Fath al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nas
Egyptian theologian (1272–1334)
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Life
Although Ibn Sayyid al-Nas was himself an Egyptian,[1] he was descended from a Muslim Andalusian family from Seville.[2] The family fled due to hostility from Christians, who eventually took the city in 1248.[3] His grandfather Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Ahmad was born in 1200 and settled in Tunis, where Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' father was born in October 1247.[3] His grandfather died in 1261.[4]
Ibn Sayyid al-Nas died in the year 1334,[5] corresponding to 734 in the Hijri calendar.[2] He was known as an adherent of the Zahiri school of Sunni Islam.[2]
Work
Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' biography of the prophet Muhammad is well known.[6][7] Some of the isnads, or chains of narration establishing the historicity of claims, are unique; Ibn Hisham, arguably the most respected classical biographer, included events in his version of the prophetic biography whose chains of narration are only available in Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' work.[8] During his time, he was also considered one of Cairo's greatest composers of poetry in praise of Muhammad.[9] Ibn Sayyid al-Nas along with Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati were often the presiding "judges" during poetic contests during the reign of Mamluk sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad.[10] Slimane of Morocco, the sultan of Morocco in the early 1800s who greatly restricted the acceptable reading material in his sultanate, designated Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' prophetic biography as one of only two approved works.[11]
Ibn Sayyid al-Nas was respected among hadith circles for his transmissions of a recension of Sahih al-Bukhari, the most significant collection of prophetic tradition in Sunni Islam. In regard to the widely reported raid of Hudhayl, Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' transmission is nearly identical to the narrations of Muhammad al-Bukhari himself, save seven small differences, six copyist errors and one difference in a single word.[12]