Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan

Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan (Arabic: يحيى بن سعيد القطان, romanized: Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān; 120 AH/738 CE – 198 AH/813 CE) was a Basran hadith scholar of the tabi' al-tabi'in who is considered a progenitor of Sunni hadith criticism.^[1]

Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan
يحيى بن سعيد القطان
Personal life
Born	120 AH/738 CE Basra, Umayyad Caliphate
Died	198 AH/813 CE Basra, Abbasid Caliphate
Main interest(s)	Hadith, biographical evaluation
Religious life
Religion	Islam
Muslim leader
Students Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in, Ishaq ibn Rahwayh
Influenced by Sufyan al-Thawri, Shu'ba ibn al-Hajjaj, al-Awza'i, Ibn Jurayj
Arabic name
Personal (Ism)	Yaḥyā يَحْيَىٰ
Patronymic (Nasab)	Ibn Saʿīd ibn Farrūkh ٱبْن سَعِيد ٱبْن فَرُّوخ
Teknonymic (Kunya)	Abū Saʿīd أَبُو سَعِيد
Epithet (Laqab)	Al-Qaṭṭān ٱلْقَطَّان
Toponymic (Nisba)	Al-Baṣrī ٱلْبَصْرِيّ

Biography

Yahya ibn Sa'id was born in Basra in 120 AH/738 CE to descendants of freed slaves from Banu Tamim; his work in the cotton trade earned him the nisba al-Qattan. He travelled to Medina, Baghdad and Kufa in pursuit of hadith.^[2] He audited the lessons of Shu'ba ibn al-Hajjaj for twenty years, as well as those of Sufyan al-Thawri. His other teachers included the grammarian Hammad ibn Salamah, the jurists Malik ibn Anas and al-Awza'i,^[2] and Ibn Jurayj, a substantial proportion of whose extant biographical information has been transmitted through al-Qattan.^[3] His own students included Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in,^[4] and Ishaq ibn Rahwayh.^[2] He reportedly authored two works which have not survived: al-Ḍuʿafā, a book of unreliable hadith narrators, and Kitāb al-Maghāzī.^[2] Ibn Sa'id died in Basra in 198 AH/813 CE.^[2]

Views

Ibn Sa'id was critical of hadith that he transmitted without a sahabi narrator (i.e., mursal hadith),^[5] and identified tadlīs performed by hadith narrators regardless of their stature, including his teacher and celebrated jurist Sufyan al-Thawri.^[6] He was known for his strict standards in biographical evaluation. He deemed several ascetics and Sufis as unreliable narrators and was sceptical of hadith transmitted through them.^[2] A famous statement that can be plausibly attributed to Ibn Sa'id through isnad-cum-matn analysis comments on how the pious (al-ṣāliḥīn) were most dishonest in matters of hadith, which has been adduced as evidence of hadith forgery among some early Muslims.^[1]