al-Hazimi
- Died
- 584 AH
- Born in
- -
Abu Bakr al-Hazimi (548/549–584 AH / 1153/1154–1188 CE) was a Persian Shafi'i jurist, hadith scholar, and genealogist who settled in Baghdad, known for his work on abrogation in prophetic traditions, al-I'tibar fi al-Nasikh wa al-Mansukh min al-Athar.
Early life and education
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Uthman ibn Musa ibn Uthman ibn Hazim al-Hazimi al-Hamadhani, titled Zayn al-Din, derived his nisba from his ancestor Hazim. He was born on the road to Hamadhan in 548 AH (or 549 AH), where he was raised and memorized the Quran. At the age of four, he was brought to attend the hadith sessions of Abu al-Waqt al-Sijzi in Hamadhan. He also studied hadith in his hometown under Shahrdar ibn Shirawayh al-Daylami, Abu Zur'a Tahir ibn Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and Abu al-Ala al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Attar.
In pursuit of hadith, al-Hazimi traveled across several regions, including Iraq, Syria, al-Jazira, Mosul, Isfahan, Fars, Azerbaijan, Bukhara, Harran, Basra, Wasit, Kufa, Erbil, and the Hijaz. His teachers included Abu Musa al-Madini in Isfahan, Abu al-Fadl Abd Allah ibn Ahmad (the preacher of Mosul), Abu Talib Muhammad ibn Ali al-Kattani in Wasit, and Muhammad ibn Talha al-Maliki in Basra. He also received formal transmission licenses (ijazat) from scholars such as Abu Tahir al-Silafi, Abu Sa'd al-Sam'ani, and Abu Abd Allah al-Rustami.
Al-Hazimi eventually settled in eastern Baghdad, where he studied Shafi'i jurisprudence under Jamal al-Din Wathiq ibn Fadlan and associated with local jurists and Sufis.
Scholarly career and standing
Al-Hazimi achieved significant prominence for his memorization and mastery of hadith, particularly legal traditions (ahadith al-ahkam), hidden defects (ilal), transmitter biographies, and Arab genealogy. His teacher Abu Musa al-Madini held him in high esteem, remarking that he had never seen a young man with a stronger memory and declaring him superior in memorization to his contemporary Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi. The historians Ibn al-Dubaythi and Ibn al-Najjar characterized him as an authoritative, ascetic, and devout scholar dedicated to continuous worship, seclusion, and teaching.
His scholarly output reflected his methodological focus on hadith sciences and auxiliary disciplines; in al-I'tibar fi al-Nasikh wa al-Mansukh min al-Athar, he addressed legal traditions that resisted reconciliation to establish abrogating and abrogated texts, while in Ujala al-Mubtadi wa Fudala al-Muntahi fi al-Nasab, he provided an alphabetical manual of tribal lineages and relative adjectives (nisbas). He also composed al-Amakin, ma Ittafaq Lafzuhu wa Iftaraq Musammahu, a geographical dictionary designed to clarify homonymous and orthographically confusable place names found in prophetic reports. Among those who transmitted from him were Abu Muhammad Abd al-Khaliq al-Nishtabri and Abd Allah ibn al-Hasan, the preacher of Damietta.
Death
Al-Hazimi died in Baghdad in Jumada al-Ula 584 AH (1188 CE)—with reports specifying the 4th, 22nd, or the eve of Monday, the 28th of the month—at approximately thirty-five years of age. A large crowd performed funeral prayers over him in the courtyard of Jami' al-Qasr on the eastern side of Baghdad, after which his body was transported across the river to the western side for a second prayer. He was buried in the cemetery of al-Shuniziyya next to the grave of Samnun ibn Hamza al-Muhibb, opposite the tomb of al-Junayd al-Baghdadi, and his books were distributed among students of hadith.
Answer updated
List of Works
al-I'tibar fi al-Nasikh wa al-Mansukh min al-Athar is a specialized hadith treatise on abrogation (naskh) in prophetic reports and legal traditions. It is devoted to compiling and resolving conflicting prophetic hadiths that cannot be harmonized, determining abrogating and abrogated texts based on chronological precedence and posteriority.
al-Amakin, ma Ittafaq Lafzuhu wa Iftaraq Musammahu is a geographical and onomastic dictionary devoted to disambiguating homonymous and orthographically confusable toponyms. It specifically addresses place names associated with prophetic reports, hadith transmitters, and Arabic historical events that share identical spoken forms or similar unpointed Arabic scripts.
Ujala al-Mubtadi wa Fudala al-Muntahi fi al-Nasab is a specialized manual of Arab tribal genealogy and relative adjectives (nisbas). Arranged alphabetically, it provides students of hadith with a concise reference for identifying transmitters and their tribal lineages.