Abu Dawood

Abu Dawud Sulaymān ibn al-Ash‘ath al-Azdi as-Sijistani Arabic: أبو داود سليمان بن الأشعث الأزدي السجستاني‎), commonly known simply as Abu Dawud, was a noted Persian collector of prophetic hadith, and compiled the third of the six "canonical" hadith collections recognized by Sunni Muslims, the Sunan Abu Dāwūd.

Biography

Abu Dawud was born in Sistan, eastern Iran (then-Persia) and died in 889 in Basra. Widely traveled among scholars of hadith, he went to Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Hijaz, Tihamah, Khurasan, Nishapur, and Marv among other places in order to collect hadith. He was primarily interested in jurisprudence, and as a result his collection focused largely on legal hadith. Out of about 500,000 hadith, he chose 4,800 for inclusion in his work.

School of thought

Imam Abu Dawud was a follower of The Hanbali school of thought. Scholars have disagreed on whether he was muqallid or mujtahid.

Works

He wrote some 21 books in total. Some of the most prominent are:

• Sunan Abu Dāwūd, containing some 4,800 hadith, is his principal work. These are usually numbered after the edition of Muhammad Muhyi al-Din `Abd al-Hamid (Cairo: Matba`at Mustafa Muhammad, 1354/1935), where 5,274 are distinguished. He indicated that all the hadith in his collection were authenticated (sahih) unless specifically marked as unauthenticated (ḍaʿīf). Some Islamic scholars (such as Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani) believe a number of the unmarked ones to be ḍaʿīf as well.
• In another work, Kitab al-Marāsīl, he lists 600 mursal hadith which, after extensive background investigation, he concludes are nonetheless sahih.
• Risālat Abu Dāwūd ilā Ahli Makkah; his letter to the inhabitants of Makkah describing his Sunan Abu Dāwūd.^[2]

Early Islam scholars

See also

• Kutub al-Sittah
• Sunan Abu Dawood

References