Sufyan ibn Uyayna
725 CE–814 CE · Kufa
Sufyan ibn Uyayna al-Hilali (full name Abu Muhammad Sufyan ibn Uyayna ibn Maymun) was one of the most influential hadith scholars and Qur'an commentators of the second Islamic century. Hadith here means a report of the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad; a muhaddith is a specialist in transmitting and grading such reports. The biographical tradition places his birth in Kufa, in southern Iraq, in 107 AH (725 CE). His father had served as an agent of the Umayyad governor Khalid al-Qasri and, when al-Qasri fell from power, moved the family to Mecca, where Sufyan would spend most of his long life and become known as muhaddith al-haram, "the traditionist of the Sacred Sanctuary."
In Mecca he studied closely with the leading local scholar Amr ibn Dinar; reports say he kept near him for about four years. He is said to have transmitted from a very large number of the generation that followed the Prophet's Companions. He also traveled, including to Iraq and to Yemen. In later life he taught a generation of major figures: the jurist al-Shafi'i, who founded one of the four Sunni legal schools and praised his skill in explaining hadith, studied with him in Mecca, as did Ahmad ibn Hanbal and other prominent traditionists.
Sufyan compiled an early collection, al-Jami', alongside a work of tafsir (Qur'an exegesis). His reports are cited throughout the major Sunni hadith collections. He died in Mecca in 198 AH (814 CE) and was buried in the al-Hajun cemetery.
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Kufa
What they did here
The biographical tradition places his birth in Kufa in 107 AH (725 CE). His father Uyayna had served as an agent of the Umayyad governor Khalid al-Qasri. (Some general reference summaries instead describe him simply as 'from Mecca'; the detailed Arabic biographical tradition reports a Kufan birth.)
About Kufa
Kufa, on the Euphrates in central Iraq near Najaf, was a garrison-town (misr) founded by the Muslims around 638 during the conquest of Iraq. It became a major centre of early Arabic grammar, jurisprudence, and Shi'i scholarship, and for a time the capital of the caliph Ali; the traditionist Ibn Abi Shayba (d. 849) and the Twelver scholar Ibn Babawayh al-Saduq (d. 991) are among those connected to it.
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The world in their lifetime
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