Imam Abu Dawud

A student of Imam Ahmad, he selected about 4,800 hadith on legal rulings for his Sunan, one of the six major hadith collections.

Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn al-Ashʿath al-Sijistani was born in 202 AH in Sijistan, in the east of the Islamic world (today on the border of Iran and Afghanistan). From a young age he devoted himself to hadith and travelled widely to hear it — to Iraq, the Hijaz, Syria, Egypt and Khurasan.

He studied with the greatest scholars of his time, above all Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, whose answers on fiqh questions he recorded in a book of his own. Abu Dawud is reported to have written down a vast number of narrations, from which he selected about 4,800 for his Sunan, focusing on the hadith that jurists use to derive rulings. In a famous letter to the people of Makkah he explained his method and pointed out where a narration had a weakness.

His Sunan became one of the six major collections of hadith (al-Kutub al-Sittah) and a standard reference for jurists of every school. He also wrote al-Marasil, on narrations with a missing link to the Prophet ﷺ, and other works on hadith.

After the Zanj revolt had devastated Basra, the Abbasid regent Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq asked him to settle there so that students would return to the city. He spent his last years teaching in Basra and died there in Shawwal 275 AH. His biographers describe him as a scholar of great piety and dignity.