Shu'ba ibn al-Hajjaj

Shu'ba ibn al-Hajjaj ibn al-Ward al-'Ataki, Abu Bistam, a client of the Azd tribe, was born and raised in Wasit and settled in Basra as a youth, becoming its leading scholar and elder. His precision of memory and extreme caution in transmitting reports earned him the title "commander of the faithful in hadith". Born in 80 or 82 AH, he died in 160 AH. ²

He saw al-Hasan al-Basri and took questions from him, and transmitted from Anas ibn Malik (may God be pleased with him), al-Hakam ibn 'Utayba, Qatada ibn Di'ama, 'Amr ibn Dinar, Yahya ibn Abi Kathir, Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani and Mansur ibn al-Mu'tamir among many others. Every leading scholar of his generation narrated from him — Sufyan al-Thawri, Sufyan ibn 'Uyayna, Yahya al-Qattan, 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, Waki' and Hushaym — and even Harun al-Rashid narrated from him. ²

Sufyan declared "Shu'ba is the commander of the faithful in hadith"; 'Ali ibn al-Madini estimated his corpus at some two thousand reports, while al-Dhahabi believed he transmitted considerably more, and ranked him alongside al-Awza'i, Ma'mar and al-Thawri in volume of narration. He was exacting about whom he narrated from: when his companions asked him to relate only from trustworthy men, he told them "Rise" — and ended the session. ³

He told the hadith students "Woe to you, keep to the market — I am a dependent of my two brothers", and never ate a dirham of his own earnings. He rebuked a man who bought a shirt for eight dirhams when a cheaper one plus charity would have been better. He entered Baghdad twice, in the days of al-Mansur and al-Mahdi. ⁴

Abu Ishaq al-Heweny mentions that in a hadith of the Book of Purity Shu'ba erred in a narrator's name: others call the man Khalid ibn Alqama, while Shu'ba called him Malik ibn Urfuta; scholars faulted him for it, al-Daraqutni said most of Shu'ba's errors are in men's names, and Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'a al-Razi said the same. ^{5 6} He says Ahmad Shakir defended Shu'ba, but he himself found that Abu Awana held Shu'ba in such awe that he followed him even in his errors, so Abu Awana's agreement is no corroboration, and he thinks Shakir was not right in this. ^{6 7} He describes Shu'ba as the imam of the world and the shaykh of Basra. ⁸

He then gathered the errors of Shu'ba he came across into a juz' he called «al-Raghba an Awham Shu'ba», which he says does not aim at completeness, and which he calls precious for the years it took. ^{9 10} He mentions that critics said Shu'ba differed from Sufyan al-Thawri in the chain of a well-known hadith on the merit of learning and teaching the Qur'an, and that he argued over about forty pages that Shu'ba's narration agrees with Sufyan's. ¹¹