Biographies of sahabah

Scholars of hadith use a variety of related sciences in their quest for identifying the authentic narrations of the Prophet Muhammad (s). A key one is the science of men or ‘ilm al-rijal that allows them to sift through the biographical data on a specific narrator and determine both his or her credibility and also whether he or she met with (or had the possibility of meeting) people above and below in any given isnad or chain of narration.

So for instance, a very famous hadith recorded in Imam Malik’s Muwatta’ says

• From Malik that he heard that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “I have left two matters with you. As long as you hold on to them, you will not go the wrong way. They are the Book of Alláh and the Sunna of His Prophet.”
  
  Source: al-Muwatta’, Malik b. Anas, Kitab al-Jami’ in the section called “alnahiy ‘an al-qawl bi al-qadar ”.

Unlike most other narrations in the Muwatta’, this one has Imam Malik narrating without any intermediaries directly from the Prophet (s). So a hadith scholar would not take this as reliable, despite his comfort with Malik b. Anas himself as a reliable person, and would look for other versions that have a full and uninterrupted chain of narration.

Now when you do find such versions and research the narrators, you realise that the unmentioned narrators are not reliable, rendering no isnad for this hadith as reliable.

This science of men, under Sunni scholarship, does not include an assessment on the Companion in the isnad. However, a knowledge of the life of the Companions and who their students were, the tabi’un, was a very important part of determining the authenticity of what may have been attributed to them.

For that purpose, biographical dictionaries were written that aimed to collect all the data available to the compiler on each Companion. I mention some of the famous ones below:

• al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba - Ibn Hajar al-’Asqalani
• al-Isti’ab fi Ma’rifat al-’Ashab - Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr al-Nimari
• Usd al-Ghaba fi Ma’rifat al-Sahaba - Ibn al-’Athir al-Jazari

In actual fact, a researcher will probably want to look at each of these as well as various other historical and biographical works that are not exclusive to the Companions, for instance Kitab al-Tabaqat of Ibn Sa’d that is available in English, and the history of al-Tabari, the Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk, that is also available in English in its entirety, and the Ta’rikh al-khulafa’ of al-Suyuti (also translated) primarily covers the first four caliphs.

Beyond these texts, and once we start to consider the lives of the tabi’un and the scholars after them, they were not immune from scrutiny by Sunni muhaddithun and so books of rijal would pass judgement on them, or, share any mixed opinions from earlier rijal scholars.

There are quite a few books such as al-Dhahabi’s Mizan al-I’tidal and even books focusing on weak and rejected narrators such as al-’Uqayli’s Kitab al-Du’afa. None in English as far as I know.

If you can handle Arabic, a great book for researching hadith narrators is al-Mizzi’s Tahdhib al-Kamal. It is very easy to navigate and quite comprehensive.

As far as the origins of this science, one example of an early scholar who was regarded highly for ‘ilm al-rijal was Yahya b. Ma’in, another that comes to mind is Ibn al-Madini, I believe both were a little earlier to al-Bukhari though they may have overlapped. Al-Bukhari was certainly not the first to practice ‘ilm al-rijal and, as I have stated above, he did not scrutinise any Companions either, consistent with his outlook. The science of men for the Sunni scholars was exclusively for the Successors and those who followed them.

For those interested in this fascinating area of Islamic studies, I recommend Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature by Muhammad Mustafa al-A’zami and Lights on the Muhammadan Sunnah by Shaykh Mahmud Abu Rayyah.