Kitab At-Tabaqat Al-Kabir Volume VI: The Scholars of Kufa
★★★★★
reviews
$30.00
In stock — ships today
Out of stockSKU TH093
Add $75.00 more for free US shipping
Secure checkout
30-day returns
Scholar-vetted
Edition transparency
Exactly what you're buying
Translator
Aisha Bewley
Description
About The Book
The Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir by Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn Sa'd is one of the most important and earliest surviving collections of biographical details of the early Muslims, spanning just over the first two centuries of Islam. It is a rich storehouse of information compiled from all the sources available to Ibn Sa'd, as a result of which, the reader is given a vivid insight into the lives of the early Muslims and how extraordinary they were.
The scope of Ibn Sa'd covers the time of the Rashidun khalifs, the Umayyads and the 'Abbasids. This sixth volume of the Tabaqat (Volume VI) deals firstly with the scholars of Makkah, Ta'if, Yemen, Yamama and Bahrain and then the bulk of the book is devoted to the scholars of Kufa.
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
Ibn Sad: Muhammad ibn Saʿd ibn Maniʿ, Abu ʿAbd Allah (168–230 AH / 784–845 CE), was a historian, biographer, and traditionist. Of Basran origin and a client of Banu Hashim, he settled in Baghdad, where he served as secretary and pupil to the chronicler Muhammad ibn ʿUmar al-Waqidi, transmitting much of his master's material. From this association comes his lasting byname, Katib al-Waqidi. His major work, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir (The Great Book of Generations), is an eight-volume biographical dictionary that opens with the life of the Prophet and proceeds through the Companions, including those who fought at Badr treated as a distinguished class, the Followers, and later generations of scholars, arranged by generation (tabaqa) and by region such as Madina and Kufa. A separate section gathers the women of the early community. The Tabaqat is counted among the earliest and most important sources for the sira and for early Islamic prosopography, drawn upon by later historians including al-Tabari. Classical authorities such as al-Khatib al-Baghdadi described Ibn Saʿd as a man of learning and merit who excelled in his compilation. Hadith critics generally regarded him as reliable. He lived through the Mihna under the Abbasids and was among those questioned. His work has been translated into English by Aisha Bewley under titles such as The Men of Madina and The Women of Madina.
About the translator
Aisha Bewley: Aisha Bewley (b. 1948 CE) is one of the most prolific and respected translators of classical Arabic Islamic literature into English. Born in the United States, she earned a BA in French and an MA in Near Eastern languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and undertook further study at the American University in Cairo. She embraced Islam in 1968 and has since devoted more than four decades to rendering the texts of the Islamic tradition into clear, accessible English. Her best-known work is The Noble Qur'an, a translation of the meanings of the Qur'an produced with her husband, Abdalhaqq Bewley, and first published in 1999. Among her landmark translations are the Muwatta' of Imam Malik ibn Anas (1989), a foundational early collection of hadith and Maliki fiqh, and the multi-volume Tafsir of al-Qurtubi (2003 onward). Her wider output spans creed, law, and Prophetic biography, including abridgements and renderings of works such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's writing on the soul after death and classical descriptions of the noble character and appearance of the Prophet, peace be upon him. WorldCat records her as author or translator of dozens of works across many editions, and in 2023 she was named Muslim Woman of the Year by The Muslim 500, which recognizes the world's most influential Muslims. Her translations are valued for fidelity to the Arabic and readable English, and remain in steady use among English-speaking students of the tradition.
Specifications
EAN 13 / ISBN
9781842001240
Publisher
Taha Publishers
Author
Ibn Sad
Pages
446
Translator
Aisha Bewley
Year Published
2012
Size
W- | H- | D-
Shipping & returns
Free US shipping on orders over $75. Multi-volume sets ship as one boxed parcel. 30-day returns — return shipping is on us for any fault in the book.