- Al-Ruhāwī ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh
The imam, ḥāfiẓ, and hadith master; the indefatigable voyager and roamer; the muhaddith of al-Jazīra—Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh (1) al-Ruhāwī, the Hanbalī, a perpetual wayfarer (saffār) and a freedman of certain merchants.
He was born in al-Ruhā in 536 AH and grew up in Mosul.
After his patron set him free, a love for listening to hadith took hold of him. He met the last of the musnad transmitters, took copiously from them, distinguished himself, and composed works, though his handwriting was poor and he never mastered calligraphy.
He heard hadith from Masʿūd ibn al-Ḥasan al-Thaqafī; al-Ḥasan ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Rustamī; Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al-Ṣaydalanī; Rajāʾ ibn Ḥāmid al-Maʿdānī; Maḥmūd ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm Fūrja; ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Mardawayh; Maʿmar ibn al-Fākhir; Ismāʿīl ibn Shahrayār; Abū Masʿūd ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Ḥājjī (2), and many others.
(*) Sources: Mujam al-buldan, 2/877 (his name there is misprinted as “Abd al-Qahir”); Ibn Nuqta, At-Taqyid, fols. 146–147; Ibn ad-Dubaythi, Tarikh, fol. 187 (Paris MS 5922); al-Mundhiri, At-Takmila, 2: bio-no. 1399; Dhayl ar-Rawdatayn, 90; Tarikh al-Islam, fol. 193 (Paris MS 1582); Tadhkirat al-huffaz, 4/1387-1389; Duwal al-islam, 2/87; Al-Ilam bi-wafayat al-aʿlam, fol. 212; Al-Mukhtasar al-muhtaj, fol. 85; Al-Mustafad by al-Husami ad-Dumyati, fol. 50; Mirat al-jinaan, 4/23; Al-Bidaya wa-n-nihaya, 13/69; Dhayl tabaqat al-hanabila, 2/82, 86; Aqd al-juman by al-Ayni, 17, fols. 353-354; An-Nujum az-zahira, 6/214; Ibn al-Furat, Tarikh, 9, fol. 169; Shadharat adh-dhahab, 5/50-51.
(1) The manuscript reads the same as our base text, whereas al-Mundhiri’s Takmila and Ibn Kathir’s Al-Bidaya give the name as “Abd al-Rahman”. No other source records him under that form, and the author himself elsewhere cites only his own name and his father’s; most likely “Abd al-Rahman” is correct.
(2) His work Al-Wafayat, from which he transmits, is the book I published jointly with my teacher Dr. Ahmad Naji al-Qaysi in Baghdad in 1966.