Tabakaları, Beldeleri ve Münekkitleri Açısından Meçhul Râviler

Abstract

In this article, the narrators, who were described as being unknown by at least only one critic in the first three centuries of the hijra, were considered in terms of period, region, and the relation between the narrator and the critic. The aim is to define the method used by the critics while determining the obscurity of such narrators and to interprete the period and regions in which the unknown narrators were centered in the system in terms of rijal criticism. It is deemed that this study, which is going to be based on the first three centuries of rijāl evaluation, will contribute to the readings related to the history of rijāl criticism and enable some inferences about the history of hadith. The article is limited to unknown narrators in Ibn Abī Hātim's (d. 327/ 938) work named al-Jarh wa al-taʻdīl, which is regarded as the most extensive book of rijāl that was compiled in the in the fourth century of the hijra and reached our day. Besides their regions and the period they lived in, the determined group of the narrators was examined in terms of the number of critics who labeled them as obscure and their being contemporary. Based on this, some comments were made by considering the history of development of the science of rijāl criticism. In this context, it has been determined in which regions the unknown narrators were common in the first three centuries of the hijra and its possible reasons, and whether the unknown narrators were evaluated in their own period or after their death. Thus, instead of the descriptive narratives put forward by the scholars of the later period, this article deals with the issue within the scope of the rijāl criticism practice in the first three centuries-which is also the main point of this disciplinewhile examining the unknown narrators of the first three centuries of the hijra from various aspects.