Ilm ar-Rijal

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Part of a series on the Science of hadith
Terminology
History of Hadith — ... Ilm ar-Rijal — ... Narrators of hadith — ...
Terminology
Isnad — chain of narrators Matn — hadith text Riwayah — narration
technical terms
Musnad — supported Mursal — hurried Ahaad — single narrator Munqati — broken muttasil — uninterrupted isnad Gharib — strange/rare Shadhdh — irregular Munkar — denounced/rejected Mudraj — interpolated Da'if jiddan — very weak Isra'iliyat
Regarding authenticity
Mutawatir — agreed upon Sahih — authentic Hasan — fair Da'if — weak Mawdo — fabricated Mudtarib — shaky
Other
Sharh — comments Hadith collection This box: view • talk • edit</div>

Ilm ar-Rijal (Arabic) is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to the sira, the life of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad.

Since the sira is part of the sunnah, or moral example that Muslims are supposed to follow, and validating the sayings of Muhammad is a major study ("isnad"), accurate biography has always been of great interest to Muslims.

Another important influence of biography on Islam is in the recording of the lives of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs (a Sunni term), who expanded Islamic dominance rapidly:

Abu Bakr Siddiq
Umar al-Khattab
[[Othman bin Affan]
Ali

Ali, the last of these, is the only one considered legitimate in Shia Islam, which considers Muhammad's family to play a special holy role.

With this extremely contentious succession, and confusion about the intentions of Muhammad regarding who should rule Madina and make binding judgements in Islam, biography of these figures became a very major concern, and political bias had to be sorted out from biographical fact. During the 30 years from the death of Muhammad to the death of Ali, Islam had spread from Libya to Afghanistan, from Armenia to Sind and Gujarat, and Muslim armies had entered Spain and China. The risk of factional splintering, variant heresies regarding the life of Muhammad, and the gains that local leaders could gain by promoting such division grew to extremes.

Muslim biographers, accordingly, became expert at sorting out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc., and were renowned throughout the known world for their honesty in recording history - many in fact considered acknowledging faults in leaders to be a matter of religious duty, comparing their various failings to the sira or life of Muhammad. Modern practices of scientific citation and historical method owe a great deal to the rigor the isnad tradition of early Muslims.