The Hadith Transmitters and Their Narrations in Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulamī's Tabakāt al-Sūfiyya

The two main sources of the Islamic tradition of thought are accepted as the Qur'an and the Sunnah by all schools of thought. However, different interpretations of both the Qur'an and the Sunnah have led to the formation of different schools of thought such as Ahl al-Hadith, Ahl al-Rayy, Mu'tazilites, Shia and Sufism. In Tabakāt al-sūfiyya, where the biographies of the first zāhids representing Sufi thought are narrated, 58 out of 105 Sufis are ascribed hadiths, which is an example of zāhids' attempts to prove their views with Islamic references. Along with this, the number of ascetics who were both distinguished by their ascetic life and engaged in the science of hadith is quite high. In order to evaluate the relationship between Sufis and the science of hadith, this study examines the lives, scholarly identities, and hadith-making aspects of 58 ascetics to whom hadith is ascribed in Tabakāt al-sūfiyya, and analyzes the reliability of the narration values of the hadiths mentioned in the work, thus making certain evaluations on the relationship between Sufism and hadith.