The Madīnan School: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib
He is Abū Muḥammad Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib ibn Ḥazn al-Qurashī al-Makhzūmī (raḥimahullāh), known as Sayyid at-Tābiʿīn and one of the Seven Fuqahāʾ of Madīnah. Born in Madīnah in the 15th year of Hijrah, two years into the Khilāfah of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. He grew up in the city while many of the senior Companions were still alive and never left it except for Ḥajj, ʿUmrah, or jihād.
He sought knowledge with exceptional dedication, saying that he would travel nights and days in pursuit of a single ḥadīth. He heard from ʿUmar while the latter was still delivering sermons, and from ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Zayd ibn Thābit, Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, ʿĀʾishah, Umm Salamah, and many other Companions. His closest connection was with Abū Hurayrah, whose daughter he married; he became the most knowledgeable of people regarding Abū Hurayrah’s ḥadīth. He was especially renowned as the most precise preserver of the judgments and fatāwā of ʿUmar, to the point that he was called Rāwiyatu ʿUmar. He himself said: “No one is more knowledgeable of a judgment issued by the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ, or by Abū Bakr, or by ʿUmar, than I am.”
His major students included the Imām Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn Shihāb az-Zuhrī (who sat with him for seven years and thought no one else possessed his level of knowledge), Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī, Qatādah Ibn Da’āmah, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and many others who carried the fiqh of Madīnah forward.
He issued fatāwā while Companions were still alive. Ibn ʿUmar said of him: “He is, by Allāh, one of the muftīs.” ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī declared: “I do not know among the Tābiʿīn anyone of wider knowledge than him; when Saʿīd says ‘the Sunnah has preceded,’ that is sufficient for you. He is, in my view, the most eminent of the Tābiʿīn.” Imām Aḥmad said he was the best of the Tābiʿīn. Az-Zuhrī and Mak’ḥūl, when asked who was the most knowledgeable they had met, both answered: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib.
He was known for his intense zuhd, warāʿ, and steadfastness. He traded in oil and refused the stipends of the rulers. He never missed the congregational prayer for decades; it is reported that for forty years the adhān was not called except that he was already in the mosque, and that he performed the Fajr prayer with the wuḍūʾ of ʿIshāʾ for fifty years.
He faced trials under the Banū Umayyah during their reign as Khulafā for refusing unconditional bayʿah and for declining to marry his daughter to the son of the Khalīfah, preferring a poor but righteous student. He left behind him a comprehensive impact and contribution to our body of ‘ilm while his fatāwā and transmissions form a cornerstone of the Madīnan school.
He died in Madīnah in the year 94 AH (the year known as “the Year of the Fuqahāʾ” because of the many scholars who passed away in it) at approximately seventy-five years of age, during the Khilāfah of al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and was buried in al-Baqīʿ.
Rahimahullāh fī al-Khālidīn, āmīn
(Named by an-Nasāʾī at the head of the Tābiʿīn among the fuqahāʾ of Madīnah.)
