Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili

Abu Ya'la al-Mawsili (full name: Ahmad ibn Ali ibn al-Muthanna al-Tamimi al-Mawsili) was a Sunni traditionist — a collector and transmitter of hadith, the reports of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Biographical sources place his birth in 210 AH (825/826 CE) in Mosul, in what is now northern Iraq, and his death there in 307 AH (919 CE), having lived nearly a century.

According to the later biographical tradition (tarajim), as a young man he was sent to study in the major centres of learning, where he heard hadith from leading masters of the previous generation. The teachers named for him — among them Yahya ibn Ma'in, Ali ibn al-Madini, and Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shayba — were associated chiefly with Baghdad, while others, such as the historian Khalifa ibn Khayyat, taught in Basra; this points to study-travel (rihla) southward, though the sources do not lay out a precise itinerary.

His enduring work is the Musnad Abi Ya'la, a large hadith collection arranged by the Companion who first narrated each report. It survives in two recensions, a larger and a smaller, and is treated by later scholars as a useful supplement to the better-known Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Among those who transmitted from him were Ibn Hibban, al-Tabarani, and Ibn Adi.

Later critics regarded him highly: al-Daraqutni called him "trustworthy and reliable" (thiqa ma'mun), and al-Dhahabi titled him "the hadith master of Mosul" (muhaddith al-Mawsil), though, as with most large collections, scholars note that individual reports within the Musnad vary in strength.