Sulayman al-Tabarani

Abu al-Qasim Sulayman ibn Ahmad al-Tabarani (260-360 AH / 873-971 CE) was one of the most prolific Sunni traditionists (muhaddithun — collectors and transmitters of hadith, the reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad). His nisba, "al-Tabarani," marks his birthplace: Tabariyya (Tiberias), in the region of Greater Syria. Sources also give him the lineage-names al-Lakhmi and al-Shami.

Like many scholars of his age, al-Tabarani undertook a long rihla — a journey "in pursuit of knowledge" — to hear hadith directly from teachers across the Islamic world. Biographers report decades of travel through Syria, the Hijaz, Yemen, Egypt, and Iraq (Baghdad, Kufa and Basra), before he settled in Isfahan in Persia, where he taught for many years and died, traditionally reported at the age of about one hundred. The often-repeated claim that he narrated from "more than a thousand" teachers expresses the scale of his network rather than an exact count.

He is best remembered for three hadith dictionaries. The largest, al-Mu'jam al-Kabir, is organized by the name of the Companion (sahabi) who first transmitted each report — a reference layout still used by scholars. Two smaller works, al-Mu'jam al-Awsat and al-Mu'jam al-Saghir, complete the set. Later hadith critics judged his collections useful but uneven: because al-Tabarani gathered widely, some chains he recorded were later graded weak. His Mu'jams remain standard reference works in Sunni hadith scholarship.