Usool al Hadith - Forever Islam

every important town, had not only one or two but several biographers whocollected together the biographies of every important traditionist or man of letterswho either lived in it or visited it. Makkah, Madeenah, Basra, Kufah, Wasit,Damascus, Antioch, Alexandria, Qayrawaan, Cordova, Mawsil, Aleppo,Baghdad, Isfahan, Bukhaara, Merv, etc. all had their historians and biographers oftheir men of letters.Many of these provincial historians dealt with the political history of theseprovinces. A number of them dealt mainly with the biographies of their men ofletters, in general, and those of the narrators and the tradifionists, in particular. Alarge number of the early biographical dictionaries, which contained thebiographies of the important Muslim scholars of particular places (since theirconquest by the Muslims till the time of the compilers), are supplemented by theirsuccessors with those of the eminent men of the later periods down to almostmodern times. 12Tareekh Baghdaad of Al-Khateeb al-BaghdaadeeOne of the most important works of this type is al-Khateeb al-Baghdaadee’sTaareekh Baghdaad that is the earliest biographical dictionary of the men ofletters, principally traditionists, who either belonged to, or delivered lectures in,the great metropolis.Al-Khateeb al-Baghdaadee, whose full name was Aboo Bakr Ahmad ibn‘Alee, was the son of khateeb 13 of a village near Baghdad. He was born in the year392AH/1002, and began the study of hadeeth at the age of 11, which took him tothe various centres of learning in Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, and Persia. Al-Khateeb excelled in the various Islaamic sciences, particularly, the field of Asmaaar-Rijaal and hadeeth. He delivered lectures on hadeeth in Damascus, Baghdadand other centers of learning, and some of his own teachers (e.g. al-Azharee andal-Barqaanee) accepted him as an authority on traditions, and received them fromhim. Finally, he settled down in Baghdad, where his authority on hadeeth wasrecognized by the Caliph al-Qaa’im and his minister Ibn Maslamah (d. 1058),who had ordered that no preacher should narrate in his sermon any tradition thatwas not approved by al-Khateeb al-Baghdaadee. Here he read out almost all hisbooks to his students, and here he died in 463/1071.His life in Baghdad had not been altogether uneventful until the revolt of al-Basaaseeree (1058) in which al-Khateeb’s patron, Ibn Maslamah, was killed. Al-Khateeb suffered at the hands of the rebel and his supporters and was eventually12 Hadith Literature, p. 183.13 An Imaam who gives the Friday sermon.