JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

JAIS
ONLINE
Pavel Pavlovitch
In the collective isnād, a matn is attached to a number of transmitters,
none of whom may be proven as the originator of that specific matn’s
wording.
Save for Abū ʿAwāna’s confused tradition, the matn bundle through
Ibn al-Jaʿd is sufficiently consistent as to allow us to consider Ibn al-Jaʿd
as the CL or PCL in the al-bikr u yujlad wa-yunfā wa-l-thayyib u yujlad
wa-yurjam tradition. The evidence of the isnāds is less unequivocal,
however. There being no direct CR citation of Ibn al-Jaʿd, the isnāds that
branch from him form a spider structure. This issue is compounded by a
biographical problem. According to the biographical dictionaries, Ibn al-
Jaʿd died in 230/845, which means seventy lunar years after the death of
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Shuʿba in 160/776. Such a long period is suspect: the pupil must have
lived at least eighty to eighty-five lunar years in order to have heard from
his alleged teacher, assuming that the audition occurred towards the end
of the teacher’s life. I am skeptical about such coincidences, which
abound in Islamic tradition as convenient isnād-shortening devices. That
is not to say that such relationships did not occur at all; rather, one
should take them with a pinch of salt as possible instances of the so
called ‘age trick’. 62 In the present cluster, the question stands whether
Ibn al-Jaʿd heard from Shuʿba, or their alleged relationship boils down to
such an ‘age trick’.
The information provided by the rijāl critics engaged in the process of
al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl (depreciating and appreciating transmitters) may be
useful, albeit with qualifications. An entry on ʿAlī b. al-Jaʿd is present in
the early biographical dictionary of Ibn Saʿd. Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845) was
a contemporary of Ibn al-Jaʿd. According to Ibn Saʿd, Ibn al-Jaʿd related
from a number of second century authorities as Shuʿba b. al-Ḥajjāj,
Sufyān al-Thawrī and Ḥammād b. Salama. More importantly, Ibn al-Jaʿd
reportedly said that he had been born towards the end of the reign of the
first Abbasid caliph, Abū l-ʿAbbās (d. 136/754). Ibn al-Jaʿd died more
than ninety-six lunar years later, at the end of Rajab 230/April 845. 63
Thus he would have been twenty-four years old at the time of Shuʿba’s
demise in 160/776. Add to this that according to Ibn al-Jaʿd’s own words
cited by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, he came to Basra in 156/773–4. 64 Even
62 For more on the ‘age trick’, see G. H. A. Juynboll, “The Role of
Muʿammarūn in the Early Development of Isnād,” WZKM 81 (1991), 155–75.
63 Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar, 11 vols.
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1421/2001), 9:240–1.
64 Al-Khāṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, 17
vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2001), 13:281–2.