al-Darimi

Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Darimi (181-255 AH / 797-869 CE) was a hadith scholar (a transmitter and critic of reports about the Prophet Muhammad) based in Samarqand, in Transoxiana. His byname "al-Darimi" is traditionally traced to Banu Darim, a clan of the Arab tribe of Tamim; a minority view links it instead to a place-name. He is reported to have given his own birth date as the year the famous scholar Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak died, 181 AH.

Like other muhaddithun (hadith specialists) of his age, al-Darimi is said to have travelled widely to collect reports — through the Hejaz, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and across Khurasan — studying with teachers such as Yazid ibn Harun. He is best known for the Sunan al-Darimi (also called his Musnad), a hadith collection arranged by legal topic. Major compilers are reported to have transmitted from him, among them Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi; the common claim that al-Bukhari was his student is disputed in the biographical literature.

Where exactly the Sunan ranks is a matter of opinion, not fact: some scholars place it among the canonical Six Books (often as a candidate for the sixth or "seventh"), while it is uniformly counted among the wider Nine Books. He died in 255 AH; the sources agree on the date but differ on the place, with Marw (Merv) and Samarqand both reported. Later biographers such as al-Dhahabi praise him as a hafiz of exceptional memory and piety.