al-Rashid al-Attar
- Died
- 662 AH
- Born in
- Cairo
al-Rashid al-Attar (584–662 AH / 1188–1264 CE) was a Maliki hadith scholar and traditionist based in Cairo, where he led hadith scholarship and served as the head of the Kamiliyya Hadith Academy.
Lineage and Early Life
He was Rashid al-Din Abu al-Husayn Yahya ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn Ali ibn Mufarrij ibn Abi al-Futuh (also recorded as Ibn Abi al-Fath) al-Qurashi al-Umawi al-Nabulsi thumma al-Misri al-Maliki. While his family originally hailed from Nablus, he was born in Cairo in 584 AH (1188 CE) into a family of scholars. His father, Abu al-Hasan Ali, was a recognized traditionalist who oversaw his early upbringing and transmitted hadith to him.
Education and Travels
Al-Rashid al-Attar studied hadith under numerous scholars in Egypt and journeyed to several centers of learning across the Islamic world. In Cairo and Alexandria, he heard hadiths from his father, his uncle Abu al-Qasim Abd al-Rahman, Abu al-Qasim al-Busiri, Imad al-Din al-Katib, Ali ibn Hamza al-Katib, and Fatima bint Sa'd al-Khayr, receiving his specialized training in hadith discipline from Ali ibn al-Mufaddal. He traveled to Damascus, where he studied under Taj al-Din al-Kindi and Ibn al-Harastani, and further pursued his narrations in Mecca and Medina.
Scholarly Career and Students
Following the tenure of Abd al-Azim al-Mundhiri, al-Rashid al-Attar was appointed head of the prestigious Dar al-Hadith al-Kamiliyya academy in Cairo, a post he held for six years until the end of his life. He endowed his entire personal collection of books as a religious trust (waqf).
Among his works was Ghurar al-Fawa'id al-Majmu'a, a specialized treatise demonstrating the continuous transmission chains of specific narrations in Sahih Muslim, as well as Nuzhat al-Nazir, a biographical compilation of scholars who transmitted narrations from Abu al-Qasim al-Baghawi.
A large number of traditionists studied and transmitted under his supervision, including Abd al-Mu'min al-Dimyati, Qutb al-Din al-Yunini, Najm al-Din ibn Sasra, Abd al-Rahman ibn Ya'ish al-Sabti, Dawud ibn Yahya al-Hariri, and his son Abu Sadiq Muhammad ibn Yahya.
Scholarly Standing
Biographers recognized al-Rashid al-Attar for his mastery of biographical evaluation (ilm al-rijal), precision in transmission chains, and fine calligraphy. During his youth, Ibn Nuqta praised him as a trustworthy, accurate, and discerning traditionist. Al-Sharif Izz al-Din stated that leadership of hadith studies in Egypt culminated in him, noting his unassailable reliability.
Death
Al-Rashid al-Attar died in Cairo on 2 Jumada al-Ula 662 AH (March 1264 CE). He was buried at the foot of Mount Muqattam alongside his family. He was eulogized in verse by the contemporary poet al-Siraj al-Warraq.
Answer updated
List of Works
Nuzhat al-Nazir fi Dhikr man Haddath an Abi al-Qasim al-Baghawi min al-Huffaz wa-al-Akabir is a specialized biographical dictionary of hadith transmitters. The work is devoted to chronicling the leading memorizers and prominent scholars who transmitted hadith from the centenarian Iraqi traditionist Abu al-Qasim al-Baghawi (d. 317 AH). Arranged alphabetically by the names of the transmitters, each entry records lineages, dates where known, notable teachers and students, and sample narrations transmitted through al-Baghawi.
Ghurar al-Fawa'id al-Majmu'a fi Bayan ma Waqa'a fi Sahih Muslim min al-Ahadith al-Maqtu'a is a specialized hadith treatise. The work investigates fourteen narrations in Sahih Muslim that had been characterized as having broken chains of transmission, proving their continuous connectivity through alternative transmission paths and citing chains from other authoritative compilations.
al-Ruwat an Malik (also titled Mujarrad Asma' al-Ruwat an Malik) is a biographical reference work that compiles the names and details of transmitters who related hadiths from Imam Malik ibn Anas. An alphabetically arranged abridgment of an extensive work by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, it condenses the material by omitting extended chains of transmission while adding critical annotations and supplemental transmitters omitted from the original survey.