Ma'mar ibn Rashid () was an eighth-century
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 ...
scholar. A
Persian ''
mawla
''Mawlā'' (, 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 Muhammad, the te ...
'' ("freedman"),
he is cited as an authority in all six of the
canonical Sunni hadith collections.
He was a student of and is considered one of the most important sources for
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri
Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Abd Allah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (; died 124 AH/741-2 CE), also referred to as Ibn Shihab or az-Zuhri, was a ''tabi'i'' Arab jurist and traditionist credited with pioneering the development of '' s� ...
.
Ma'mar is the author of the ''Kitāb al-Maghāzi'' (''The Expeditions''), one of the earliest surviving
prophetic biographies in Islamic literature, alongside that of
Ibn Ishaq
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar al-Muttalibi (; – , known simply as Ibn Ishaq, was an 8th-century Muslim historian and hagiographer who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic proph ...
. Ma'mar's work survives through a recension produced by his student,
Abd al-Razzaq (d. 211/827). In 2015, an English translation of it was published by Sean Anthony.
Ma'mar also wrote the ''al-Jāmiʿ'', which has also come down through the transmission of Abd al-Razzaq, as an appendix of his
Musannaf. This was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, thematic compilation of hadith about Muhammad. One chapter of it is the earliest known systematic exposition of what was to become the ''dalāʾil al-nubūwa'' ("proofs of prophethood") literature.
Life
Ma'mar ibn Rashid was born in 96 AH/714 CE 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 ...
. He was a Persian ''
mawla
''Mawlā'' (, 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 Muhammad, the te ...
'' ("freedman") of the Huddan clan of
Azd
The Azd (Arabic: أَزْد), or Al-Azd (Arabic: ٱلْأَزْد), is an ancient Tribes of Arabia, Arabian tribe. The lands of Azd occupied an area west of Bisha and Al Bahah in what is today Saudi Arabia.
Land of Azd Pre-Islamic Arabia
Pre- ...
,
trading cloth and other luxuries on their behalf. Despite this, he was able to study under the Basran scholars
Hasan al-Basri
Abi Sa'id al-Hasan ibn Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as al-Hasan al-Basri, was an ancient Muslim preacher, ascetic, theologian, exegete, scholar, and judge.
Born in Medina in 642,Mourad, Suleiman A., “al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī”, in: ''Encyc ...
and
Qatada ibn Di'ama.
While on a journey to trade wares at
Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (; 6 February 743) was the tenth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 724 until his death in 743.
Early life
Hisham was born in Damascus, the administrative capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, in AH 72 (691–692 CE). Hi ...
's court in
Resafa
Resafa (), sometimes spelled Rusafa, and known in the Byzantine era as Sergiopolis ( or , ) and briefly as Anastasiopolis (, ), was a city located in the Roman province of Euphratensis, in modern-day Syria. It is an archaeological site situated so ...
, he encountered and became pupil to the elderly scholar
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri
Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Abd Allah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (; died 124 AH/741-2 CE), also referred to as Ibn Shihab or az-Zuhri, was a ''tabi'i'' Arab jurist and traditionist credited with pioneering the development of '' s� ...
. 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
Resafa (), sometimes spelled Rusafa, and known in the Byzantine era as Sergiopolis ( or , ) and briefly as Anastasiopolis (, ), was a city located in the Roman province of Euphratensis, in modern-day Syria. It is an archaeological site situated so ...
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
Al-Walid ibn Yazid ibn Abd al-Malik (; 70917 April 744), commonly known as al-Walid II, was the eleventh Umayyad caliph, ruling from 743 until his assassination in 744. He succeeded his uncle, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik.
Birth and background
Al-W ...
.
Amid the turbulence of the
civil wars that followed, Ma'mar departed for
Yemen
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...
where he spent the last twenty years of his life. There he married a local woman and taught several students, transmitting hadith to many individuals that would become major scholars. The most prominent of these was
ʽAbd al-Razzaq al-Sanʽani, 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, notably arranging those concerning
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
'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.
Works
''Kitab al-Maghāzi''
Ma'mar's ''Kitab al-Maghazi'' (''Military Expeditions'') belongs to a subgenre of prophetic biography that focuses on the military raids conducted during the lifetime of Muhammad. Specifically, it focuses on the key battles and raids, as well as their location, conducted under the rule of Muhammad. In tradition, the material originates from the lectures of
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri
Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Muslim ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Abd Allah ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (; died 124 AH/741-2 CE), also referred to as Ibn Shihab or az-Zuhri, was a ''tabi'i'' Arab jurist and traditionist credited with pioneering the development of '' s� ...
as presented to his student, Ma'mar. Ma'mar, in turn, transmitted his version of these stories and lectures to his own pupil,
Abd al-Razzaq, through whom the extant version of the text was written down and is known. Therefore, Ma'mar is not the author of the ''Kitab al-Maghazi'' in a conventional sense of authorship, but is labelled as such by historian Sean Anthony, who believes that he was the pivotal figure for the arrangement of the form and content of the text that has reached us today. This situation is not unusual, as all Arabic historical writings of the second Islamic century only survive through the recensions of later authors. The ''Kitab al-Maghazi'' is not chronologically ordered, although material is arranged under some chapter headings. There is thematic overlap between some of the chapters, but this was for the purpose of dividing material Ma'mar obtained from al-Zuhri, and from figures other than al-Zuhri.
''Al-Jamiʿ''
The ''al-Jāmiʿ'' of Ma'mar is one of the earliest thematic compilations 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 ...
. It has come down through a recension produced by Ma'mar's foremost student,
Abd al-Razzaq, specifically as an appendix to another one of his works, the
Musannaf. One chapter of the ''Jāmiʿ'' called the “Bāb al-nubūwa” is the earliest known collection of reports concerned with offering proofs for the prophetic status of
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
. It is not known the degree to which Ma'mar himself, or his student Abd al-Razzaq, shaped the extant form of this chapter. The chapter contains six reports. (Later works in this genre would contain a massively expanded list of such reports.) The first four concerned miraculous acts of creating water in times of need. The first two are the same story, though with a different
isnad
In the Islamic study of hadith, an isnād (chain of transmitters, or literally "supporting"; ) refers to a list of people who passed on a tradition, from the original authority to whom the tradition is attributed to, to the present person reciting ...
each. The story is that one of Muhammad's
Companions was looking for water to perform an
ablution. Muhammad put his hand on a vessel with only a little water in it, and water gushed forth between his fingers, enough for seventy people. In a third report, a woman is asked to provide water from her water skins into a vessel. After a series of water transfers, the women notices that her original water skin was bulkier than before, and Muhammad declared that God had miraculously provided. This was followed by the conversion of the women, who also converts her kinsmen on account of this episode. In a fourth account, a man is asked to pass around his bowl of water for seventy-two men to perform water ablutions. After it returns to the original man, it turns out that the water level of the bowl was unchanged. In a fifth account,
Abd Allah ibn Jahsh tells Muhammad, during the
Battle of Uhud
The Battle of Uhud () was fought between the early Muslims and the Quraysh during the Muslim–Quraysh wars in a valley north of Mount Uhud near Medina on Saturday, 23 March 625 AD (7 Shawwal, 3 AH).
After the expulsion of Hijrah, Muslims from ...
, that he had lost his sword. Muhammad gives the man a branch from a tree, and the branch miraculously transforms into a new sword. In the sixth account, a Companion of Muhammad reports having seen a special sign (''ʿalāma'') between Muhammad's shoulders that is a special physical marker of a prophet.
See also
*
Ibn Jurayj
Abd al-Malik ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Jurayj (, 80 AH/699 CE - 150 AH/767 CE) was an eighth-century ''faqīh'', exegete and hadith transmitter from the Taba' at-Tabi'in.
Biography
Ibn Jurayj was born in Mecca in 80 AH/699 CE. His father Abd al-Aziz w ...
*
Ata ibn Abi Rabah
Bibliography
* Rāshid, Maʿmar ibn, et al. ''The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muhammad''. Edited by Sean W. Anthony, NYU Press, 2015.
References
Citations
Sources
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{{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