Tarikh Ibn Muin - Riwayat al-Darimi
- Author died
- 233 AH
- Editions
- دار المأمون للتراث
Tarikh Ibn Muin - Riwayat al-Darimi (The History of Ibn Ma'in – Transmission of al-Darimi) is a classical Hadith biographical evaluation work recording the critical judgments of the Hadith critic Yahya ibn Ma'in (d. 233 AH / 848 CE), compiled and transmitted by his student Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Darimi (d. 280 AH / 893 CE; another report gives 282 AH) .
Title and Genre
The work is entitled in full Tarikh Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Darimi 'an Abi Zakariyya Yahya ibn Ma'in fi Tajrih al-Ruwat wa-Ta'dilihim (The History of Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Darimi from Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Ma'in on the Disparagement and Corroboration of Narrators) . It is also referred to as Su'alat al-Darimi (The Questions of al-Darimi) or Tarikh al-Darimi . It belongs to the genre of kutub al-su'alat (questionnaires on narrator criticism), in which a student questions his master regarding Hadith transmitters and compiles his oral responses into a book .
Structure and Method
Al-Darimi's transmission differs from other recensions of Ibn Ma'in's biographical evaluations—such as those of Abbas al-Duri and Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhriz—in both structure and scope . It opens with entries on the companions of certain prominent Successors (Tabi'un) and comparative assessments of their direct audition (sama') and accuracy (tathabbut) .
The content is concise, brief in wording, and strictly confined to narrator criticism and appraisal (al-jarh wa-al-ta'dil) without extending into broader biographical details . Its format follows a direct question-and-answer style, almost consistently structured along the lines of: "I asked him about [Narrator]? He said: trustworthy (thiqa). I said: and his father? He said: trustworthy" .
Transmission and Reception
The text was transmitted from al-Darimi through several chains of transmission, including Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Harawi, Zakariyya ibn Ahmad al-Balkhi, and via Muhammad ibn 'Ali to Ibn Adi . Major Hadith scholars and biographical authorities, such as Ibn Abi Hatim, Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Al-Mizzi, Al-Dhahabi, and Ibn al-Mulaqqin, cited Ibn Ma'in's verdicts directly from al-Darimi's book in their critical and biographical works .
Editions
The work was edited by Ahmad Muhammad Nur Sayf and published by Dar al-Ma'mun lil-Turath in Damascus in conjunction with the Center for Scientific Research and Islamic Heritage Revival at Umm al-Qura University in Makkah .
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