occasionally wrongly al-Muʿaṭṭil), from the tribe of Sulaym, was a Companion of the Prophet Muḥammad. His year of birth does not seem to be recorded, and he is mentioned as having died a martyr’s death during the Arabs’ conquest of Armīniya in 17/638 (cf. Ṭabarī, i, 2506) or 19/640 (cf. Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Iṣāba , iii, 441). Other reports have it that he met his death at a much later date in the year 59/679 (cf. K̲h̲alīfa, Taʾrīk̲h̲ , ed. A.D. al-ʿUmarī, 226-7) or ¶ 60/680 in S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ in the D̲j̲azīra (cf. Ibn al-D̲j̲awzī. Munt…

(a.), the verbal noun from dawwana "to register”, most probably a denominal verb from the Persian noun dīwān [ q.v.]. For tadwīn in the connotation of “drawing up lists for military and administrative purposes”, see dīwān. For its use as “gathering poetry of a certain poet or tribe”, see s̲h̲iʿr . In the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ , the term indicates the collecting of traditions in writing in order to derive legal precepts from them and not as a mere memory aid, for which rather the terms kitābat al-ʿilm or k. al-ḥadīt̲h̲ were used. The period of tadwīn al-ḥadīt̲h̲ is genera…