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Abū Sufyān Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ ibn Malīḥ al-Ruʾāsī al-Kilābī al-Kufī (745/47–812) was a prominent hadith scholar based in Kufa. He was one of the principal teachers of the major Sunni Muslim jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

Origins

Waki was born in Kufa, or in the village of Ustuwa near Nishapur, in 128/129 AH (745–747 CE). His father al-Jarrah ibn Malih belonged to the Ubayd ibn Ru'as clan of the Banu Kilab tribe and was born in Soghdia, while his mother, a daughter of Amra ibn Shaddad ibn Thawr of the same clan, was born in Bukhara; the Ubayd ibn Ru'as had been settled in Kufa following the Muslim conquest of Iraq in the 630s. The family was well off and al-Jarrah was the supervisor of the bayt al-darb (mint) at Rayy, before being appointed head of the bayt al-mal (treasury) in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809).

Career

Schooled in the Islamic religious sciences, especially the hadith (traditions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad), Waki became a leading traditionist (muhaddith) in his hometown, known for transmitting numerous hadiths based on his memorizations. Despite the errors of transmission attributed to him, Waki was generally regarded as the best muhaddith of his time. His refusal of an appointment as qadi (head judge) by Harun al-Rashid out of concern of dependence on the state further contributed to his reputation for piety and ascetism.

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani has mentioned a long list of his teachers and students in his work Tahdhib al-tahdhib. He transmitted hadiths on the authority of the earlier Muslim scholars Isma'il ibn Abi Khalid, Ikrima ibn Ammar, al-Awza'i, al-A'mash, and Malik ibn Anas, as well as his father. Al-Dhahabi in his Siyar a`lam al-nubala has listed the names of about 20 teachers of Waki out of which the best known were Sufyan al-Thawri, Shu'ba ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Ibn Jurayj. He was among the most important teachers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder and namesake of the Hanbali school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh). Waki himself was classified as a follower of the Hanafi fiqh of Sunni Islam.

Waki built a mosque in Kufa, installing as its imam a tribesman of his, Humayd ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Humayd al-Ru'asi.

Death and descendants

On his return from the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), Waki died in the Fayd oasis in 197 AH (812). His son Sufyan was also a Kufan traditionist, though of poor reputation. Sufyan died at an old age in 861.

Literary works

Although Waki was popularly held to have never possessed a book, he authored a number of works:

• Tafsir al-Quran
• al-Sunan
• al-Marifa Wa al-Tarikh
• al-Musannaf (cited by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani)
• al-Zuhd (a copy of which is preserved in the al-Zahiriyah Library Library of Damascus)
• Kitab al-salat, of which just one page survived on a papyrus leaf

References

1. M. Fethullah Gülen (2009). The Messenger of God: Muhammad. Tughra Books. p. 316. ISBN 9781597846394. Waki' ibn Jarrah, who was brought up in the school of Abu Hanifa and was a tutor of Imam Shafi'i
2. Nimrod Hurvitz (2002). The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power. Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 9781136753138. For example, Yahya b. Sa'id al-Qattan and Waki' b. al-Jarrah (d. 196) are referred to as Hanafis
3. ^ Khoury 2002, p. 101.
4. ^ "Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ: Biographical Reports". Al-Ikhbar: Translations of Classical Arabic Texts. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
5. ^ Rosenthal 1989, p. 200, note 242.
6. Szilagyi 2009, p. 148, note 64.
7. Caskel 1966, p. 560.
8. Salem 2016, p. 21, note 64.
9. ^ Spectorsky 2013, p. 87.
10. Al-Dhahabi. Siyar a'lam al-nubala, Volume 9. p. 143.
11. Spectorsky 2013, pp. 86–87.
12. Hurvitz 2002, p. 51.
13. Rosenthal 1989, p. 176, note 66.
14. Blankinship 1993, p. 134, note 726.
15. Tillier, Mathieu; Vanthieghem, Naïm (2018-09-30). "Une œuvre inconnue de Wakīʿ b. al-Ǧarrāḥ (m. 197/812 ?) et sa transmission en Égypte au IIIe/IXe siècle". Arabica. 65 (5–6): 675–700. doi:10.1163/15700585-12341510. ISSN 0570-5398. S2CID 195465795.

Bibliography

• Blankinship, Khalid Yahya, ed. (1993). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XI: The Challenge to the Empires. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-0851-3.
• Caskel, Werner (1966). Ğamharat an-nasab: Das genealogische Werk des His̆ām ibn Muḥammad al-Kalbī, Volume II (in German). Leiden: Brill.
• Hurvitz, Nimrod (2002). The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1507-X.
• Khoury, R. G. (2002). "Wakīʿ b. al-Djarrāḥ b Malīḥ". In Bearman, P. J.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. & Heinrichs, W. P. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume XI: W–Z. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 101. ISBN 978-90-04-12756-2.
• Rosenthal, Franz, ed. (1989). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume I: General Introduction and from the Creation to the Flood. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-562-0.
• Salem, Feryal (2016). The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubarak and the Formation of Sunni Identity in the Second Islamic Century. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-31029-2.
• Spectorsky, Susan A. (2013). "Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 243/855)". In Powers, David S.; Spectorsky, Susan A.; Arabi, Oussama (eds.). Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists. Leiden and Boston: Brill. pp. 85–106. ISBN 978-90-04-25452-7.
• Szilagyi, K. (2009). "A Prophet like Jesus? Christians and Muslims Debating Muhammad's Death". Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. 36.

• 746 births
• 812 deaths
• 8th-century Arab people
• Banu Kilab
• Hanafi fiqh scholars
• Muslim ascetics
• People from Kufa
• People from Nishapur
• Taba‘ at-Tabi‘in hadith narrators