Abu Nu'aym al-Asbahani, Ahmad ibn Abd Allah

Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani, Ahmad ibn Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Ishaq ibn Musa ibn Mihran, a hadith scholar, memorizer and historian from Isfahan. ¹

The source describes him as a great collector of narrations who alone attained a high chain of transmission in the last part of his life. ¹

He was born in 336 AH and died in 430 AH; the Gregorian dates are derived as 948 CE and 1038 CE. Both dates need a second source. ¹

Among his works is Knowledge of the Companions. ²

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), signed by Fr. Rosenthal, gives Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani as Ahmad b. 'Abd Allah b. Ishaq b. Musa b. Mihran al-Shafi'i, born in Isfahan in Rajab 336/January-February 948 (some sources give 334), and died on a Monday in Muharram 430/23 October 1038, an authority on fiqh and tasawwuf. His grandfather Muhammad b. Yusuf was a well-known ascetic and the first of his family to accept Islam. Abu Nu'aym was taught from the age of six by important masters, among them Ja'far al-Khuldi and al-Asamm. From 356/967 he travelled and studied in Iraq, the Hijaz and Khurasan, and for fourteen years he was reckoned one of the best hadith authorities, a judgment al-Khatib al-Baghdadi and al-Dhahabi quote. ³

His Hilyat al-Awliya' wa-Tabaqat al-Asfiya', finished in 422/1031, is a biographical dictionary of 649 pious people reckoned as Sufis, beginning with the four rightly guided caliphs, which the article takes as evidence of the interpenetration of Sufism and orthodoxy. His second large work, Dhikr Akhbar Isbahan, gives biographies of people with connexions to Isfahan after a history and topography of the town. The strife between Hanbalites and Shafi'ites brought criticism from his fellow townsman Ibn Manda and attacks on him, and he was expelled from the mosque of Isfahan, which, according to tradition, saved his life when Subuktigin massacred the people in the mosque at the Friday service. He died in Isfahan. ³