Question:
Assalamu Alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuhu
This is a question for Shaykh GF Haddad in regards to a reply he gave to someone awhile back who asked about the reliability of Sayf ibn Umar Al Tamimi’s historical narrations. The Shaykh argued that Sayf is considered to be immensely reliable when it comes to historical narrations, but not so reliable when it comes to hadiths. Now my question is that, if we accept that Sayf himself was reliable in historical narrations, does that mean that we can accept every single historical narration of his as being reliable? Or we do still have to analyze the narrators that exist in his chains of narration? In other words, is the statement “Sayf ibn Umar Al Tamimi was a reliable historian” an implication that every historical narration of his is supposed to be taken as reliable?
Fi Amaanillah
Answer:
`Alaykum salam,
The answer is no, it is just a caution not to throw out the window everything he transmits. See for rxample how much of what he transmits is confirmed by Ibn Abi Shayba and Ibn Hibban in their Sira works, or cited approvingly by Ibn Sayyid al-Nas or Dhahabi or Mughultay in their Siras or Ibn Hajar in the Isaba. There is a modern strictist school in Sira writing and there is a laxist school. I believe the great Sira scholars possessed the flair and expertise to always tread a middle path between the two so as not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
