Abū al-Ḥasan ʻAlī ibn ʻAbdillāh ibn Jaʻfar al-Madīnī (778 CE/161 AH – 849/234) () was a ninth-century

Sunni Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Mu ...

Islamic scholar who was influential in the

science of hadith Hadith sciences ( ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith") consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in the study and evaluation of the hadith. ("Science" is used in the sense of a field of study, not to be ...

. Alongside

Ahmad ibn Hanbal Ahmad ibn Hanbal (; (164-241 AH; 780 – 855 CE) was an Arab Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, traditionist, ascetic and eponym of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence—one of the four major orthodox legal schools of Sunni Islam. T ...

, Ibn Abi Shaybah and

Yahya ibn Ma'in Yahya ibn Ma'in (; 774-847) was a classical Islamic scholar in the field of hadith. He was a close friend of Ahmad ibn Hanbal for much of his life. Ibn Ma'in is known to have spent all of his inheritance on seeking hadith to the extent he becam ...

, Ibn al-Madini has been considered by many Muslim specialists in hadith to be one of the four most significant authors in the field.

Ibn al-Jawzi Abu al-Faraj Jamal al-Din Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Hasan Ali Al-Jawzi also known as Ibn al-Jawzi (16 June 1201) was a Muslim jurisconsult, preacher, orator, heresiographer, traditionist, historian, judge, hagiographer, and philologist who played ...

The Life of Ibn Hanbal
pg. 45. Trns. Michael Cooperson. New York:

New York University Press New York University Press (or NYU Press) is a university press that is part of New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 ...

, 2016.

Biography

Ibn al-Madīnī was born in the year 778 CE/161 AH in

Basra Basra () is a port city in Iraq, southern Iraq. It is the capital of the eponymous Basra Governorate, as well as the List of largest cities of Iraq, third largest city in Iraq overall, behind Baghdad and Mosul. Located near the Iran–Iraq bor ...

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

to a family with roots in

Medina Medina, officially al-Madinah al-Munawwarah (, ), also known as Taybah () and known in pre-Islamic times as Yathrib (), is the capital of Medina Province (Saudi Arabia), Medina Province in the Hejaz region of western Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, ...

now in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

. His teachers include his father, ʻAbdullāh ibn Jaʻfar, Ḥammād ibn Yazīd, Hushaym and Sufyān ibn ʻUyaynah and other from their era. His teacher, Ibn ʻUyaynah, said that he had learned more from Ibn al-Madīnī, his student, than his student from him. Ibn al-Madīnī specialized in the disciplines of

hadith Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...

biographical evaluation Biographical evaluation (; literally meaning'' 'Knowledge of Men', ''but more commonly understood as the ''Science of Narrators)'' refers to a discipline of Islamic religious studies within hadith terminology in which the narrators of hadith are ...

and ''al-ʻIlal'', hidden defects, in the ''sanad'', chain of narration. He was praised by other hadith specialists for his prowess in that field—by both his contemporaries, students and his teachers. ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, a scholar who preceded him, described Ibn al-Madīnī the most knowledgeable person of prophetic hadith. His students include prominent hadith scholars in their own right. They include: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhalī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʻīl al-Bukhārī, Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān ibn al-Ashʻath al-Sijistānī and others. Al-Bukhārī, who went on the collect what is considered to be the most authentic collection of hadith in

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

, said that he did not consider himself diminutive in comparison to anyone other than Ibn al-Madīnī. Al-Dhahabī lauded Ibn al-Madīnī as an ''imām'' and as exemplary to subsequent scholars in the field in hadith, a description he considered tarnished by Ibn al-Madīnī's adopted position in the theological inquisition of the ninth century. According to Al-Dhahabī, he adopted a position in favor of the Muʻtazilah regarding the uncreated origin of the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

, but later regretted this and declared the claimant that the Quran was created as an apostate. Great Mosque of Samarra

Ibn al-Madīnī died in Samarra,

in June, 849/ Dhu al-Qa'dah, 234.

Works

Al-Nawawī said Ibn al-Madīnī authored approximately 200 works some on subjects not previously written about and many not since superseded. *''al-ʻIlal'' – on the subject of hidden defects (''`ilal'') in the ''sanads'' of

; of which a small segment has been published *''Kitāb al-Ḍuʻafāʼ'' – on the subject of weak hadith narrators in the discipline of

*''al-Mudallisūn'' – on the subject of hadith narrators who utilize ambiguous terminology in narrating *''al-Asmāʼ wa al-Kunā'' – on names paidonymics *''al-Musnad'' – a collection of hadith arranged by narrator *''Kitab Ma'rifat al-Sahaba'' – ''The Book of Knowledge of the Companions''

Early Islam scholars

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ali Ibn Al-Madini Hadith scholars 8th-century people from the Abbasid Caliphate Hadith compilers 778 births 849 deaths Iraqi writers Arab biographers Iraqi Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam Atharis 8th-century Arab people 9th-century Arab people Biographical evaluation scholars