Waki' ibn al-Jarrah

Waki was born in Kufa,^[1] or in the village of Ustuwa near Nishapur,^[2] in 128/129 AH (745–747 CE).^[3] His father al-Jarrah ibn Malih belonged to the Ubayd ibn Ru'as clan of the Banu Kilab tribe and was born in Soghdia, while his mother, a daughter of Amra ibn Shaddad ibn Thawr of the same clan, was born in Bukhara;^[2][4] the Ubayd ibn Ru'as had been settled in Kufa following the Muslim conquest of Iraq in the 630s.^[5] The family was well off and al-Jarrah was the supervisor of the bayt al-darb (mint) at Rayy,^[2] before being appointed head of the bayt al-mal (treasury) in Baghdad under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809).^[1][2]

Schooled in the Islamic religious sciences, especially the hadith (traditions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad), Waki became a leading traditionist (muhaddith) in his hometown, known for transmitting numerous hadiths based on his memorizations.^[6][7] Despite the errors of transmission attributed to him, Waki was generally regarded as the best muhaddith of his time.^[1] His refusal of an appointment as qadi (head judge) by Harun al-Rashid out of concern of dependence on the state further contributed to his reputation for piety and ascetism.^[1]

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani has mentioned a long list of his teachers and students in his work Tahdhib al-tahdhib. He transmitted hadiths on the authority of the earlier Muslim scholars Isma'il ibn Abi Khalid, Ikrima ibn Ammar, al-Awza'i, al-A'mash, and Malik ibn Anas, as well as his father.^[1][7] Al-Dhahabi in his Siyar a`lam al-nubala has listed the names of about 20 teachers of Waki out of which the best known were Sufyan al-Thawri, Shu'ba ibn al-Ḥajjāj and Ibn Jurayj.^[8] He was among the most important teachers of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder and namesake of the Hanbali school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh).^[9] Waki himself was classified as a follower of the Hanafi fiqh of Sunni Islam.^[10]

Waki built a mosque in Kufa, installing as its imam a tribesman of his, Humayd ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Humayd al-Ru'asi.^[2]

On his return from the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), Waki died in the Fayd oasis in 197 AH (812).^[3] His son Sufyan was also a Kufan traditionist, though of poor reputation. Sufyan died at an old age in 861.^[11][12]

Although Waki was popularly held to have never possessed a book, he authored a number of works:^[1]

• Tafsir al-Quran
• al-Sunan
• al-Marifa Wa al-Tarikh
• al-Musannaf (cited by Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani)^[1]
• al-Zuhd (a copy of which is preserved in the al-Zahiriyah Library Library of Damascus)^[1]
• Kitab al-salat, of which just one page survived on a papyrus leaf^[13]