reign of two and half years, and his successor does not seem to have been interested in the matter. Even if a collection had been made in pursuance of these orders, which is very doubtful, no copy has reached us.20 But the work was taken up independently of government patronage in the next century, which marks the commencement of the fourth stage in the collection of Ḥadīth.

Collection of Ḥadīth: Fourth Stage

Before the middle of the second century, Ḥadīth started to assume a more permanent shape, and written collections began to see the light of day. Hundreds of the students were engaged in the work of learning Ḥadīth in the various centres, but with every new teacher and student the work of preserving the name of the transmitter along with the text was becoming more difficult. Written collections had thus become indispensable. The first known work on the subject is that of Imām ‘Abd al-Mālik ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn Juraij, commonly known as Ibn Juraij. According to some, however, Sa‘īd ibn Abī ‘Arūba or Rabī‘ ibn Ṣuhaib has precedence in this matter. All these authors died about the middle of the second century. Ibn Juraij lived at Makkah, while others who wrote books on Ḥadīth in the second century are Imām Mālik ibn Anas and Sufyān ibn ‘Uyaina in Madīnah, ‘Abd Allāh ibn Wahb in Egypt, Ma‘mar and ‘Abd al-Razzāq in Yaman, Sufyān Thaurī and Muḥammad ibn Fudzail in Kūfa, Hammād ibn Salmah and Rauḥ ibn ‘Ubāda in Baṣra, Ḥushaim ibn Wāsiṭ and ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mubārak in Khurāsān, by far the most important of the collections of these authors is the Muwaṭṭā of Imām Mālik. All these books, however, were far from being exhaustive. In the first place, the object of their compilation was simply the collection of such reports as touched on the daily life of the Muslims. Reports relating to a large number of topics, such as faith, knowledge, the life of the Holy Prophet, wars, comments on the Holy Qur’ān, were outside their scope. And secondly, every author collected only such reports as were taught at the centre where he worked. Even the Muwaṭṭā contains only the ḥadīth which came through the people of Ḥijāz. All these works were, therefore, incomplete, but they were a great advance on oral transmission in the work of collecting Ḥadīth.