Assalam alaikoum
I found this article on the internet
Abū Hurairah: According to the Scottish ḥadīṯ-specialist James Robson, Abū Hurairah “is said to have died in 57, 58, or 59; but if it is true that he prayed at ʿĀʾisha’s funeral in 58, the date must be 58/678, or 59. He was 78 years old.”[27] Hence, it would seem that Abū Hurairah was probably born around 600 and died in approximately 678, at the age of 78.
Hammām ibn Munabbih: According to the German ʿarabicist and islāmologist Raif Khoury, Wahb ibn Munabbih (the brother of Hammām) “was of Persian origin, having been born at Dhimar, two days’ march from Ṣanʿāʾ in the year 34/654-5. […] He lived with his five brothers at Ṣanʿāʾ, and Hammām was the eldest of them. The most reasonable date for the brother’s death seems to be 101 or 102/719-20, and the least probable is 132, when compared with that of Wahb.”[28] Hence, it would seem that Hammām was born prior to 655 and died around 720, in excess of the age of 75.
Maʿmar ibn Rās̠id: According to the American ʿarabicist Michael Fishbein: “Abū ʿUrwah Maʿmar b. Rāshid, born in 96/714 and died in 154/770, a pupil of al-Zuhrī, was a historian and traditionist.”[29] Hence, it would seem that Maʿmar was born in 714 and died in 770, at the age of 56.
ʿAbd ar-Razzāq: According to the German ʿarabicist, islāmologist, and ḥadīṯ-expert Harald Motzki, ʿAbd ar-Razzāq was a “Yemeni scholar, b. 126/744, d. in the middle of Shawwāl 211/middle of January 827.”[30] Hence, it would seem that ʿAbd ar-Razzāq was born in 744 and died in 827, at the age of 83.
Based upon this biographical data, the following approximate chronology emerges for the isnād of the Ṣaḥīfat Hammām:
ø Abū Hurairah (600-678)
ø Hammām (pre-655-720)
ø Maʿmar (714-770)
ø ʿAbd ar-Razzāq (744-827)
The problem with this isnād arises from the claim that Hammām transmitted his ṣaḥīfah to Maʿmar, who was only five or six years old at the time of Hammām’s death around 720. Even if the legends of infant children memorising ḥadīṯs are given any merit, this chronological problem cannot be ignored, given that the Mediæval biographical literature also reports that Maʿmar only began to research and collect ḥadīṯs during the same year that the famous preacher Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī died: 728, nearly a decade after the death of Hammām.[31]
However, some sources also report a much later date for the death of Hammām, in 749 or 750[32][33] (perhaps in an effort to ameliorate this incongruity). Given that Hammām was the elder brother of Wahb (who was born in 655), Hammām must have been more than 95 years old by 750, which seems unlikely; as Juynboll puts it:
“If Hammām’s late year of death is taken literally, creating every opportunity for Maʿmar to have heard him personally, and if it is at the same time maintained that he was a transmitter of Abū Hurayra, he must have reached an age which requires an act of faith to accept.”[34]
Furthermore, Hammām is suspiciously not mentioned as a muʿammar (‘exceptionally long-lived person’) in the biographical dictionary of Muḥammad ibn ʿUṯmān aḏ-Ḏahabī (d. 1353),[35] in whose work “virtually all centenarians from ancient times until his own day are mentioned.”[36] Moreover, this 750 death-date for Hammām is further contradicted by the report that Hammām died before his younger brother Wahb (who died in 728 or 732),[37][38] which would have been impossible if Hammām had in fact died two decades later. Hence: given the birth of Hammām prior to the 655 birth of his younger brother Wahb, Hammām’s absence from Ḏahabī’s list of muʿammars, and Hammām’s death prior to the 728 or 732 expiration of his brother Wahb, it seems evident that 720 (and not 750) was Hammām’s actual death-date; to reiterate the conclusion drawn by Khoury, “the most reasonable date” for Hammām’s death “seems to be 719-720.”[39] Although more tentative in regards to the true death-date of Hammām,[40] Juynboll concluded: “In short, no date seems to work, when the historicity—if any—of this strand is evaluated.”[41] Concerning the isnād in general, Juynboll further concluded: “The whole corpus is supported by a supposedly very early but probably historically untenable isnād strand.”[42]
My questions are quite simple:
Birth and Death Date of these Imams, especially Hammam Ibn Munabbih?
Djazakumullahu khayran
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September 16, 2014, 11:34:51 PM