Asma al-Sahaba al-Ruwat wa ma li-kull wahid min al-adad
- Author died
- 456 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Ma'arif
Asma al-Sahaba al-Ruwat wa ma li-kull wahid min al-adad (Names of the Companion Narrators and the Number of Hadiths Transmitted by Each) is a specialized hadith treatise by the Andalusian scholar Ibn Hazm (384–456 AH / 994–1064 CE) that catalogs the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ who transmitted hadiths and records the precise number of narrations attributed to each .
Source and Scope
The treatise is extracted directly from the comprehensive Musnad of the Andalusian hadith master Baqi ibn Makhlad (d. 276 AH) . In compiling this work, Ibn Hazm surveyed the individual Companion corpora (masanid) present in Baqi's collection, enumerating a total of 1,010 narrators who transmitted at least one hadith from the Prophet ﷺ .
Structure and Method
Rather than using alphabetical order, Ibn Hazm organized the narrators hierarchically based on the volume of their transmissions, proceeding from the most prolific down to the least :
- Prolific narrators (thousands and above): Headed by Abu Hurayra with 5,374 hadiths .
- Narrators of over two thousand hadiths: 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar (2,630 hadiths), Anas ibn Malik (2,286 hadiths), and 'A'isha (2,210 hadiths) .
- Lesser tiers: Narrators of over one thousand hadiths, followed by those with several hundreds, over one hundred, and tens of narrations .
- Decreasing single-digit brackets: Narrators with specific smaller totals—such as nineteen, eighteen (including Fatima, who is listed with eighteen hadiths), seventeen, and decreasing one by one down to two hadiths .
- Single-narration transmitters (ashab al-afrad): Narrators who transmitted only a single hadith, who make up the majority of the entries .
Reception and Influence
Subsequent scholars writing on the biographical statistics and rankings of Companion narrators relied heavily on Ibn Hazm's arrangement or on Ibn al-Jawzi's parallel compilation in Talqih Fuhum Ahl al-Athar, both stemming from Baqi ibn Makhlad's Musnad . Abu al-Baqa' Muhammad ibn 'Ali ibn Khalaf al-Ahmadi later extracted Ibn Hazm's text and incorporated it into his work al-Bari' al-Fasih fi Sharh al-Jami' al-Sahih .
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani consulted Ibn Hazm's arrangement and cited it frequently across his biographical dictionary al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba . Ibn Hajar highlighted an oversight inherited from Baqi ibn Makhlad's original work: Baqi had included several Successors (Tabi'un) and non-Companions among the narrators in his Musnad, which Ibn Hazm retained without noting their non-Companion status .
Manuscripts and Publication
The text was preserved as one of five short treatises appended to manuscript copies of Ibn Hazm's Jawami' al-Sira . It was published in Cairo by Dar al-Ma'arif as part of Jawami' al-Sira wa-Khams Rasa'il Ukhra, edited by Ihsan 'Abbas and Nasir al-Din al-Asad, based on a manuscript obtained from the Habibiyya Library in India (copied in 1354 AH) and two manuscripts preserved in Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya . It was also published separately in Cairo by Maktabat al-Qur'an, edited by Mus'ad 'Abd al-Hamid al-Sa'dani .
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