EBN ŠĀḎĀN

 

EBN ŠĀḎĀN, family name of two Imami traditionists.

1. Abu’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Ḥasan (or Ḥosayn) Fāmī Qomī, Imami scholar of the 4th/10th century. Nothing is known about his life. According to Abu’l-Ḥasan b. Bābawayh, author of Taʾrīḵ al-Ray, he transmitted from Moḥammad b. Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. Walīd (d. 343/954-55), a leading Imami traditionist of Qom, and from Moḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Tammām Dehqān. He composed two books, Zād al-mosāfer and Amālī, which his son Abu’l-Ḥasan transmitted to Najāšī. Quotations from the former are contained in Ebn Ṭāwūs’s al-Mowāsaʿa wa’l-możāyaqa.

2. Abu’l-Ḥasan Moḥammad, the son of the above. His mother was a niece of the prominent Imami scholar Ebn Qūlawayh. He was learned in both Shiʿite and Sunni Hadith and transmitted from Ebn Qūlawayh, Ebn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq, and Abū Moḥammad Hārūn Tallaʿokbarī. The Sunni traditionist Ḏahabī (III, pp. 466 ff.) accuses him of gross forgery of Hadith. In his Manāqeb Amīr-al-Moʾmenīn, he states that he heard Hadith in Kūfa in 374/984-85. In 412/1021-22 he was in Mecca, where Karājekī heard his Īżāḥ dafāʾen al-nawāṣeb from him in the Ḥaram mosque. Karājekī quotes the latter in several books and describes it as a collection of Sunni Hadith mentioning the virtues of the descendants of the Prophet and implying the divine appointment (naṣsá) of the Twelve Imams. Some of Karājekī’s statements suggest that Īżāḥ dafāʾen al-nawāṣeb is identical with Abu’l-Ḥasan’s (al-Meʾat al-manqeba men) Manāqeb Amīr-al-Moʾmenīn (ed. M.-B. Abṭaḥī, Qom, 1407/1987), which is extant in manuscript (ʿAwwād, pp. 66 f.; Dānešpažūh, pp. 1129 f., who claims that the text was printed in Najaf in 1349/1930; Monzawī, p. 17). Such an identity of the two works has repeatedly been assumed. It is not clear, however, if this assumption is based on a thorough comparison of Karājekī’s quotations with the extant book. On the other hand, the Imami scholar Mīrzā Yaḥyā Eṣfahānī (d. 1325/1907), who claimed to have a copy of Īżāḥ, stated that it dealt with the blemishes (maṯāleb) of the first three caliphs and suggested that Karājekī was mistaken in identifying the two works (al-Ḏòarīʿa II, p. 494, XIX pp. 2-3). The matter needs further investigation. A Bostān al-kerām by Abu’l-Ḥasan Ebn Šāḏān is quoted by ʿEmād-al-Dīn Ṭūsī in his Ṯāqeb al-manāqeb (written in 560/1165) and by some later authors. It seems to have been a voluminous work, since ʿEmād-al-Dīn refers to the eighty-eighth part of it (al-Ḏarīʿa II p. 107). Ebn Šahrāšūb (p. 104) mentions a Radd al-šams ʿalā Amīr-al-Moʾmenīn by him. He was still alive and transmitting Hadith in Ramażān 424/August 1033 (see Dānešpažūh, III, p. 1074).

 

Bibliography: (For cited works not given in detail, see “Short References.”)

Moḥammad b. Ḥasan al-ʿĀmelī, Amal al-āmel fī ʿolamaʾ Jabal ʿĀmel, ed. A. Ḥosaynī, Baghdad, 1385/1956, II, pp. 18, 24 f.

G. ʿAwwād, “al-Maḵṭūṭāt al-ʿarabīya fī ḵezānat kotob al-Matḥaf al-ʿErāqī be-Baḡdād,” Sūmar 8, 1957.

Moḥammad b. Aḥmad Ḏahabī, Mīzān al-eʿtedāl, ed. ʿA. M. Bejāwī, Cairo, 1382/1963.

M.-T. Dānešpažūh, Fehrest-e ketāb-ḵāna-ye...Meškāt, Tehran, 1330-38 Š./1952-59, III/2, pp. 1129 f.

Ebn Ḥajar ʿAsqalānī, Lesān al-mīzān, Hyderabad, 1329-33/1911-13, I, p. 234.

Ebn Šahrāšūb, Maʿālem al-ʿolamāʾ, ed. ʿA. Eqbāl, Tehran, 1313 Š./1934, p. 104.

Moḥammad-Bāqer Ḵᵛānsārī, Rawżāt al-jannāt, ed. A. Esmāʿīlīān, Qom, 1390-92/1970-72, VI, pp. 179 f.

Aʿyān al-šīʿa IX, p. 146; XLIII pp. 260 f.

E. Kohlberg, A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work. Ibn Ṭāwūs and his Library, Leiden, 1992, pp. 37, 212, 269-70, 386.

A. Monzawī, Fehrest-e ketāb-ḵāna-ye Majles-e šūrā-ye mellī XII, Tehran, 1346 Š./1967, p. 17.

Najāšī, Rejāl, Tehran, n.d., p. 66.

A. Pākatčī, “Ebn-e Šāḏān” in DMBE IV, pp. 52-55.

(Wilferd Madelung)

Originally Published: December 15, 1997

Last Updated: December 6, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. VIII, Fasc. 1, p. 51