Ibn Tahir of Caesarea

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Ibn Tahir
ابن طاهر
TitleHafiz
Personal
Born
Movement
Sufism

Abu al-Fadl Muhammad ibn Tahir ibn Ali al-Qaysarani (

Qur'an,[2][3][4] and the first person to include Sunan Ibn Maja as a canonical work.[5]

Biography

Ibn Tahir was born in Jerusalem in about 1057 to an Arab family originally from Caesarea, hence his name. Because of the Arabic name for Jerusalem being "Bait al-Maqdis," he was often nicknamed "Maqdisi" or the man from Jerusalem instead. His birth date is recorded by Ibn Khallikan as 6 Shawwal in 448 on the Islamic calendar, which William McGuckin de Slane reckoned as December 1056 on the Gregorian calendar.[6]

Ibn Tahir traveled extensively in search of

al-Bukhari, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawud and Ibn Majah.[7]

Ibn Tahir died in Baghdad on a Friday while returning from another pilgrimage at Mecca, which he had performed multiple times during his life. Ibn Khallikan records the date as 28

Rabi al-awwal
in the Hijri year 507, reckoned by de Slane as September 1113 Gregorian.

Works

Ibn Tahir is widely regarded as the first person to

Sunan Ibn Maja.[2] Despite their importance to the Muslim faith, no one had undertaken such a task prior to his work, and there was no way to search any of these books based on key words or important terms. Ibn Tahir was also noted for his work in bibliographic indexing and biographical dictionaries, fields in which he is considered an important early figure.[8]

It was also due to Ibn Tahir's indexing efforts that

Ali ibn al-Athir's The Complete History and Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal by at least a century, modern scholarship has credited Ibn Tahir with the establishment of the foundation for the Sunni Muslim cannon.[3][4][5]

Ibn Tahir was a

Zahirite, or literalist, in terms of Muslim jurisprudence.[10] Having also been a practitioner of Sufism, Ibn Tahir wrote about the subject in both prose and poetry.[6] He was criticized by theologians for his defense of Islamic music and dancing, which his detractors alleged were the precursors to Sufi whirling. Despite the respect accorded Ibn Tahir as a historian
and traditionist, he was often criticized for the many grammatical errors in his books as well.

Edited works

Original works

Citations

  1. ^ "Names of Zahiri Scholars". Archived from the original on 2013-01-11. Retrieved 2013-02-04.
  2. ^ a b c Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, translated by William McGuckin de Slane. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. Sold by Institut de France and Royal Library of Belgium. Vol. 3, pg. 5.
  3. ^ a b Scott C. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature, and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam, pg. 106. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2004.
  4. ^ a b Muhammad 'Abd al-Ra'uf, Hadith Literature - 1. Taken from The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, vol. 1, pg. 287. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-202-30778-6
  6. ^ a b c Ibn Khallikan, pg. 6.
  7. ^ Al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-huffaz., vol. 4, pgs. 27-29.
  8. ^ Lucas, pg. 103.
  9. ^ Lucas, pg. 83.
  10. ^ Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law: 9th-10th Centuries C.E., pg. 185. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1997.
  11. ^ WorldCat, auctore Abuʻl Fadhl Mohammed ibn Tahir al-Makdisi, vulgo dicto Ibnoʻl-Kaisarani quae cum appendice Abu Musae ispahanensis.
  12. Amazon.de, Al-Mu'talif wa-l-mukhtalaf fi-l-ansab [Gebundene Ausgabe]
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