Usool al Hadith - Forever Islam

the well-known Kitaab al-Ansaab of al-Sam‘aanee. Yet others containbiographical details of all narrators who lived in or visited a particular town, e.g.Aleppo, Baghdad, Damascus, etc. The works of al-Khateeb al-Baghdaadee, Ibnal-‘Asaakir and others are examples of this type. Some of them dealt with only thereliable or unreliable narrators, like Kitaab al-Thiqaat and Kitaab ad-Du‘afaa byIbn Hibbaan and others. Others contain the biographies of only such narrators asfind a place in any particular collection of traditions or in a group of them. To thisclass belong a large number of works that deal with the lives of the narrators onwhom al-Bukhaaree or Muslim or the authors of all the Sound Six have relied.The works on the Asmaa ar-Rijaal may be classified into two main groups: (1)The general works and (2) The special works.1. General Works. This refers to those works which contain the biographies ofall the narrators, or at least of all the important ones among them, who had beenknown to their compilers. Most of the early works on this subject belong to thisclass. The Tabaqaat of Muhammad ibn Sa‘d, the three Histories of al-Bukhaaree,the History of Ahmad ibn Abee Khaythamah, and many other works on theAsmaa ar-Rijaal, which were compiledduring the third century of the Hijrah following this pattern. 3Tabaqaat Ibn Sa‘dThe earliest of these works received by us is the Kitaab al- Tabaqaat al-Kabeerby Ibn Sa‘d. Aboo ‘Abdillaah Muhammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Munee‘ az-Zuhreebelonged to a family of Babylonian slaves of the family of the great traditionist,‘Abdullaah ibn ‘Abbaas, who had granted them their freedom. Born at Basra, thegreat centre of hadeeth learning, Ibn Sa‘d was attracted to this field and traveledthrough Kufa, Makkah and Madeenah where he stayed for quite a long time.When he finally came to Baghdad, the greatest centre of intellectual activity in histime, he was blessed with the opportunity to become the personal literary assistantto al-Waaqidee, one of the early Arab historians. He worked for him for such along time that he was given title “Kaatib al-Waqidee” (the secretary of Waqidee),by which he became generally known.Eventually Ibn Sa‘d’s reputation in Baghdad as a historian and traditionistattracted a band of students who sat at his feet and studied Tradition and History3 Hadith Literature, pp. 171-2.