Ibn Khuzayma

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Khuzayma (born Safar 223 AH / January 838 CE in Nishapur, a great Khurasani center of learning; died Dhu al-Qa'da 311 AH / February 924 CE) was a leading Sunni scholar of hadith (reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds) and a jurist of the Shafi'i madhhab (one of Sunni Islam's four legal schools). His contemporaries are reported to have honored him with the title "Imam al-A'imma" — "Imam of the Imams" — in recognition of his command of hadith and law.

According to the biographical tradition, he studied first under Nishapur's scholars, notably Ishaq ibn Rahwayh (d. 238 AH / 853 CE), then undertook the rihla, the scholar's journey in search of hadith, said to have lasted some twenty years and to have reached Rayy, Merv, Wasit, Baghdad, Basra, Kufa, and the lands of al-Sham (Syria), the Jazira (upper Mesopotamia), and Egypt before he settled again in Nishapur. The sources preserve only the list of places, not the order or dates of these travels, and they do not agree on the age at which he set out.

He is best known for his Sahih Ibn Khuzayma, valued for its demanding standard of authentication, and for Kitab al-Tawhid, a work on God's attributes. He is also remembered for a late-life dispute in Nishapur over the nature of God's speech: some of his own students held the position associated with Ibn Kullab, while Ibn Khuzayma held a more traditionist view. The exact terms and significance of that quarrel are debated by later writers and should be treated as contested rather than settled. Al-Hakim reports he authored more than 140 works.