Sunan
Mecca · 869
a
al-Darimi
al-Darimi
797 CE–869 CE · Samarkand
Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Darimi (181-255 AH / 797-869 CE) was a hadith scholar (a transmitter and critic of reports about the Prophet Muhammad) based in Samarqand, in Transoxiana. His byname "al-Darimi" is traditionally traced to Banu Darim, a clan of the Arab tribe of Tamim; a minority view links it instead to a place-name. He is reported to have given his own birth date as the year the famous scholar Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak died, 181 AH.
Like other muhaddithun (hadith specialists) of his age, al-Darimi is said to have travelled widely to collect reports — through the Hejaz, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and across Khurasan — studying with teachers such as Yazid ibn Harun. He is best known for the Sunan al-Darimi (also called his Musnad), a hadith collection arranged by legal topic. Major compilers are reported to have transmitted from him, among them Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi; the common claim that al-Bukhari was his student is disputed in the biographical literature.
Where exactly the Sunan ranks is a matter of opinion, not fact: some scholars place it among the canonical Six Books (often as a candidate for the sixth or "seventh"), while it is uniformly counted among the wider Nine Books. He died in 255 AH; the sources agree on the date but differ on the place, with Marw (Merv) and Samarqand both reported. Later biographers such as al-Dhahabi praise him as a hafiz of exceptional memory and piety.
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Stop 1 of 7797Born
SamarkandסמרקנדCentral Asia
What they did here
Born in Samarqand in 181 AH / 797 CE. He is reported to have dated his own birth to the year Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak died (181 AH). His nisba al-Darimi is traditionally traced to the Tamimi clan of Banu Darim.
About Samarkand
Samarkand is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan, today the country's second largest. Known to the Greeks as Marakanda, the Sogdian city was taken by Alexander the Great in 329 BCE. Umayyad forces under Qutayba ibn Muslim captured it around 710, and under the Samanids (875-999) it was one of the leading cities of the eastern Islamic world. Genghis Khan's armies sacked it in 1220, but Timur made it his capital in 1370, and his grandson Ulugh Beg built a madrasa on the Registan square and, in 1428, an astronomical observatory. The city was also home to a large Bukharan Jewish community, most of which emigrated from the 1970s on. Its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Sages whose lives overlapped with al-Darimi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with al-Darimi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.