Abu Huraira

Abū Huraira ( Arabic أبو هريرة, DMG Abū Huraira ; died 678, 679 or 680) was a companion of the Prophet Mohammed from the South Arabian tribe Daus, who is best known as a narrator of hadiths . With more than 3,300 hadiths in whose chain of narration he appears, he is numerically the most important source of prophetic traditions in Sunni Islam . Early on, however, there were also doubts about the credibility of the hadith he had handed down.

Life

Abū Huraira converted to Islam around the year 619. The new religion was imparted to him through his tribal mate at-Tufail ibn ʿAmr, who had traveled to Mecca and accepted Islam there. Around 620, Abū Huraira himself traveled to Mecca with at-Tufail's company and met Mohammed there, but then returned to his tribe.

In 628, shortly before the campaign to Chaibar , Abū Huraira emigrated to Medina with 80 other tribesmen. There he belonged to the so-called Ahl as-Suffa ("people of the shadow roof"), a group of poorer prophet companions who lived in his mosque in close proximity to Mohammed . At times he also worked as a servant to Mohammed. It is said that the two could often be seen hand in hand in common corridors in the city. In Dhū l-Qaʿda 629 he accompanied the Prophet's companion Ibn al-Hadramī to Bahrain. A year later he took part in the campaign to Tabūk , only to return to Bahrain a short time later with the tax caravan.

From around 641 he served the caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb as governor of Bahrain . In 644, however, ʿUmar called him back to Medina and confiscated his private assets on the charge that he had enriched himself from the community's assets. Since Abū Huraira believed the measure to be illegal, he refused to surrender the money. ʿUmar is said to have insulted him and hit him with the whip until he paid the money into the treasury. ʿUmar wanted to send him back to Bahrain, but Abū Huraira refused, pointing out the loss of property he had suffered and the shameful treatment.

When during the caliphate of Muʿāwiya I (661-680) the Umayyad prince Marwān was governor of Medina, he put Abū Huraira as a deputy during his periods of absence. Tensions arose with the governor, however, when Marwān allowed the Medinan merchants to issue vouchers called Sakk for their food, and Abū Huraira and Zaid ibn Thābit came to him and put forward a saying by the Prophet that allegedly forbade this type of commercial transaction.

Abū Huraira had an estate near Dhū l-Hulaifa, the point where the pilgrims from Medina made the Ihrām . His old mother is said to have run the household there.

Surname

Abū Huraira is best known by his Kunya . Their meaning ( Abū Huraira = "father of the kitten") is said to go back to the fact that he owned a small cat that he especially loved. The word Huraira becomes diptotic in connection with Abū .

There are very different statements about Abū Huraira's actual name ( Ism ): ʿAbd ʿAmr, ʿUmair, Sukain, Burair etc. It was common tradition that his name in the Jāhilīya was originally ʿAbd Shams and that he was the new one on the occasion of his conversion to Islam from the Prophet Name ʿAbd ar-Rahmān (or ʿAbdallāh) was given.

His role as a narrator

In general, Abū Huraira had a reputation for great piety. Like ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās , he was known for the transmission of biblical narratives from Jews and Christians, but his authority was also invoked in traditions on legal, ritual and theological issues. Many misogynist hadiths are also traced back to Abū Huraira.

Doubts about Abu Huraira's credibility in early Islam

Even in the milieu of the early narrators of hadith, there were doubts as to whether all the hadiths that were circulating in the name of Abu Huraira actually go back to him. Doubts aroused in particular the fact that he had converted to Islam relatively late and had not lived in the immediate vicinity of Muhammad. There are a large number of accounts of Companions of the Prophets criticizing Abu Huraira for conveying so many accounts of the Prophet. To this criticism he is said to have replied that it was not his fault that the other companions of the prophet had forgotten what they had heard. According to a report, the on-Naisābūrī in his Mustadrak narrated to Aishah once asked Abu Huraira, how he might deliver so much from the Prophet that the other Companions had neither heard nor seen. He is said to have replied that she was distracted by mirrors, make-up and embellishment for the prophet, but that nothing distracted him from him. Abū Huraira himself is said to have boasted that he knew a lot more about the prophet, but preferred to hide it, because otherwise he would be thrown with shoes and excrement and declared crazy. Then to al-Hasan ibn'Alī have answered: "By God, he's right. If he told us that the house of God was being torn down and set on fire, the people would no longer believe him. "

The Muʿtazilites in particular liked to point out reports that were supposed to ridicule Abū Huraira. So led Ibrahim an-Nazzam a report to his hadith used to initiate the formula after the Abu Huraira: "My confidant told me about ( ḥaddaṯanī Halili )". Thereupon ʿAlī is said to have asked him once: “Since when has the Prophet been your confidante ( ḫalīl ), Abū Huraira?” Ibn Kathīr narrates a report according to which ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb Abū Huraira threatened to send him back to the Daus area if he did do not stop narrating hadiths from the Messenger of God. The Murji'it Bishop al-Marīsī (d. 833) claimed that Umar Abū Huraira had called the greatest liar among the narrators of hadith. The hadith scholar ad-Dārimī (d. 869) rejected this as a lie and insisted that Abū Huraira was one of the most credible narrators.

Modern Debates on the Authenticity of the Abū Huraira Hadith

The debate about the authenticity of the Abu Huraira hadith flared up again among Muslims in the 20th century. In 1958 Mahmūd Abū Raiya wrote a book with the title Aḍwāʾ ʿalā l-sunna al-muḥammadīya ("Lights over the Mohammedan Sunnah") in which he sought to uncover forgeries within the canonical collections of hadiths, with particular reference to hadiths from Abū Huraira turned off. In response to those who questioned Abū Huraira's credibility, other Muslim authors wrote books in his defense. So already published Rashid Rida 1928 a fatwa in which he defended the credibility of Abu Hurairas.

literature

Arabic sources

• Abū Saʿīd ʿU̱tmān ibn Saʿīd ad-Dārimī: Naqḍ al-imām Abī-Saʿīd ʿU̱tmān Ibn-Saʿīd ʿalā l-Marīsī al-Ǧahmī al-ʿAnīd . Ed. Rašīd Ibn-Ḥasan al-Almīʿī. Maktabat ar-Rušd, Riyad, 1998. Vol. II, pp. 617-631. Online version
• Muhammad ibn Saʿd : Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr . Vol. II / 2, Ed. Friedrich Schwally . Brill, Leiden, 1912. pp. 117-119. Digitized
• Ibn Qutaiba : Taʾwīl Muḫtalaf al-ḥadīṯ . Ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī d-Dīn al-Aṣfar. Al-Maktab al-islāmī, Beirut, 1999. pp. 72f. Digitized
• Shams ad-Dīn aḏ-Ḏahabī : Siyar aʿlām an-nubalāʾ. Ed. Shuʿaib al-Arnāʾūṭ. 11th edition. Muʾassasat ar-Risāla, Beirut, 1996. Vol. II, pp. 578-632. Digitized
• Ibn Kathīr : al-Bidāya wa-n-Nihāya . Maktabat al-Maʿārif, Beirut, 1992. Vol. VIII, pp. 103-115. Digitized
• Al-Ḥākim an-Naisābūrī: Al-Mustadrak ʿalā ṣ-Ṣaḥīḥain . Ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, Beirut, 2002. Vol. III, pp. 578-588 digitized version
• ʿAbd al-Munʿim Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAlī al-ʿAzzī: Difāʿ ʿan Abī Huraira . 2nd edition. Maktabat an-Nahḍa, Beirut, 1981. Digitized

Secondary literature

• Khaled Abou El Fadl: Speaking in God's Name. Islamic Law, Authority, and Women. Oneworld, Oxford, 2001. pp. 215-217, 224-231.
• Ignaz Goldziher : "Abū Huraira" in Enzyklopädie des Islam Vol. I, pp. 99b-100a. Digitized
• Helga Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira, the Prophet's Companion. A contribution to the history of early Islam. Frankfurt / Main, dissertation 1965.
• GHA Juynboll: The authenticity of the tradition literature: Discussions in modern Egypt. Brill, Leiden 1969, pp. 62-99.
• GHA Juynboll: Abū Hurayra . In: Encyclopaedia of Islam. THREE. Edited by Gudrun Krämer , Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Brill Online, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 171.
2. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, pp. 17-21.
3. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 57.
4. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 171.
5. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 113 f.
6. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 152.
7. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 132 f.
8. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . 1965, p. 38.
9. ↑ See Hemgesberg: Abu Huraira . Pp. 39-43.
10. ↑ Cf. Hemgesberg 32f and al-Ḥāzimī: ʿUǧālat al-mubtadiʾ wa-fuḍālat al-muntahī fī n-nasab Ed. ʿAbdallāh Kunūn. Cairo 1973, p. 59, lines 5-6 digitized .
11. ↑ See Reuben Firestone: Journeys in Holy Lands. The Development of the Abraham-Ishmael legend in Islamic exegesis. Albany 1990. pp. 9, 31-38.
12. ↑ Abou El Fadl: Speaking in God's Name. 2001, p. 215.
13. ↑ Abou El Fadl: Speaking in God's Name. 2001, p. 216.
14. ↑ an-Naisābūrī: Al-Mustadrak . 2002, Vol. III, p. 582.
15. ↑ Muhammad ibn Saʿd: Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr . 1912, Vol. II / 2, p. 119.
16. ↑ Ibn Qutaiba: Taʾwīl Muḫhtalaf al-ḥadīṯ . 1999, p. 72f.
17. ↑ Juynboll: The authenticity of the tradition literature . 1969, p. 72f.
18. ↑ ad-Dārimī: Naq̣d al-imām Abī-Saʿīd ʿU̱tmān Ibn-Saʿīd ʿala 'l-Marīsī al-Ǧahmī al-ʿAnīd . Vol. II, p. 617.
19. ↑ ad-Dārimī: Naq̣d al-imām Abī-Saʿīd ʿU̱tmān Ibn-Saʿīd ʿala 'l-Marīsī al-Ǧahmī al-ʿAnīd . Vol. II, pp. 618-631.
20. ^ Rašīd Riḍā: Fatāwā al-imām Muḥammad Rašīd Riḍā . Ed. Ṣalāḥ-ad-Dīn al-Munaǧǧid and Yūsuf Q. Ḫūrī. Dār al-Kitāb al-Ǧadīd, Beirut, 1970–1971. P. 2034f. Digitized