Who is a Sahabi?- An Argument Where The Muta'zila Were More Meticulous Than The Traditionists!

The Inconsistency of the Traditionists and their errant Definition for Sahaba.

Note: This is the other half of the Previous article. To read the first part click here

Who is a Sahabi?- The understanding of the expression by the Early Muslims

The legal status of those who saw the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was a factor, i.e., whether or not they had reached puberty (baligh) when they met him. During the Prophet's lifetime some of the Companions did produce children. Their parents usually brought them to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and the Prophet would pray for them, cut their hair and give them their first food, and sometime give them their names. Yet when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم passed away most of these children had not yet reached puberty. Were they be counted as Companions as well? On this issue the Traditionists were bitterly divided. Yahya ibn Ma’een, Abu Zurah, Abi Hatim and Abu Dawud were of the opinion that those who had not reached legal majority when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم passed away cannot be considered as Companions[1]. They insisted that these children enjoyed the privilege of "seeing" the Prophet but did not have his "Companionship" (lahu ru’yah wa laysat lahu suhbah). Al-Ala’i even denies that they ever truly saw him (wa-la Suhbata lahu wa- la ru’yata qa’tan) [2]. Al Waqidi is also reported as having held this view[3]. The majority of the Traditionists however disagreed.

 It was too difficult for them to reject the claims of Companions Like Al-Hasan ibn 'Ali and his generation, who knew the prophetic era (asr al- nubuwah) and accepted ri'wayah from the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, but reached legal majority only after his Passing away[4].' Were they not to be counted among the Companions, the Traditions reported by them would have fallen into the category of Al Mursal. Their position was by and large similar to that of the Follower’s, although not exactly so. We saw above that the term al-mursal refers to those prophetic Traditions whose chains of transmission reached back only to the Followers. But the Traditionists had a special term for prophetic Traditions reported by people who had not reached puberty when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم passed away. This term was al-mursal al-Sahaba. Unlike the other mursal this type was not weak and could be used as an authoritative source[5].  Given that the Traditionists insisted that those born in the final years of the Prophet's lifetime deserve the title Companions, it might have been expected that they would include their Traditions in the category of al musnad. That they did not implies that the Traditionists did not see these younger Companions as Companions in the fullest sense of the word.

From the above discussion we can see that, for the Traditionists, membership among the Companions was automatic. It is beyond anybody's control. Whoever met the Prophet, like it or not, had to be included as Companions. Thus men like Al Hakam ibn Abi al As Al Qurayshi Al Umawi, the father of Marwan ibn al-Hakam, whom the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم disliked and whom he expelled from Medina, was nonetheless a companion[6].

There were other scholars who did not see membership as automatic. For them, to be a Companion meant more than just seeing the Prophet. Within the Traditionists' circle those who held this view were known as the Usuliyun. The Traditionists did not bother to explain clearly who the Usuliyun were, being mainly concerned with their views rather than with their identity. So while these views were widely quoted (in order to be refuted), their names are barely mentioned in the sources. But the way they are presented indicates that they must have been the opponents of the Traditionists whose opinions they fought to reject. The most likely candidates of the Usuliyun were in fact the adversaries of the Traditionists, i.e., the Mu'tazilis.

The names of the Usuliyun which are occasionally cited by the Traditionists support this assumption, in that they include Ibn al-Sibagh, Abu al-Husayn al-Basri, al- Kiya' al-Tabari, and 'Amr ibn Yahya. Abu al-Husayn and 'Amr ibn Yahya were Mutazilis; Amr ibn Yahya, the Traditionists claimed, was none other than Abu 'Uthman al-Jahiz (d. 255/868 in Basra), one of the leading Mu'tazïIi scholar and a student of the Mutazili theologian Al Nazzam[7]. Ab'u al-Husayn was for his part a famous Mu’taziIi scholar, active in Baghdad, who died in 436/1044[8].  According to the author of al-Wadih the leading figures (shuyukh) of the Mu'tazilis held views similar to those of Abu al- Husayn[9].

In contrast to the Traditionists, the Usuliyun insisted that the name Companion be given only to those who accompanied the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم  for a long time, and who often had sessions with him."[10]. Thus Ibn Al-Sibagh is said to have asserted that

The Companions were those who met the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and stayed with him and followed him; those who came to him and departed from him without accompanying and following him therefore did not deserve this title.[11]

Abu al-Husayn apparently said more or less the same thing:

To be a Companion, a person must have two qualifications: one is to have had long sessions (majalis) with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, because a person who only saw him, like those who came to him (al-wafidin) and others, and did not stay long, are not to be named Companions; the other is to have prolonged his stay with him, to have followed him (al- tab’lahu), to have taken (Traditions) from him (Al- Akhdh’anhu), and to have placed himself under his authority (al-itba' anh).[12]

The basis of the Usuliyun argument was that the meaning of the word Suhbah itself necessitates close association[13]. Hence the phrase Ashab Al Rasul (the people of the Prophet) is similar to Ashab Al Qaryah (the people of the village), Ashab al-Kahf wa-al-Raqim (the People of the Cave and Inscription), Ashab Al Jannah (the people of Paradise) and Ashab Al Hadith (the people of Traditions), all of which imply a close association.

Likewise it is obvious that one who only comes to a person or sees him or does business with him cannot be said to have been a companion of that person[14]. The Traditionists, however, insisted otherwise. The word Suhbah, they maintained, never originally signified a long-term association. All linguists agreed that the word Sahabi is derived from the word al-Suhbah. This word is applied, without any restriction, to whoever associates helf with others regardless of whether the association is long or not. It is just like other words such as mukallim (speaker), mukbatib (preacher) and Darib (beater) which are applied to those who perform these acts (i.e., to speak, preach, and beat) regardless of whether they do so once or many times in succession[15]. And Hence, Due to the efforts of the traditionists, I became a Muazin of the local Masjid as I gave the call for Namaz (Aza’an) once.

[By this same logic, we can say that a person is Pious no matter how many times he prays in a Day, no matter how much he respects his parents. If he had done this once, even for a short time, then he should be considered Pious.]

The only trouble was that many within the Traditionists own circle disagreed with this very definition. The view of Hazrat Anas ibn Malik رضي الله عنه and Sa’id ibn al-Musayyab رضي الله عنه has already been mentioned. Their understanding of what a Companion was reflected the customary meaning of the word Suhbah advocated by the Usuliyun. Ali ibn al-Madani, Ibn Hanbal and al-Bukhari also seem to have believed that the term Suhbah did not originally include those who had only seen the Prophet. If this is the case, then what the later Traditionists call the customary meaning (al-mana Al urfi) of Suhbah was actually closer in spirit to the meaning assigned by the earliest generation of Traditionists. And yet, how could Traditionists like Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab, whose Prophetic Traditions are considered as the soundest of Al Mursal[16] at variance with other Traditionists over so fundamental an issue?

To solve this problem, the Traditionists had to do at least one of two things:

Either reinterpret the past or negate it; they in fact tried to do both. They reinterpreted Anas ibn Malik’s رضي الله عنه statement, saying that what Anas meant by the word "Sahiba' (in "fa amma man Sahibahu fa-la) was a particular kind of Suhbah (al-Suhbah Al Khasah)[17]. The views of Abu Zur'ah and Abu Dawud whose opinions on puberty tended to limit the boundaries of Companionship and therefore could be seen as sympathetic to the position of the Usuliyun were also interpreted in the same way. Thus what they meant was that those who had not reached their legal majority when the Prophet died did not enjoy the status of the special Companionship Suhbah Khassah[18]. They denied that Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab ever made the statement attributed to him, insisting that it must have had its origin among the Usuliyun."[19] They pointed for instance to the fact that its chain of transmission included al-Waqidi, whose reputation among the Traditionists was not very sound.[20] This claim may be accurate; yet it must be kept in mind that not only did the Traditionists acknowledge that al-Waqidi‘ s own definition differed from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab[21] so that it is unlikely that he would have tampered with the latter's definition for his own good-but also that, on other occasions, the Traditionists did not hesitate to use information from al-Waqidi.[22] Sometimes the reason had nothing to do with al-Waqidi. Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab's view was reckoned weak because it necessitated the exclusion of Companions like Jabir ibn 'Abdullah al-Bajali رضي الله عنه who only became a Muslim in the year of the Prophet's passing away[23].. So the issue was not whether this report truly came from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab. It was rejected because it’s content contradicted the formal definition favored by the Traditionists.[As the modern Salafi’s do]. In this case the Traditionists relied on their definition, which was formulated later, to evaluate Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab's, which was formulated earlier."

The result was that the Traditionists extended the meaning of the word Suhbah to include those who were with the Prophet for only a very short time, or who had even had no more than a glimpse of him, claiming this extended meaning to be the original meaning. The Usuliyun words, as quoted by Abu  al-Muzzafar al-Samâni, express this phenomenon correctly :

The Traditionists assign the name Companion to everyone who narrates from the Prophet, a tradition or a word, and they extend (the meaning) so that they also count as Companions those who saw him only one time (ra’ahu Ruyah).[24]

The Traditionists for their part reasoned that, because the Prophet was so eminent, anybody who saw him had been specially favored[25]. To have spent with the Prophet even a (very short) time (sa'atan) was an accomplishment superior to any other. Thus Hazrat Umar ibn Abd al-'Aziz, the most pious Umayyad Caliph, lagged far behind in terms of religious achievement when compared to Mu'awiyah, who rebelled against a legally appointed Caliph 'Ali. As it was expressed "One of Mu'awiyah's days with the Prophet was better than 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz's رضي الله عنه  lifetime and his ‘family[26].

➽Conclusion: There is a need to reform the definition of Sahaba, thus moderating it (protecting it from extremes of both traditionists and Usuliyun). As a student of Islamic studies my opinion on who a Sahabi is as

 A Muslim, who meets the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, attend His (at least) few majalis, accompany Him and remain faithful to Him and His Family and passes away in that condition.

[1] Al Iraqi, Al Taqyid, Pg 292-293.

[2] Al Iraqi, Al Taqyid, Pg 293.

[3] "Wa haka al Qadi Iyyad an Al Waqidi annahu Yashtaritu Baligh," Al Shawkani, Irshad Al Fuhul ila Tahqiq Al Haqq min ilm Al Usul. (Cairo: Mustafa Al Babi Al Halabi  wa Awladuh, 1937), Pg 70.

[4] Al Shawkani, Irshad Al Fuhul ila Tahqiq Al Haqq min ilm al Usul (Cairo: Mustafa Al  Babi Al Halabi, 1937), Pg 70; Ibn Hajr, Fath Al Bari, Vol 7, Pg 4; Al Suyuti, Tadrib Al Rawi, Pg 397; Al Hakim Al Nisaburi assigned them to the lowest level of the class of companions; See his Ma'arifat, Pg 22.

[5] Al Qasimi, Qawaid, Pg 148.

[6] Ibn Abd Al Barr, Al Istiab, Vol 1, Pg 359-360.

[7] Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat Al Ayn, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Beirut: Dar Sadir,n.d), Vol 2,  Pg 471, 474; Ibn Al Murtada, Kitab Tabaqat Al Mutazilah, ed. Susanna Diwald Wilzer (Beirut; Al Matba'ah Al Kathulikiyah, 1961), Pg 68,70.

[8] Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat Al Ayn, Vol 4, Pg 271.

[9] Al Sakhawi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 3, Pg 92.

[10] Ibn Al Salah, Ulum Al Hadith, Pg 393, Al Amidi, Al Ihkam, Pg 130; Al Nawawi, Al  Taqrib, Pg 81-82, Tadhib Al Asma, Vol 1, Pg 14; al Sakhawi, Irshad Al Fuhul, Pg 70; Al  Bihari, Kitab Musallam Al Thubut (Cairo):Al Matba'ah Al Husayniyah Al Misriyah, 1908), Vol 2, Pg 120.

[11] Al Iraqi, Al Taqyid, Pg 297; Al Sakhawi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 3, Pg 92.

[12] Abu Al Husayn Al Basri, Al Mu'tamad Fi Usul Al Fiqh (Damascus: Al Ma'had Al Ilmi Al Firansi lil Dirasat Al Arabiyah, 1965), Vol 2, Pg 666.

[13] Ibn Al Salah, Ulum Al Hadith, Pg 293; Al Suyuti, Tadrib Al Raawi, Pg 398.

[14] Al Amidi, Al Ihkam, Pg 133-134. See Also Al Basri, Al  Mu'tamad, Vol 2, Pg 666-667. Compare the Usuliyun's argument with the Shi'is. They share the view that the title "Companion" should only be given to those who really close to the Prophet. But, whereas the Usuliyun basically open the possibility of being a companion to every Muslim. The Shi'i limits this title to the descendants of the Prophet. They divide companionship into two: The true companionship (al Suhbah Al Haqiqiyah) and the external companionship (Al Suhbah Al Zahir Al Amr). Unlike the later, the former is applied only to those who complied fully with the Prophets Commands and prohibitions and followed him in everything that came from Him. And this is only applied to the imams of his descndants (al a'immah min  dhurriyatih). See Ibn Hayyun, Tarbiyat Al Muminin or Ta'wil Da'a'im Al Islam, Ms. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Ms. 25736, 20 recto.

[15] Khatib Al Baghdadi, Al Kifayah, Pg 69-70; Al Iraqi, Al Taqyid, Pg 296-297; Al Suyuti, Tadrib Al Rawi, Pg 398.

[16] The reaon why his Prophetic traditions enjoy such a high esteem is because he was the son of a companion (His father was among the Ashab Al Shajarah and was present at the Bay'at al Ridwan) and because he was one of the only two sucessors who knew (adraka) and heard reports from the Ten companions to whom the Prophet promised Paradise. See Al Hakim Al Nisaburi, Ma'rifat, Pg 25.

[17] al Iraqi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 4, Pg 338; Al Sakhawi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 3, Pg 93. It seems that the traditionists often used this approach to interpret any statement coming from other traditionists that contradicted their view. Thus when Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal was reported to have denied Maslamah ibn Mukhallad's companionship (Suhbah), Ibn Hajr says that what Ahmed bin Hanbal meant was particular companionship (al Suhbah Al Khassah) (Ibn Hajr, Al Isabah, Vol 3, pg 398). Likewise when Muhammad Ibn Awf says that he does not know if Malik Ibn Hunayrah had companionship, it is interpreted by Ibn Hajr to mean, once again, that Muhammad ibn Awf is referring to the particul;ar companionship (Ibn Hajr, Al Isabah, Vol 3, Pg 337).

[18] Al Iraqi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 4, Pg 338; Al Sakhawi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 3, Pg 95.

[19] Ibn Al Salah, Ulum Al Hadith, Pg 293.

[20] Al Iraqi, Al Taqyid, Pg 297; Al Suyuti, Tadrib Al Rawi, Pg 398. The full Isnaad of Ibn Al Musayyab's view is given by Khatib Al Baghdadi, Al Kifayah, Pg 68-69.

[21] "Qala Ibn Amr [al waqidi]: ra'aytu ahl al- ilm yaquluna kull man ra'a Rasul Allah Salla Allah alayhi was sallama wa qad adraka al- hilm wa aqala amr al din wa- radiyahu fa huwa indana min man sahiba Al Nabi salla Allah alayhi was sallama wa law sa'atan min nahr" (Khatib al Baghdadi, Al Kifayah, Pg 68-69).

[22] Reading biographical dictionaries on the companions, one can see clearly the truth of this statement. The traditionists’ argument for differentiating between historical information and Hadith information (to make the point that, while we can accept his information on Hadith) is problematic. How can we decide that Al Waqidi's information concerning Sa'id bin Al Mussayab belongs to the hadith and therefore should be rejected while his information about other people belongs to history and therefore can be accepted?

[23] Al Nawawi, Al Taqrib, Pg 82; Al Suyuti, Tadrib Al Ra'awi, Pg 398-399.

[24] Ibn Al Salah, Uloom Al Hadith, Pg 292.

[25] Ibn Al Salah, Uloom Al Hadith, Pg 292, Ibn Kathir, Al Ba'ith, Pg 98; Al Iraqi, Fath Al Mughith, Vol 4, Pg 337. The Usuliyun have a different way of seeing it. To them, the position of Companion was so prestigious that not just anybody can easily achieve it. It must be more than just seeing the Prophet. So the difference is that while the traditionists make the Prophet the starting point for defining the companions, the Usuliyun give more weight to the high position of the companions (because the position of the companions is so eminent).

[26] Ibn Kathir, Al Ba'ith, pg 98. There are others who refuse to pass judgement on who was superior, Muawiyah or Hazrat Umar ibn Abdul Aziz. The reason given is that because Muawiyah was a "companion" (according to traditionists), possessing adalah, the issue cannot even be discussed (Ibn Abd Al Barr, Jami Al Bayan al Ilm was fadlihi wa ma Yanbaghi fi Riwayatihi wa Hamlih, ed. Abd Al Rahman Muhammad Uthman (Madina: Al Maktabah Al Salafiyah, 1968).,Vol 2, Pg 227. Since however Muawiyah is being compared with Umar ibn Abd Al Aziz who was not a companion, can the refusal to pass judgement be interpreted as an implicit acknowledgement of the inferiority of Muawiya?