Juz Baybi
- Author died
- 477 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Khulafā’ lil-Kitāb al-Islāmī
Juz' Baybi is a hadith tract (juz') transmitted with elevated chains of narration by the centenarian female scholar Bibi al-Harthamiyya (d. 477 AH / 1084–1085 CE) from her teacher Ibn Abi Shurayh al-Ansari (d. 392 AH / 1002 CE) .
Transmission and Significance
The text comprises the hadith narrations that Umm al-Fadl Bibi bint Abd al-Samad al-Harthamiyya al-Harawiyya received directly from Abu Muhammad Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Shurayh . Because she lived beyond the age of ninety—reaching ninety-seven years according to one account—she became the sole surviving transmitter of Ibn Abi Shurayh's transmissions in her era . Although another report dates her death to around 475 AH in Herat, she lived in the nearby village of Bakhsha, four parasangs from the city, where hadith scholars traveled extensively to hear the compilation directly from her .
Innumerable students heard the collection from her, notably Ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi, Wajih al-Shahhami, Abu al-Waqt al-Sijzi, and Abd al-Jalil ibn Abi Sa'd al-Harawi, who was the last surviving person to narrate it from her . The transmission subsequently spread through leading later transmitters, such as Abu al-Munajja Ibn al-Latti, and remained a widely transmitted and studied short hadith collection across major scholarly centers in Syria and Egypt .
Content and Scholarly Examination
The tract contains 119 hadiths narrated by Ibn Abi Shurayh through his teachers, including Abu al-Qasim al-Baghawi and Ahmad ibn Uthman al-Nahrawani .
Hadith critics examined several reports within the compilation. Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi noted a rejected (munkar) lengthy narration regarding divine decree (al-qadar) in the collection, remarking that he had initially suspected it might have been inserted into Bibi's manuscript, before finding corroborating chains from other transmissions of al-Baghawi and determining that the defect stemmed from an earlier obscure narrator named Yahya Abu Zakariyya . Another narration from al-Nahrawani regarding the hospitality of a home was cited in biographical works on problematic narrators with critical assessments regarding its transmission chain .
Publication
The work was edited by Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Jabbar al-Fariwa'i and published in Kuwait by Dar al-Khulafa' lil-Kitab al-Islami (1st ed., 1406 AH / 1986 CE) in 100 pages, featuring a biographical study of Bibi and her transmitters alongside hadith verification and scholarly indexes .
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