Ibn Babawayh (al-Shaykh al-Saduq)

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Babawayh al-Qummi, known by the honorific al-Shaykh al-Saduq ("the truthful shaykh"), was one of the most influential traditionists (muhaddith, a collector and transmitter of reports) and jurists of Twelver Shia Islam. He was born in Qom, then a leading center of Shia learning, the son of Ali ibn Babawayh, himself the foremost scholar of the city. His exact birth year is not recorded and the sources disagree: one strand places it after 305 AH (917-18 CE, often estimated 306 AH), while other references give c. 311 AH (923 CE). He was born before his father's death in 329 AH. Twelver tradition, drawing on al-Saduq's own account in his Kamal al-din, holds that his father obtained a son through the prayer of the Twelfth Imam, al-Mahdi, conveyed via the Imam's deputy al-Husayn ibn Ruh al-Nawbakhti; this is a devotional report preserved within the tradition, not an externally attested fact.

He traveled widely in search of hadith. The biographical tradition records a journey to Rayy as early as Rajab 339 AH (c. 950 CE), visits to Baghdad around 352 and 355 AH (c. 963-966 CE), and journeys through Khurasan and Transoxiana — Nishapur, Balkh, Bukhara, Samarqand, and other towns (Farghana, Hamadan) — as well as Kufa and a hajj to the Hijaz. In Rayy he was honored by the Buyid amir Rukn al-Dawla (d. 366 AH / 976 CE), with whom he is reported to have held discussions, and Rayy became his final home, where he died in 381 AH (991 CE); his shrine there still stands. His best-known work, Man la yahduruhu al-faqih ("For Him Who Has No Jurist at Hand"), became one of the Four Books on which Twelver law and hadith rest. Among his pupils was al-Shaykh al-Mufid, who carried his learning into a more systematic theology.