brandishing both panegyric and lampoon.
212 – al-Humaydī ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr ibn ʿĪsā* (Kh, D, T, S)
He is ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Usāmah ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥumayd ibn Zuhayr ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Asad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā.
Another opinion holds that his line goes back through his grandfather: ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ḥumayd.
He was the imam, ḥāfiẓ (hadith master), and jurist; the Shaykh of the Sacred Mosque. His kunya was Abū Bakr, and he was al-Qurashī, al-Asadī, al-Humaydī, al-Makkī, the compiler of the Musnad (1).
He narrated from: Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd; Fudayl ibn ʿIyāḍ; Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah—of whom he transmitted extensively and with precision—ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿAmmī; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Ḥāzim; al-Walīd ibn Muslim; Marwān ibn Muʿāwiyah; Wakīʿ; and al-Shāfiʿī. Though not an overly prolific transmitter, he enjoyed great prestige in Islam.
Those who narrated from him include: al-Bukhārī, al-Dhuhlī, Hārūn al-Ḥammāl, and Aḥmad ibn
The second of the two verses reads: “O son of Harun, you have triumphed…”. In the discipline of badīʿ (rhetorical embellishment) it is cited as an example of tawjīh, i.e. wording that admits two opposite senses; in this case the phrase “with the daughter of…” can suggest either nobility or insignificance.
Ibn Khallikan attributes the couplet to the Baghdadi poet Muhammad ibn Hazim al-Bahili, and adds: “When these lines reached al-Maʾmun he said, ‘By Allah, we do not know whether he meant good or ill.’”
(*) Principal sources: Ibn Saʿd, Tabaqat, 5:502; Ibn Maʿin, Tarikh, p. 308; al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-kabir, 5:96; al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-saghir, 2:339; Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Jarh wa-l-taʿdil, 5:56; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Intiqāʾ, p. 104; al-Shirazi, Tabaqat, p. 99; Ibn Mandah, Jamiʿ bayna rijal al-sahihayn, 1:265; al-Samʿani, al-Ansab, 4:231; Ibn al-Futi, al-Muʿjam al-mushtamil, p. 153; Ibn al-Athir, al-Lubab, 1:321; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-kamal, fol. 682; al-Dhahabi, Tadhhib al-tahdhib, 2:144/2; al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-huffaz, 2:413; al-Dhahabi, al-ʿIbar, 1:377; al-Dhahabi, al-Kashif, 2:86; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-zāhira, 2:231; and numerous later biographical compendia.
(1) The work has been published in two volumes, edited by the hadith scholar Habib al-Rahman al-Aʿzami, under the auspices of the Indian Academy of Sciences.