علي بن عبد الله المديني

'Ali ibn al-Madini (RH)

'Ali ibn 'Abd Allah al-Madini

Also known as: Ali ibn al-Madini, Ibn al-Madini, Ali bin al-Madini, Ibnu al-Madini

161–234 AH · 778–849 CE

Hadith

Basran master of the hidden defects of hadith, the teacher before whom al-Bukhari said he alone felt small.

'Ali ibn al-Madini was born in Basra in 778 to a family originally from Madinah. He studied with his father and with the great Basran critics Hammad ibn Zayd, Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan and 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, and travelled to Makkah to learn from Sufyan ibn 'Uyaynah and to Yemen to learn from 'Abd al-Razzaq. He became the leading authority of his time on 'ilal, the hidden defects that can undermine a chain that looks sound, and on the narrators themselves.

Al-Bukhari, his student, said he had never felt small before anyone except 'Ali ibn al-Madini, and drew heavily on his judgements; Abu Dawud was also among his students. He is said to have written around two hundred works, of which only a few survive, among them part of his al-'Ilal. During the Abbasid inquisition over the createdness of the Quran he gave the answer the authorities demanded, which cost him the regard of some, Ahmad ibn Hanbal among them; most later scholars treated it as done under duress and continued to rely on his hadith. He died in Samarra in 849.

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