al-Thani min Hadith Sufyan ibn Uyayna lil-Ta'i
- Author died
- 265 AH
- Editions
- A manuscript published in the free Jawāmi‘ al-Kalim software affiliated with the Islamweb website
al-Thani min Hadith Sufyan ibn Uyayna lil-Ta'i (Arabic: الثاني من حديث سفيان بن عيينة للطائي, The Second Part of the Hadith of Sufyan ibn Uyayna by al-Ta'i) is a specialized hadith tract (juz') compiled by the Iraqi hadith scholar Ali ibn Harb al-Ta'i (d. 265 AH / 878–879 CE), preserving narrations transmitted on the authority of the prominent Meccan traditionist Sufyan ibn Uyayna .
Transmission and Provenance
The work forms the second part of Ali ibn Harb's transmission from Sufyan ibn Uyayna . It was preserved through family transmission by the author's great-grandson, the centenarian hadith transmitter Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Umar ibn Ali ibn Harb al-Ta'i (d. 340 AH), who transmitted it in Baghdad directly from his great-grandfather .
From Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Yahya, the collection was heard and relayed by several classical traditionists, foremost among them Abu al-Hasan Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rizqwayh (known as Ibn Rizqwayh), who read it in his mosque on the riverbank in Baghdad during Rabi' al-Awwal 407 AH . It was subsequently received and utilized by later scholars in their hadith anthologies and transmission indexes (faharis), including Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn Asakir, and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani .
A surviving manuscript of this part is preserved in the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus among the Majami' Umariyya collection (Majmu' 67, item 6, fols. 98–103, represented by the copy of al-Qastallani) . The text has appeared in modern editions alongside the first part, including an edition prepared by Muflih ibn Sulayman ibn Falah published by Dar al-Mayman (1430 AH / 2009 CE) and an edition edited by Hamza Ahmad al-Zayn published by Dar al-Hadith in Cairo .
Contents and Scope
The tract comprises 144 transmitted texts, consisting of prophetic traditions (marfu'), statements of Companions (mawquf), and rulings and commentaries of early Successors (maqtu') .
The narrations transmitted by Ibn Uyayna draw upon key early authorities, including Amr ibn Dinar, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Ziyad ibn Ilaqa, Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Qasim, and Abdullah ibn Dinar .
The material spans a wide range of legal, moral, and historical subjects:
- Ritual laws and worship: Topics include the details of purification, prayer, the rules of congregational attendance, and specific rites during Hajj and Umrah .
- Transactions, oaths, and family law: Reports on contracts, dowries (sadaq), the oaths of abstinence (ila'), and inheritance distributions according to Islamic rulings .
- Exegesis, virtues, and ethics: Qur'anic commentary on specific verses, hadiths on the virtues of the Qur'an and remembrance, prohibitions against arrogance and worldly obsession, and moral counsels transmitted from early authorities such as Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, Jabir ibn Zayd, and al-Hasan al-Basri .
The tract concludes with a report attributed to Abdullah ibn Abbas warning scholars against seeking worldly gain through religious knowledge: لو أن حامل العلم أخذه بحقه وبما ينبغي لأحبهم الله وملائكته والصالحون والناس، ولكنهم طلبوا به الدنيا فأبغضهم الله وهانوا على الناس ("If the bearers of knowledge had taken it by its due right and as is proper, God, His angels, the righteous, and people would have loved them; but they sought the worldly life with it, so God detested them and they became lowly in the eyes of people") .
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