Forty-Fifth Category:
Sons Narrating from Their Fathers

Abu Nasr al-Waʾili authored a work on this topic. Its most delicate section concerns those isnads in which the father or grandfather is left unnamed. The material falls into two kinds:

1. Reports that read only “from my father.” These are plentiful.

2. Reports that read “from my father, from my grandfather,” such as the chain of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs: from his father, from his grandfather. There exists a large recension in this form, most of whose traditions are first-rate legal reports. The majority of hadith specialists have accepted it exactly as it stands, understanding the “grandfather” here to be ʿAbd Allah (the Companion), not Muhammad the Successor.

Another example is the corpus of Bahz ibn Hakim ibn Muʿawiyah ibn Haydah: from his father, from his grandfather—also a fine collection. Likewise, Ṭalḥah ibn Muṣarrif ibn ʿAmr ibn Kaʿb—some say Kaʿb ibn ʿAmr—belongs to this category.

One of the most striking illustrations is the narration recorded by al-Khatib through ʿAbd al-Wahhab ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn al-Harith ibn Asad ibn al-Layth ibn Sulayman ibn al-Aswad ibn Sufyan ibn Zayd ibn Akinah al-Tamimi, who said:

“I heard my father say,
‘I heard my father say,
“I heard my father say,
‘I heard my father say,
“I heard my father say,
‘I heard my father say,
“I heard my father say,
‘I heard my father say,
“I heard ʿAli ibn Abi Talib—may Allah be pleased with him—say:

‘al-Hannān is He who turns in mercy toward the one who has turned away from Him,
and al-Mannān is He who grants bounty before it is even requested.’”

Allah knows best.