Muhammad ibn Sirin

Muhammad ibn Sirin (c. 33–110 AH / c. 654–728 CE) was a scholar of Basra in southern Iraq and one of the most respected figures of the tabi'un — the "Successors," the generation that came after the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad. He belonged, by tradition, to the circle of the Companion Anas ibn Malik as his mawla (a non-Arab client or freedman attached to an Arab patron); his father, Sirin, is reported to have been a captive of non-Arab, likely Christian, origin, settled in Iraq. By trade he is described as a cloth merchant, and reports hold that business losses left him in debt and, at one point, imprisoned.

Within Sunni hadith scholarship he is remembered above all as a careful, trustworthy transmitter and an early voice for scrutinising the chain of narrators (isnad). A famous saying preserved in the introduction to Sahih Muslim has him warn that "this knowledge is religion, so look to whom you take your religion from" — used by later scholars as a charter for isnad criticism.

The dream-interpretation manual circulated for centuries under his name is regarded by modern scholarship as a later, pseudepigraphic compilation rather than his own work; his reputation as a dream-interpreter is largely a tradition that grew up around him. Glossary: tabi'i = a Muslim who met Companions but not the Prophet; isnad = the chain of authorities transmitting a report.