Sulaym ibn Qays
| Sulaym ibn Qays Arabic: سليم بن قيس |
|
|---|---|
| Birthplace | Kufa |
| Ethnicity | Arab |
| Known For | Being a loyal companion of Imam Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt |
| Influences | Muhammad, Ali, the Ahl al-Bayt, Salman the Persian, Miqdad and Abu Dharr al-Ghifari |
| Died | 76 AH (695 AD) |
| Father | Qays |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Shia |
| Influenced | Aban ibn abi-Ayyash |
| Works | The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays, narrater of Hadith, and History of Islam |
| Era | Islamic golden age |
Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilālī al-ʿĀmirī (Arabic: سليم بن قيس) was, according to Shia Muslim tradition, one of the companions of Ali towards the end of the latter's life. Sulaym was also said to be a loyal companion of Ali's sons Hasan and Husayn, the latter's son Ali Zayn al-'Abidin, and Muhammad al-Baqir. He reportedly authored the well-known book, Kitab Sulaym ibn Qays (The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays). Shia scholarship view Sulaym as "an anti-Umayyad" because of his love for the Ahl al-Bayt (household of Muhammad) and the "documentation" of the Event of Saqifah in his book.
Much of the information about Sulaym comes from Shia Muslim tradition. According to modern historian Mokhtar Djebeli, "the very existence of this man, and his work, should be regarded with caution, since apart from Ibn al-Nadim ... only a few Shi'is mention him, and then only in a very terse and laconic fashion". Ibn al-Nadim himself, as well as later biographers including al-Tusi, relied on the Alid writer Ali ibn Ahmad al-Aqiq (d. 911). The Shafi'i scholar Ibn Abi'l-Hadid, who was fully versed in Shi'a literature, questioned Sulaym's existence, claiming "he had heard" certain Twelver Shi'a scholars assert that Sulaym was "pure invention of the imagination" and "his alleged book being nothing but the apocryphal work of a forger".
The Twelver scholars Ahmad ibn Ubayda (d. 941) and Abu Abd Allah al-Ghadhanfari (d. 1020) based their denial of the existence of Sulaym's book on three factors: a segment in the book indicates there were thirteen imams instead of the traditionally held twelve; another segment states Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr condemned his dying father Abu Bakr despite Muhammad being a three-year-old child; and the book was allegedly solely transmitted to Aban ibn Abi Ayyash, despite the fact that the latter was only fourteen-years-old. However, the prominent Twelver scholar al-Hilli rejected theories about Sulaym's non-existence, though Djebli asserts al-Hilli's "arguments were too unconvincing to sweep away such doubts". Nonetheless, later Shi'a biographers produced al-Hilli's arguments verbatim, and Sulaym's book is considered by Shi'a scholars as among the oldest sources of Shi'a thought and superior to the much later four works of Sunni tradition, namely the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal and Muwaṭṭaʾ Imām Mālik.
...
Wikipedia