Imam Muslim
His Lineage
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Imam Muslim and His Ṣaḥīḥ
By Shaykh ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-ʿAbbād, Lecturer at the Faculty of Sharia, Islamic University

His Lineage:
He is Imam Abū al-Ḥasan Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj ibn Muslim al-Qushayrī by ancestry, al-Nīsābūrī by domicile. Ibn al-Athīr states in al-Lubāb fī Tahdhīb al-Ansāb: “Al-Qushayrī is pronounced with a ḍammah on the qāf, a fatḥah on the shīn, the yāʾ is quiescent with two dots beneath it, and it ends with a rāʾ. This nisbah goes back to Qushayr ibn Kaʿb ibn Rabīʿah ibn ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿah, a large tribe to which many scholars are ascribed.” He then listed a number of them, among whom is Imam Muslim.

Imam Muslim’s attribution is an original tribal lineage, whereas Imam al-Bukhārī’s link to the Juʿfīs is one of clientage. For this reason, when Imam Abū ʿAmr ibn al-Ṣalāḥ mentioned in his work ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth that the first to author a Ṣaḥīḥ was Imam al-Bukhārī, followed by Imam Muslim, he said: “The first to compile a Ṣaḥīḥ was al-Bukhārī—Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Juʿfī, their client—and he was followed by Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Nīsābūrī al-Qushayrī, who is one of them.”