243 – Ibn Mufawwiz, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ḥaydara al-Maʿāfirī
A ḥadith master of outstanding skill and precision, he was Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ḥaydara ibn Mufawwiz ibn Aḥmad ibn Mufawwiz al-Maʿāfirī, from Xàtiva (al-Shāṭibī).
He was born in 463 AH, the year Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr died. Shaykh Abū ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥaddāʾ and the judge Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī granted him authorisation to transmit.
He heard ḥadith from his uncle Tāhir ibn Mufawviz; from Abū ʿAlī al-Jayyānī—most extensively—from Abū Marwān ibn Sirāj, and from Muḥammad ibn al-Faraj al-Ṭallāʿī, and he succeeded his teacher Abū ʿAlī in his study circle.
He wrote a refutation of Ibn Ḥazm (1). He was a memoriser of ḥadith and its hidden defects, an authority on narrators, exact, erudite, and a man of letters and a poet (2), eloquent and distinguished. He narrated to the people of Cordoba, but death overtook him before the customary age for one’s own narration (3). He lived a little over forty years.
He died in 505 AH.
(*) Sources: Ibn al-Abbar, Al-Sila, vol. 2, pp. 567-568; Ibn ʿAbd al-Hadi, Mukhtasar Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ al-Hadith, fol. 225; Al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, vol. 4, part 17, section 1; Al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, vol. 4, p. 1255; Ibn al-Qaysarani, Tabaqat al-Huffaz, p. 456.
(1) Ibn ʿAbd al-Hadi describes him in Mukhtasar Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ al-Hadith (fol. 225) as having produced “an excellent refutation,” adding, “I copied it myself; it attests to his vast learning and authoritative standing.”
(2) Concerning Ibn Hazm he recited, as quoted in Nafh al-Tib, vol. 2, pp. 84 and 375:
ya man tuʿani umuran lan tuʿaniha (O you who toil over matters you will never master,)
khall at-taʿanni wa aʿti al-qaws bariha (leave off striving and hand the bow to its fletcher!);
tarwi al-ahadith ʿan kulli musamaha (you transmit hadiths with careless ease,)
wa innama li-maʿaniha maʿaniha (yet every report has meanings within its meaning.)
(3) Al-Sila, vol. 2, p. 568, adds: “He used to teach the public in the Great Mosque of Cordoba; they studied under him, and he continued benefitting them until he died in Rabiʿ al-Akhar 505 AH. He was buried in the suburb.”