Waki' ibn al-Jarrah

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.

Waki was born in Kufa,^[3] or in the village of Ustuwa near Nishapur,^[4] in 128/129 AH (745–747 CE).^[5] 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;^[4][6] the Ubayd ibn Ru'as had been settled in Kufa following the Muslim conquest of Iraq in the 630s.^[7] The family was well off and al-Jarrah was the supervisor of the bayt al-darb (mint) at Rayy,^[4] before being appointed head of the bayt al-mal (treasury) in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809).^[3][4]

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.^[8][9] Despite the errors of transmission attributed to him, Waki was generally regarded as the best muhaddith of his time.^[3] 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.^[3]

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.^[3][9] 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.^[10] He was among the most important teachers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder and namesake of the Hanbali school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh).^[11] Waki himself was classified as a follower of the Hanafi fiqh of Sunni Islam.^[12]

Waki built a mosque in Kufa, installing as its imam a tribesman of his, Humayd ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Humayd al-Ru'asi.^[4]

On his return from the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), Waki died in the Fayd oasis in 197 AH (812).^[5] His son Sufyan was also a Kufan traditionist, though of poor reputation. Sufyan died at an old age in 861.^[13][14]

Although Waki was popularly held to have never possessed a book, he authored a number of works:^[3]

• Tafsir al-Quran
• al-Sunan
• al-Marifa Wa al-Tarikh
• al-Musannaf (cited by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani)^[3]
• al-Zuhd (a copy of which is preserved in the al-Zahiriyah Library Library of Damascus)^[3]
• Kitab al-salat, of which just one page survived on a papyrus leaf^[15]

• 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.