the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections, yet they avoided anything he related after his memory had begun to falter; in his old age he thus went through the same decline that overtook Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah.
Al-Jurayrī died in 144 AH.
69 – Raqabah ibn Maṣqalah al-ʿAbdī * (B, M, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī)
The imam, the firmly reliable scholar, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAbdī, of Kūfah.
He narrated from Anas ibn Mālik,
and from ʿAtāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, Nāfiʿ, Ṭalḥah ibn Muṣarrif, ʿAwn ibn Abī Juḥayfah, and others.
Those who transmitted from him include his companion Sulaymān al-Taymī, Abū ʿAwānah, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl, and a number of others.
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “Trustworthy, reliable.”
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿIjlī said, “He was trustworthy and eloquent, counted among the eminent men of the Arabs—may Allah Most High have mercy on him.”
The pre-Islamic Arabs used to place the deceased’s name before the prayer for mercy, a practice reflected in their poetry, as in the verse: “Upon you be the peace of God, O Qays ibn ʿAsim, and His mercy so long as He wills to show mercy,” and in al-Shammakh’s line: “Upon you be peace from a tanned hide, and may God’s hand bless that torn leather.” The author’s point is not that the sunnah for greeting the dead is to say, “ʿalayka al-salam (peace be upon you).” How could that be, when it is authentically reported that the Prophet entered a cemetery and said, “al-salam ʿalaykum ahla dara muʾminin (peace be upon you, dwellers of the abode of believers),” thus placing the prayer for peace before mentioning those addressed, exactly as one does when greeting the living. Hence, the sunnah does not differentiate between greeting the living and the dead.
(*) al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-Kabir, vol. 3, p. 342; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, vol. 5, p. 377; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-Kamal, entry 420; al-Dhahabi, Tadhhib al-Tahdhib, vol. 1, p. 227, no. 2; Ibn Hajar, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, vol. 3, pp. 286–287; Ibn ʿAbd al-Dahir, Khulasa Tadhhib al-Kamal, p. 119.