Section (1)
[Knowledge of Personal Names and Kunyas]
Among the important matters in this discipline are: knowing the kunyas (teknonyms) of those whose given names are the ones by which they are famous (2), for they may sometimes be cited in a chain of transmission by their kunya, and one might then imagine the narrator to be someone else; knowing the personal names of those who are ordinarily referred to by their kunya (3)—the converse of the preceding category; knowing those whose very name functions as a kunya, and they are (4) few (5); knowing the narrators about whose kunya there is disagreement, and they are many (6); knowing those who possess numerous kunyas, such as Ibn Jurayj, who had two—Abu al-Walid and Abu Khalid—or whose descriptive epithets and honorific titles are numerous; and knowing those whose kunya coincides with their father’s name, like Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ishaq al-Madani (7), one of the Followers of the Successors.
(1) The word fasl (“section”) is absent from manuscript T, and the scribe left a blank space in its place.
(2) Manuscript K has the reading bi-smin (“with a name”).
(3) Manuscripts W and T read al-mukannayin (“those referred to by a kunyah”).
(4) A copy noted in the margin of manuscript Y reads wa-huwa (“and he/it is”). Al-Qari, in his Sharh Sharh al-Nukhba (p. 745), states: “A sound copy reads wa-hum (‘and they’), on the basis that man (‘who’) is plural in meaning although singular in form.”
(5) From the phrase “wa-maʿrifat asmaʾ al-mukannayin” (“and knowledge of the names of those known by a kunyah”) up to this point is missing in manuscript A.
(6) The entire clause “wa-maʿrifat mani ismuhu kunyatuhu, wa-hum qalil, wa-maʿrifat mani ukhtulifa fi kunyatihi, wa-hum kathir” (“and knowledge of those whose personal name is identical with their kunyah—and they are few—and of those about whose kunyah there is disagreement—and they are many”) is absent from manuscript H.
(7) Manuscript D reads al-Madini (“the Madinite”).