14 – Ibn al-Sarḥ, Aḥmad b. ʿAmr al-Umawī * (M, D, S, Q)
The imām, ḥāfiẓ, and jurist: Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad b. ʿAmr b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAmr b. al-Sarḥ al-Umawī, their client, the Egyptian jurist.
He transmitted ḥadith from Sufyān b. ʿUyaynah, ʿAbd Allāh b. Wahb, and Saʿīd al-Ādamī.
Those who reported from him include Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī, Ibn Mājah, al-Qāsim b. Mahdī, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Kūfī, Muḥammad b. Zabbān b. Ḥabīb, Abū Bakr b. Abī Dāwūd, and others.
He composed an exposition of the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Ibn Wahb (1) and was counted among the eminent scholars.
Death: He passed away on the fourteenth of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, in the year 250 AH, and was in his eighties (2).
He has a ḥadith that he alone preserved from Ibn Wahb. A number of transmitters said: “Ibn al-Sarḥ narrated to us; Ibn Wahb narrated to us; from ʿAmr b. al-Ḥārith; from Abū Yūnus; from Abū Hurayrah, who said:
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Every son of Adam is a master,’
(*) Al-Jarh wa-l-taʿdil, 2:65; Al-Jamʿ bayna Rijal al-Sahihayn, p. 14; Tahdhib al-Kamal, p. 33; Tadhhib al-Tahdhib, 1:20 / 1; Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, 2:504-505; Al-ʿIbar, 1:455; Tabaqat al-Shafiʿiyyah by al-Subki, 2:26; Tarikh Ibn Kathir, 11:6; Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, 1:64; Tabaqat al-Huffaz, p. 219; Husn al-Muhadara, 1:309; Khulasat Tadhhib al-Kamal, p. 10; Shadharat al-Dhahab, 2:120.
(1) He is Abu Muhammad ʿAbd Allah ibn Wahb ibn Muslim al-Masri, the Maliki; his biography appeared earlier in volume 9, entry 63.
(2) Ibn Abi Hatim states in Al-Jarh wa-l-taʿdil, 2:65, that when his father was asked about this narrator he replied, “There is no problem with him.” In Tahdhib al-Kamal, pp. 33-34, al-Nasaʾi judges him “reliable” (thiqa). Abu Saʿid ibn Yunus reports that ʿAli ibn al-Hasan ibn Khalaf ibn Qudayd said to him: “Your grandfather Yunus had memorized (hadith), whereas Ahmad ibn ʿAmr had not; nevertheless, he was trustworthy, firmly accurate, and pious.” Abu Saʿid adds: “He was a jurist among the righteous and reliable transmitters.”