Thread by @Farid_0v

-=[Who is Abu Ubayd?]

I came across an interesting report yesterday in Tabaqat Ibn Sa'ad that listed the number of participants in Al-Jamal.

It was the hadith of Ibn Sa'ad from Abu Ubayd from Hisham bin Urwa.

The editor wrote: Abu Ubayd is Al-Qassim bin Sallaam. I doubted it.

The editor also commented that Abu Ubayd didn't meet Hisham. That is true. However, the large disconnection gave me doubts. I had a hunch it was another Abu Ubayd.

After a little research, I realized that there was no way it is Al-Qasim, since Abu Ubayd is from another tabaqa.

His teachers were also all from the tabaqa of Hisham as well.

So I started looking up all the narrators named Abu Ubayd. There was always an issue with tabaqa.

I thought it may be Abu Ubayda too. I checked sources that quoted Ibn Sa'ad. Nope, it is Abu Ubayd.

I then started to have crazy thought, which I had to test.

I started looking for some of these reports by Abu Ubayd in other sources. Perhaps one would indicate his identity.

I found a report in the biography of Hamza bin Abi Usayd and the result shocked me.

Instead of Abu Ubayd being the narrator here, it said: Al-Haytham bin Adi.

To confirm my suspicions, I asked Abdullah Moataz to look into the matter, without telling him about my findings. He found another example of Al-Haytham narrating something that only Abu Ubayd did.

Confirmed.

Al-Haytham bin Adi and Abu Ubayd are in the same tabaqa. Shared the same teachers and students. They reported the exact same hadiths.

Al-Hatham's kunya was Abu Abdul-Rahman though, meaning that Ibn Sa'ad disguised his kunya.

It seems that the reason that Ibn Sa'ad may have done this is because Al-Haytham was a notorious liar.

However, how does that explain other instances where Al-Haytham is named fully?

It is interesting that when Ibn Sa'ad mentions his full name, he mentions no kunya.

So is it that Ibn Sa'ad would sometimes have a changeof heart about naming him?

Perhaps he really did believe that his kunya was Abu Ubayd?

Is this sufficient to accuse Ibn Sa'ad of tadlees al-shuyukh?

Wallahu a'alam.

Another thing to take into consideration is that Ibn Sa'ad didn't give him a common kunya. Naming him Abu Ubayd made him distinct, since he had no other teachers with that kunya.

It seems like Ibn Sa'ad didn't want to confuse us into thinking that these are authentic reports.

By naming him Abu Ubayd, his narrations would always be doubted, since he would be anonymous in status, however, it seems like Ibn Sa'ad preferred that over being clear about quoting a liar.