Ma'mar ibn Rashid () was an 8th-century Persian hadith scholar. A

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

mawla Mawlā ( ar, مَوْلَى, plural ''mawālī'' ()), is a polysemous Arabic word, whose meaning varied in different periods and contexts.A.J. Wensinck, Encyclopedia of Islam 2nd ed, Brill. "Mawlā", vol. 6, p. 874. Before the Islamic prophet ...

'' ("freedman"), he is cited as an authority in all six of the canonical Sunni hadith collections.

Life

Ma'mar ibn Rashid was born in 96 AH/714 CE in

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...

. He was a Persian ''

'' ("freedman") of the Huddan clan of

Azd The Azd ( ar, أَزْد), or ''Al-Azd'' ( ar, ٱلْأَزْد), are a Tribes of Arabia, tribe of Sabaeans, Sabaean Arabs. In ancient times, the Sabaeans inhabited Ma'rib, capital city of the Sabaeans, Kingdom of Saba' in modern-day Yemen. Th ...

, trading cloth and other luxuries on their behalf. Despite this, he was able to study under the Basran scholars

Hasan al-Basri Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as Hasan of Basra (Arabic: الحسن البصري, romanized: ''Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī''; 642 - 15 October 728) for short, or as Hasan al-Basri, was an early Muslim preacher, asceti ...

and Qatada ibn Di'ama. While on a journey to trade wares at

Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ( ar, هشام بن عبد الملك, Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik; 691 – 6 February 743) was the tenth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 724 until his death in 743. Early life Hisham was born in Damascus, the administra ...

's court in

Resafa Resafa ( ar, الرصافة Reṣafa), also sometimes spelled Rusafa, and known in the Byzantine era as Sergiopolis (in greek Σεργιούπολις, Σεργιόπολις, "city of Saint Sergius") and briefly as Anastasiopolis (Αναστασ� ...

, he encountered and became pupil to the elderly scholar

Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubaydullah ibn Abdullah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri ( ar, محمد بن مسلم بن عبید الله بن عبد الله بن شهاب الزهری, translit=Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh b. S̲h̲i ...

. Ma'mar learned and transmitted a large body of traditions from al-Zuhri through audition, public recitation and writing, making his narrations coveted by other hadith scholars. Ma'mar remained in Resafa after al-Zuhri's death, and witnessed the removal of his late teacher's manuscripts from the Umayyad court following the assassination of al-Walid II. Amid the turbulence of the

civil wars A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

that followed, Ma'mar departed for Yemen where he married a local woman and taught several students. The most prominent of these was

ʽAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʽani Abd al-Razzaq ibn Hammam ibn Nafi al-Sanani (, 744-827 CE, 126–211 AH), was an eighth-century Yemeni hadith scholar purportedly of Persian people, Persian descent who compiled a hadith collection known as the Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq, ''Musanna ...

, who he taught for the final seven to eight years of his life. ʽAbd al-Razzaq preserved Ma'mar's traditions in his own

musannaf Musannaf hadīth collections are defined by their arrangement of content according to topic and constitute a major category within the class of all such works. Etymologically, ''musannaf'' is the passive particle of the Arabic verb ''sannafa'', ...

, notably arranging those concerning

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

's life into ''The'' ''Book of Expeditions (''), which has survived as one of the earliest extant works of ''sira-maghazi'' literature. Also preserved is ʽAbd al-Razzaq's recension of Ma'mar's hadith collection, ''al-Jāmi.

Bibliography

* Rāshid, Maʿmar ibn, et al. ''The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muhammad''. Edited by Sean W. Anthony, NYU Press, 2015.

References

{{Authority control 8th-century Muslim scholars of Islam Hadith scholars Iranian historians of Islam Taba‘ at-Tabi‘in hadith narrators 8th-century Iranian people 8th-century historians of the medieval Islamic world

Life

See also

Bibliography

References