Yahya al-Qattan

Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan (; 120 AH/738 CE – 198 AH/813 CE) was a Basran hadith scholar of the tabi' al-tabi'in who is considered a progenitor of Sunni hadith criticism.

Biography Yahya ibn Sa'id was born in Basra in 120 AH/738 CE to descendants of freed slaves from Banu Tamim; his work in the cotton trade earned him the nisba al-Qattan. He travelled to Medina, Baghdad and Kufa in pursuit of hadith. and Ibn Jurayj, a substantial proportion of whose extant biographical information has been transmitted through al-Qattan. His own students included Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ali ibn al-Madini, Yahya ibn Ma'in, and Ishaq ibn Rahwayh. and identified tadlīs performed by hadith narrators regardless of their stature, including his teacher and celebrated jurist Sufyan al-Thawri. He was known for his strict standards in biographical evaluation. He deemed several ascetics and Sufis as unreliable narrators and was sceptical of hadith transmitted through them. A famous statement that can be plausibly attributed to Ibn Sa'id through isnad-cum-matn analysis comments on how the pious (al-ṣāliḥīn) were most dishonest in matters of hadith, which has been adduced as evidence of hadith forgery among some early Muslims.