Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās

Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Yahya bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Sayyid al-Nas al-Ya'mari, better known as Abu Bakr Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, was a Medieval Muslim theologian. He was the grandfather of Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, though he died before ever meeting his grandson.

Ibn Sayyid al-Nas
Born1200
Seville, Andalusia (today Spain)
Died1261
EraMedieval era
RegionNorth Africa
SchoolZahiri

Life

The Ya'mari were an Arab tribe who settled down in Úbeda in the region of Jaén,[1] though Ibn Sayyid al-Nas himself was born in Seville[2] in 1200CE.[3] The family eventually settled in Tunis due to fighting between Christians and Muslims in Spain, where Ibn Sayyid al-Nas had a son. His grandson, also a Muslim theologian and also called Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, was born in Egypt several years after the death of the elder Ibn Sayyid al-Nas.[4]

Ibn Sayyid al-Nas studied religion from an early age. He began his education during his early teens under theologians such as Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, from whom he learned Muslim jurisprudence on the Zahiri rite for over thirty years.[2] He died in Tunis on June 24, 1261.[3][5]

Work

Ibn Sayyid al-Nas spent a brief period of time in Aznalcázar before moving to North Africa and accepting positions as the imam of mosques in Tangier and later Béjaïa.[2] When his reputation spread into Africa, the Hafsid Caliph Muhammad I al-Mustansir invited him to Tunis where he was a favored scholar of the court until his death.[6] There was a measure of controversy regarding the numerous Ijazah permissions to teach of Ibn Sayyid al-Nas; quite a few of the written permissions were granted by his teacher al-Nabati from al-Nabati's own teachers, whom Ibn Sayyid al-Nas did not meet or study with personally.[7] Ibn Sayyid al-Nas was said to have memorized over ten thousand hadith, or recorded statements of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, along with their chains of authentication; his students were often awed by his ability to accurately recall all of this from memory.[7]

Citations
  1. Ibn Hazm, Jamharat ansab al-arab, pg. 293. Ed. Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun. Cairo: 1982.
  2. Camilla Adang, "Zahiris of Almohad Times." Taken from Biografias Almohades, pg. 465. Eds. Maria Luisa Avila and Maribel Fierro. Part of Estudios Onomastico-Biograficos de Al-Andalus, vol. X. Madrid-Grenada: Spanish National Research Council, 2000.
  3. Franz Rosenthal, Ibn Sayyid al-Nās Archived 2013-11-03 at the Wayback Machine. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. Ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Online. Accessed 30 October 2013.
  4. Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam, pg. 67. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. ISBN 9780791439678
  5. Scott C. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature, and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam: The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Saʻd, Ibn Maʻīn, and Ibn Ḥanbal, pg. 110. Volume 51 of Islamic History and Civilization. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2004. ISBN 9789004133198
  6. Adang, pg. 466.
  7. Adang, pg. 468.
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