Follow-up 🧵: The recent post of @alSahraTeam contains *a lot* of inscriptions related to the descendants of the prophet Muḥammad’s uncle, al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (after whom the Abbasid caliphs are named). One by a certain Rišdayn ibn Kurayb merits close attention ...
Here's the text:
شهد رشدين بن كريب مولى
عبد الله بن عباس ان لا اله
الا الله وحده لا شريك له
Translation:
Rišdayn ibn Kurayb, the client of
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās, testifies that there is no god
but God alone: He has no partner.
شهد رشدين بن كريب مولى
عبد الله بن عباس ان لا اله
الا الله وحده لا شريك له
Translation:
Rišdayn ibn Kurayb, the client of
ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās, testifies that there is no god
but God alone: He has no partner.
This is a simple inscription but it attests to two VERY famous people: Ibn ʿAbbās, the paternal cousin of the Prophet (called ℎ̣𝑖𝑏𝑟 𝑎𝑙-𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎ℎ, “the scholar of the community”) and the man’s father, “Abū Rišdayn” Kurayb ibn Abī Muslim (d. 98/716+, Medina).
Rišdayn’s father, Kurayb, was a freedman (𝑚𝑎𝑤𝑙𝑎̄) of Ibn ʿAbbās and bound to the Hāshim clan by clientage; he is remembered as a well-known source of traditions from the Companions of the Prophet who is cited by the likes of ʿAmr ibn Dīnār and Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī.
Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 1176) compiled a wonderful biography of Kurayb which mentions his son; he included Kurayb in his history of Damascus because Kurayb delivered a message to the caliph Muʿāwiyah in Syria from Umm al-Faḍl bint al-Ḥārith. Read it here:
google.com/books/edition/…
google.com/books/edition/…
Kurayb is also exceptional because of the role that he reputedly played in the preservation and dissemination of the writings of his master, Ibn ʿAbbās. Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, the Medinan scholar famous for his 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑎̄𝑏 𝑎𝑙-𝑀𝑎𝑔̇𝑎̄𝑧𝑖̄ on the life of the prophet, claims that...
"Kurayb deposited with us a camel-load of the writings of Ibn ʿAbbās. Whenever ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās [d. 117/735] desired what was written down, he wrote to him: Send me the scroll on 𝑥 topic, and he would make a copy and send one of them."
