Al-Nasa'i

Al-Nasāʾī (215 – 303 AH; 830 – 915 CE), full name Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad ibn Shuʿayb ibn ʿAlī ibn Sinān ibn Baḥr ibn Dīnar al-Khurasānī al-Nasāʾī (), was a noted collector of hadith (sayings of Muhammad), from the city of Nasa (early Khorasan and present day Turkmenistan), and the author of "As-Sunan", one of the six canonical hadith collections recognized by Sunni Muslims. From his "As-Sunan al-Kubra (The Large Sunan)" he wrote an abridged version, "Al-Mujtaba" or Sunan al-Sughra (The Concise Sunan). Of the fifteen books he is known to have written, six treat the science of hadīth.

== Biography == Of Persian origin, Al-Nasa'i himself states he was born in the year 830 (215 h.) - although some say it was in 829 or 869 (214 or 255 h.) - in the city of Nasa in present-day Turkmenistan - part of Khorasan, a region in Western Asia and Central Asia known for its many centres of Islamic learning. There he attended the gatherings and circles of knowledge, known as "halaqat". His facination with knowledge began at an early age. In the year 230 AH, at about 15 years old, he began his travels with his first journey to Qutaibah b. Saʿīd where he stayed in the city of Baghlan for a year and two months. He covered the whole Arabian Peninsula seeking knowledge from scholars in Iraq, Kufa, the Hijaz, Syria and Egypt, where he eventually settled and where scholars would travel to to visit him. He was an unparalleled scholar of his time. A habit of his was to fast every other day, as this was a habit of Dawud.