Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan

Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan (; 120 AH/738 CE – 198 AH/813 CE) was a Basran hadith scholar of the tabi' al-tabi'in who is considered a progenitor of Sunni hadith criticism.

Biography Yahya ibn Sa'id was born in Basra in 120 AH/738 CE to descendants of freed slaves from Banu Tamim; his work in the cotton trade earned him the nisba al-Qattan. He travelled to Medina, Baghdad and Kufa in pursuit of hadith. He audited the lessons of Shu'ba ibn al-Hajjaj for twenty years, as well as those of Sufyan al-Thawri. His other teachers included the grammarian Hammad ibn Salamah, the jurists Malik ibn Anas and al-Awza'i, and Ibn Jurayj, a substantial proportion of whose extant biographical information has been transmitted through al-Qattan.Motzki 2002, p. 284 His own students included Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in,Motzki 2002, pp. 249-250 and Ishaq ibn Rahwayh. He reportedly authored two works which have not survived: al-Ḍuʿafā, a book of unreliable hadith narrators, and Kitāb al-Maghāzī. Ibn Sa'id died in Basra in 198 AH/813 CE.

Views Ibn Sa'id was critical of hadith that he transmitted without a sahabi narrator (i.e., mursal hadith),Motzki 2002, p. 249 and identified tadlīs performed by hadith narrators regardless of their stature, including his teacher and celebrated jurist Sufyan al-Thawri.Brown 2009, p. 234 He was known for his strict standards in biographical evaluation. He deemed several ascetics and Sufis as unreliable narrators and was sceptical of hadith transmitted through them. A famous statement that can be plausibly attributed to Ibn Sa'id through isnad-cum-matn analysis comments on how the pious (al-ṣāliḥīn) were most dishonest in matters of hadith, which has been adduced as evidence of hadith forgery among some early Muslims.

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Motzki, Harald (2002). The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence: Meccan Fiqh Before the Classical Schools. Translated by Katz, Marion H. Brill. Brown, Jonathan A.C. (2009). Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.