Ibn Hibban al-Busti

Abu Hatim Muhammad ibn Hibban al-Busti (c. 270-354 AH / 884-965 CE) was one of the great hadith scholars of the eastern Islamic world. He was born in Bust, a town in Sijistan (today southern Afghanistan), from which he takes the name al-Busti. A jurist of the Shafi'i school (one of Sunni Islam's four main legal traditions), he was above all a master of hadith — the reports of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad — and of rijal, the discipline that weighs each transmitter's reliability to grade a report as sound or weak.

Like many scholars of his age, Ibn Hibban traveled widely in search of hadith, gathering from teachers across Khurasan, Transoxania, Iraq, the Hijaz and Egypt; among them were the hadith critic al-Nasa'i and, at Nishapur, Ibn Khuzayma. He later served as a judge (qadi) in Samarqand, where he taught and, according to the historian Ibn Asakir, composed his major works. In 340/951 he returned to Bust and founded a school that paid its students stipends; he died there in 354/965.

His most influential works are his Sahih (formally al-Taqasim wa'l-Anwa'), a large arrangement of hadith he judged authentic, and two foundational reference works on transmitters: al-Thiqat ("the trustworthy") and al-Majruhin ("the impugned"). Later biographers report that Hanbali scholars in his homeland accused him of heresy over his teaching that God has no "limit" and his definition of prophecy; that episode is a traditional account reflecting later intra-Sunni disputes, not a settled fact.