Sualat Abi Ubayd al-Ajuri Aba Dawud al-Sijistani fi al-Jarh wa al-Tadil
- Author died
- 275 AH
- Editions
- ʻImādat al-Baḥth al-ʻIlmī bi-al-Jāmiʻah al-Islāmīyah
Su’alat Abi Ubayd al-Ajuri Aba Dawud al-Sijistani fi al-Jarh wa al-Tadil (The Questions of Abu Ubayd al-Ajuri to Abu Dawud al-Sijistani on Narrator Criticism and Evaluation) is a specialized hadith work compiling the critical evaluations and narrator assessments of the hadith scholar Abu Dawud al-Sijistani (202–275 AH / 817–889 CE), recorded and transmitted by his student Abu Ubayd Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Uthman al-Ajuri .
Scope and Content
The work records al-Ajuri’s direct inquiries to Abu Dawud regarding the reliability, defects, sectarian affiliations, and veracity of hadith transmitters (al-jarh wa al-ta'dil) . Alongside Abu Dawud’s own critical appraisals of narrators, it documents his transmissions and recollections from earlier authorities, particularly his teachers Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Yahya ibn Ma'in . In addition to individual narrator verdicts, the text includes details concerning birth dates, death dates, and funeral attendances witnessed by Abu Dawud .
Reception and Transmission
The questions preserve Abu Dawud’s critical methodology and narrator critiques beyond what appears in his primary compilation, Sunan Abi Dawud . The transmission is documented through early manuscript chains, such as the line passing from Abu Ubayd al-Ajuri through Muhammad ibn Adi ibn Ali ibn Adi to Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Mansur al-Atiqi, and subsequently through al-Mubarak ibn Abd al-Jabbar al-Sayrafi to Abu Tahir al-Silafi .
Later scholars frequently cited Abu Dawud’s evaluations through al-Ajuri’s transmission. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi relied upon it as an attributed source in Tarikh Baghdad . Al-Mizzi in Tahdhib al-Kamal and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib cited Abu Dawud’s statements from al-Ajuri in more than seven hundred instances using decisive phrasing (sighat al-jazm) . The work was also registered in classical bibliographic and biographical indexes, including Ibn Hajar's al-Mu'jam al-mufahras and al-Sakhawi's al-I'lan bi-l-tawbikh and Fath al-mughith .
Editions
The work was partially published from surviving manuscript parts before appearing in a complete edition:
- Part 3 was edited by Muhammad Ali Qasim al-Umari and published by the Islamic University of Madinah in 1399 AH (1979 CE), with later reprints .
- Parts 4 and 5 were edited in an academic thesis by Abd al-Aziz Ahmad Al Abd al-Qadir in 1411 AH .
- A complete edition was edited by Abd al-Alim Abd al-Azim al-Bastawi and published by Maktabat Dar al-Istiqama and Mu'assasat al-Rayyan in 1418 AH (1997 CE) .
Answer updated