In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
O you who recite the words of the Prophet and explain them,
How beautiful is your voice when it calls to guidance!
The biographies of the authors of the six major books,
Six biographies filled with beauty and majesty.
Summarized with care from that unique and magnificent book,
The biographies are of the highest nobility,
By Imam al-Dhahabi, may Allah have mercy on him.
Prepared by Shaykh Muhammad al-Muhanna, may Allah preserve him.
Imam Abu Dawud, may Allah have mercy on him,
The Imam, the master of the Sunnah, and the foremost of the hadith scholars.
He is Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn al-Ash'ath al-Azdi al-Sijistani.
The hadith scholar of Basra.
He was born in the year 202 AH.
He traveled, collected, and authored.
He excelled in this field.
In Makkah, he heard from al-Qa'nabi and Sulayman ibn Harb,
And he heard from Muslim ibn Ibrahim,
And 'Abdullah ibn Raja',
And Abu al-Walid al-Tayalisi,
And their peers in Basra.
Then he heard in Kufa from al-Hasan ibn al-Rabi' al-Burani,
And Ahmad ibn Yunus al-Yarbu'i,
And a group of others.
He heard from Safwan ibn Salih,
And Hisham ibn 'Ammar in Damascus,
And from Ishaq ibn Rahwayh,
And his peers in Khurasan,
And from Ahmad ibn Hanbal,
And his peers in Baghdad,
And from Qutaybah ibn Sa'id in Balkh,
And from Ahmad ibn Salih,
And a multitude in Egypt.
He heard from 'Amr ibn al-Madini,
And Sa'id ibn Mansur,
And Sahl ibn Bakkar,
And 'Ali ibn al-Ja'd,
And Muhammad ibn al-Minhal al-Darir,
And Musaddad ibn Musarhad,
And Yahya ibn Ma'in,
And many others besides them.
Abu 'Isa narrated from him in his Jami',
And al-Nasa'i, as it is said,
And Abu al-Tayyib al-Ushnani,
The narrator of the Sunan from him,
And Abu Bakr al-Najjad,
And Abu 'Umar Ahmad ibn al-Basri,
The narrator of the Sunan from him,
And Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad,
Al-Khallal the jurist,
And Harb ibn Isma'il al-Kirmani,
And his son Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud,
And Abu Bakr ibn Abi al-Dunya,
And Abu 'Ali,
Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Lu'lu'i,
The narrator of the Sunan,
And Muhammad ibn Bakr ibn Dasah al-Tammar,
One of the narrators of the Sunan.
He settled in Basra after the destruction of the wicked one,
The tyrant of the Zanj,
And he spread knowledge there.
He used to travel frequently to Baghdad.
Al-Khatib Abu Bakr said,
It is said that he authored his book, the Sunan, long ago,
And presented it to Ahmad ibn Hanbal,
Who deemed it excellent and praised it.
Abu Bakr al-Khallal said,
Abu Dawud,
The leading Imam of his time,
A man who was never surpassed in his knowledge,
Of the extraction of hadith sciences and his insight,
Into their intricacies, by anyone in his era.
A man of piety and a leader.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal heard from him,
A single hadith.
Abu Dawud used to mention this.
Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Yasin said,
Abu Dawud was one of the memorizers of Islam,
Regarding the hadith of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him,
Its knowledge, its hidden defects, and its chains of transmission.
He was at the highest level of devotion and chastity,
And righteousness and piety.
He was one of the knights of hadith.
When Abu Dawud authored the Sunan,
Abu Bakr said,
Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Saghani,
And Ibrahim al-Harbi,
"Hadith was made soft for Abu Dawud,"
"Just as iron was made soft for Dawud, peace be upon him."
Muhammad ibn Makhlad said,
When Abu Dawud authored the Sunan,
And read it to the people,
His book became for the people of hadith,
Like a Mushaf (Qur'an),
They follow it and do not contradict it.
The people of his time acknowledged him,
For his memorization and his precedence in it.
The Hafiz Musa ibn Harun said,
Abu Dawud was created in this world for hadith,
And in the Hereafter for Paradise.
Abu Hatim ibn Hibban said,
Abu Dawud was one of the Imams of the world,
In fiqh, knowledge, memorization,
Devotion, piety, and precision.
He collected, authored, and refined the Sunan.
The Hafiz Abu 'Abdullah ibn Mandah said,
Those who extracted and distinguished the authentic from the defective,
And the error from the correct,
Are four: al-Bukhari and Muslim,
Then Abu Dawud and al-Nasa'i.
Abu 'Abdullah al-Hakim said,
Abu Dawud is the Imam of the people of hadith,
In his era, without dispute.
Musa ibn Harun said,
I have not seen anyone better than Abu Dawud.
Abu Bakr ibn Dasah said,
I heard Abu Dawud say,
"I wrote down from the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him,
Five hundred thousand hadiths,
From which I selected what I included in this book,"
Meaning the book of Sunan.
"I collected in it four thousand hadiths,
And eight hundred hadiths.
I mentioned the authentic and what resembles and approaches it.
And it is sufficient for a person for his religion,
Four hadiths."
He said, the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him:
"Actions are by intentions."
And the second: "Part of the perfection of a person's Islam,
Is leaving what does not concern him."
And the third: "None of you will be,
A believer until he loves for his brother,
What he loves for himself."
And the fourth: "The lawful is clear."
I say, his statement that it is sufficient for a person for his religion,
Rather, a Muslim needs a large number,
Of authentic Sunnah alongside the Qur'an.
Ibn Dasah said,
I heard Abu Dawud say,
"I mentioned in the Sunan the authentic and what approaches it.
If it had a severe weakness, I clarified it."
I say, he fulfilled that,
May Allah have mercy on him, according to his ijtihad.
He clarified what was severely weak,
And whose weakness was intolerable.
And he remained silent regarding what was lightly weak and tolerable.
Thus, it does not necessarily follow from his silence,
Regarding a hadith,
That it is considered 'hasan' (good) by him,
Especially if we judge based on the definition of 'hasan',
According to our later, modern terminology,
Which, in the convention of the salaf,
Returns to a category of the authentic,
Or that which Abu 'Abdullah al-Bukhari avoids,
And Muslim accepts.
And conversely, it is included,
In the lowest ranks of authenticity.
For if it were to fall below that,
It would fall out of the realm of evidence,
And remain suspended between weakness and goodness.
The highest level in Abu Dawud's book,
Among the established, is what the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhari and Muslim) extracted,
Which makes up a portion of the book.
Then follows what one of the two Shaykhs extracted,
While the other avoided it.
Then follows what both avoided,
Yet its chain was good, free from defect and irregularity.
Then follows what had a sound chain,
And was accepted by the scholars,
Because it came from two or more acceptable paths,
Each chain supporting the other.
Then follows what had a weak chain due to a deficiency in the narrator's memory,
Such a hadith Abu Dawud accepts,
And he is silent about it, usually.
Then follows what was clearly weak due to the narrator,
This he does not remain silent about,
Rather, he usually declares it weak.
And he may remain silent about it depending on its fame and its rejection.
And Allah knows best.
The Hafiz Zakariyya al-Saji said,
The Book of Allah is the foundation of Islam,
And the book of Abu Dawud is the covenant of Islam.
I say, Abu Dawud was,
Along with his leadership in hadith and its sciences,
One of the great jurists.
His book is evidence of that.
He was one of the distinguished students of Imam Ahmad.
He attended his circle for a long time,
And asked him about the subtle issues in branches and fundamentals.
He was upon the path of the salaf in following the Sunnah,
And submitting to it,
And avoiding delving into the intricacies of speculative theology.
Al-A'mash narrated from Ibrahim from 'Alqamah,
He said: 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud,
Used to resemble the Prophet, peace be upon him,
In his guidance and his demeanor.
And 'Alqamah used to resemble 'Abdullah in that.
Jarir ibn 'Abd al-Hamid said,
Ibrahim al-Nakha'i used to be likened to 'Alqamah in that regard.
Mansur used to be likened to Ibrahim.
It was said:
Sufyan al-Thawri used to be likened to Mansur.
Waki' used to be likened to Sufyan.
Ahmad used to be likened to Waki'.
Abu Dawud used to be likened to Ahmad.
Abu Bakr ibn Jabir said:
The servant of Abu Dawud, may Allah have mercy on him,
"I was with Abu Dawud in Baghdad,
and we had prayed Maghrib.
Then the Prince, Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq, came to him—
meaning the Crown Prince.
He entered, and Abu Dawud turned to him
and said, 'What brings the Prince at such an hour?'
He replied, 'I have come to you for three things.'
He asked, 'And what are they?'
He said, 'That you move to Basra
and make it your home,
so that students of knowledge may travel to you,
and it may flourish through you, for it has fallen into ruin,
and people have ceased to visit it
due to the Zanj rebellion that befell it.'
He said, 'That is one.'
He said, 'And that you narrate the Sunan to my children.'
He said, 'Yes, bring the third.'
He said, 'And that you set aside a private session for them,
for the children of the Caliphs do not sit with the common people.'
Abu Dawud replied,
'As for that, there is no way to do it,
for people are equal in the pursuit of knowledge.'
Ibn Jabir said:
So they would attend and sit behind a screen—
meaning a concealed place—
and listen along with the common people."
Ibn Dasah said:
He was asked about that,
and he said, "The one who has the books is wealthy,
and the other has no need of it."
Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud said:
I heard my father say:
"The best of speech is that which enters the ear without permission."
He said: And I heard him say:
"I have met those among the people of hadith whom I have met;
there was none among them with a better memory for hadith,
nor one who had collected more of them, than Ibn Ma'in,
nor one more pious, nor one more knowledgeable
of the fiqh of hadith than Ahmad,
and the most knowledgeable of them regarding its defects was 'Ali ibn al-Madini.
I saw Ishaq, despite his memorization
and his knowledge, deferring to Ahmad ibn Hanbal
and acknowledging his status."
Abu Dawud said in his Sunan:
"I measured a cucumber in Egypt at thirteen spans."
"And I saw a citron on a camel,
and it had been cut into two pieces,
and it made the equivalent of two loads."
A discussion on Sijistan:
As for Sijistan,
the region from which Imam Abu Dawud hails,
it is a small, distinct region,
bordering the region of Sindh.
To its west is the city of Herat,
and to its east is a desert,
and a wilderness between it and Makran,
which is the capital of Sindh.
The completion of this eastern boundary
is the land of Multan,
and to its north is the beginning of India.
The land of Sijistan is rich in palm trees and sand,
and it is in the third of the seven climates.
The capital of Sijistan is Zaranj.
Its latitude is thirty-two degrees.
The name Zaranj is also used for Sijistan.
It has a wall and a great congregational mosque,
and a large river flows by it.
Its longitude from the Fortunate Isles
is eighty-nine degrees.
The relative adjective for it is also 'Sijzi'.
This is how Abu 'Awanah
al-Isfara'ini refers to Abu Dawud.
And to it is attributed
the Musnad of the time, Abu al-Waqt al-Sijzi.
It has been said—though it is of no account—
that Abu Dawud is from Sijistan,
a village in the district of Basra.
Qadi Shams al-Din mentioned this in Wafayat al-A'yan.
When Abu Dawud first arrived
from the lands, he entered Baghdad
when he was eighteen years old,
before he had seen Basra.
Then he traveled from Baghdad to Basra.
Abu 'Ubayd al-Ajurri said:
Abu Dawud passed away on the sixteenth of Shawwal,
in the year 275.
I say: His brother,
Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath, was slightly older than him,
and he was his companion in his travels,
and he died in his prime before Abu Dawud.
The biographies of the authors of the Six Books.
A village in the district of Basra.
Qadi Shams al-Din mentioned it.
Abu Dawud died on the sixteenth of Shawwal,
in the year 275.
I say: His brother,
Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath, was slightly older than him,
and he was his companion in his travels,
and he died in his prime before Abu Dawud.
The biographies of the authors of the Six Books.
My veins are for the hadith and its people.
So sell me your authentic narrations,
and quench my thirst with the chains of transmission,
and with the 'he said, he said'.
And take refuge in our hadith,
the 'he narrated to us', and the comprehensive,
eloquent, and precise words.
For his words—
may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him—are of great majesty,
and his speech
is above all common discourse.
And upon him is a light,
radiant with tranquility,
that flows into my soul,
and remains a source of inspiration.