Type Sixty-Four
Knowledge of the Mawālī (Clients/Freedmen)
Foremost in this category are those who are attributed to a tribe without qualification—for example, “so-and-so al-Qurashī”—when in fact the person is the tribe’s mawla. Within that broader group there are several kinds:
-
The one described as “the mawla of so-and-so,” by which a freedman is meant; this is the most prevalent usage.
-
The “mawla of Islam,” such as the Imām al-Bukhārī, the mawla of the Jufīs through the bond of Islam, for his grandfather had been a Magian and embraced Islam at the hand of al-Yamān al-Jufī. Another example is al-Ḥasan al-Māsarjasī, the mawla of ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mubārak; he had been a Christian and accepted Islam through him.
-
The “mawla of alliance,” exemplified by Imām Mālik ibn Anas: his forefathers were native Aṣbaḥiyyūn yet became mawālī of Taym of Quraysh by virtue of a pact.
Among the cases of a tribal mawla are: Abū’l-Bukhturī al-Ṭā’ī, the Successor, a mawla of the tribe of Ṭayy’; Abū’l-‘Āliyah al-Riyāhī, the Successor, a mawla of a woman from Banū Riyāḥ; al-Layth ibn Sa‘d al-Miṣrī al-Fihmī, their mawla; ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Mubārak al-Ḥanẓalī, their mawla; ‘Abd Allah ibn Wahb al-Qurashī, their mawla; and ‘Abd Allah ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Juhanī, their mawla. On occasion a person is linked to a tribe as “the mawla of its mawla,” such as Abū’l-Ḥabbāb al-Hāshimī, the mawla of Shuqrān, who himself was the mawla of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Allah knows best.
Type Sixty-Five
Knowledge of the Homelands and Towns of the Narrators
This is an area upon which the ḥadīth masters rely when evaluating narrators and compiling their works. One of its principal sources is the Ṭabaqāt of Ibn Sa‘d,