Ibn Zurayq
- Died
- 803 AH
- Born in
- -
Nasir al-Din Ibn Zurayq (d. 803 AH / 1400–1401 CE) was a Syrian Hanbali jurist and hadith scholar based in Damascus, best known for his critical hadith indexes and textual arrangements, including Man takallama fihi al-Daraqutni fi kitab al-Sunan min al-du'afa' wa-al-matrukin wa-al-majhulin .
Lineage and Background
His full name was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Sulayman ibn Hamza al-Maqdisi al-Salihi al-Hanbali, with the honorific title Nasir al-Din . He was commonly known as Ibn Zurayq, or simply Zurayq, an appellation that Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani noted was a diminutive form of the Arabic word azraq (blue) . He descended from the prominent Hanbali scholarly line of the judge and traditionist Taqi al-Din Sulayman ibn Hamza al-Maqdisi and resided in the al-Salihiyya district of Damascus .
Scholarly Career and Standing
Ibn Zurayq studied Hanbali jurisprudence and attained proficiency across the various disciplines of hadith scholarship, hearing narrations with both elevated and proximate chains of transmission . He engaged in study with prominent contemporaries, including Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, who attended transmission sessions alongside him under shaykhs in al-Salihiyya and elsewhere . Ibn Hajar commended his standing, recording: "I benefited from him greatly, and he heard [hadith] with me from the shaykhs in al-Salihiyya and elsewhere, and I did not see anyone in Damascus deserving the title of hafiz other than him" .
In the organization of hadith literature, Ibn Zurayq rearranged al-Tabarani's al-Mu'jam al-Awsat by thematic legal chapters (al-abwab) and prepared an arrangement of Ibn Hibban's Sahih . His specialized index, Man takallama fihi al-Daraqutni fi kitab al-Sunan min al-du'afa' wa-al-matrukin wa-al-majhulin ("Those Criticized by al-Daraqutni in the Book of al-Sunan Among Weak, Abandoned, and Unknown Narrators"), gathered biographical entries on transmitters who received critical verdicts from Abu al-Hasan al-Daraqutni, listing them in alphabetical order and drawing upon al-Daraqutni's evaluations both within Sunan al-Daraqutni and across his other works .
Death
Ibn Zurayq died in 803 AH (1400–1401 CE) .
Answer updated
List of Works
This specialized hadith biographical index gathers and organizes the critical verdicts issued by Abu al-Hasan al-Daraqutni on defective, abandoned, and obscure narrators recorded throughout his collection Sunan al-Daraqutni. It extracts critical statements across the transmission chains, documenting approximately five hundred transmitters evaluated as weak, discarded, or unknown.