A Brief Account of al-Awzaʿi (may Allah have mercy on him)

He is ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr ibn Yuḥmad, Abū ʿAmr al-Awzaʿi. The Awzāʿ, according to Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (1), are a clan of Ḥimyar, and he belonged to them. Others, however, hold that he was not of their lineage; rather, he settled in the quarter of al-Awzāʿ— a village outside Bāb al-Farādis among the villages of Damascus— and he was a cousin of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAmr al-Shaybānī.

Abū Zurʿah said: His origin was from captives taken in Sind; he then made al-Awzāʿ his home, and the attribution (nisbah) to that place became attached to him.

Still others report that he was born in Baalbek and grew up in the Biqāʿ Valley as an orphan under his mother’s care. She moved with him from one town to another, while he educated himself. Among the sons of kings, caliphs, viziers, merchants, and others, no one was more intelligent, more scrupulous, more learned, more eloquent, more dignified, more forbearing, or more inclined to silence than he. Whenever he spoke a word, everyone present deemed it necessary to record it because of its excellence.

He engaged in correspondence and writing, and once enlisted as a scribe in an expedition to al-Yamāmah. There he heard hadith from Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr and attached himself to him. Yaḥyā directed him to travel to Basra to hear from al-Ḥasan and Ibn Sīrīn. He made the journey, only to find that al-Ḥasan had died two months earlier, while Ibn Sīrīn was gravely ill. Al-Awzaʿi kept visiting him, but the illness grew worse and Ibn Sīrīn passed away before he could hear anything from him.

Afterwards he came to Damascus and settled in the quarter of al-Awzāʿ, outside Bāb al-Farādis. He became the leading authority there—and indeed in other lands—in jurisprudence, hadith, the accounts of the Prophet’s expeditions (maghāzī), and the other sciences of Islam. He met many of the Successors (tābiʿūn) and those after them, and a host of distinguished Muslims narrated from him: Mālik ibn Anas, al-Thawrī, al-Zuhrī—who was among his own teachers—and others. More than one of the great imams praised him, and the Muslims unanimously affirmed his integrity and leadership.

Mālik said: “Al-Awzaʿi was an imam to be followed.”

Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah and others said: “Al-Awzaʿi was the imam of the people of his time.” On one occasion during the Hajj he entered Mecca while Sufyān al-Thawrī held the reins of his camel and Mālik ibn Anas walked behind it, with al-Thawrī calling out, “Make room for the shaykh!” They seated him beside the Kaʿbah, and the two of them sat before him taking knowledge from him.

Once, Mālik and al-Awzaʿi exchanged scholarly discussion in Medina from the noon (ẓuhr) prayer until they performed the afternoon (ʿaṣr) prayer, and from ʿaṣr until they performed the sunset (maghrib) prayer. Al-Awzaʿi surpassed him in maghāzī, while Mālik surpassed him in jurisprudence— or in a certain area of jurisprudence.

Al-Awzaʿi and al-Thawrī also debated in the Caliph’s mosque over the question of raising the hands during bowing (rukūʿ) and on rising from it. Al-Awzaʿi argued for raising them on the basis of the report he narrated from al-Zuhrī, from Sālim, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) used to raise his hands