The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays

The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays (Arabic: كِتَاب سُلَيْم بن قَيْس, romanized: Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays) is the oldest known Shia hadith collection. It was attributed to Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilali (died 678), who purportedly entrusted it to Aban ibn Abi Ayyash.^[1]

Scholars consider the attribution of this work to Sulaym ibn Qays, who himself may have been a legendary figure, to be false.^[2] The earliest known reference to the book was in the Kitāb al-Ghayba by Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Nu'mani (tenth century).^{[3][better source needed]}

The precise dating of the work is not clear. Hossein Modarressi dates the original core of this work to the final years of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik's reign (r. 723–743), which would make it one of the oldest Islamic books that are still extant.^[4] However, it contains many later additions and alterations of unknown date, which may render it impossible to reconstruct the original text.^[5] Two individual passages which have been the subject of a case study have been dated to c. 762-780 and to the late 8th/early 9th century, respectively.^[6]

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Sources indicate that the book was well known, but not always held in high esteem. Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995) said that the book was among the well-known Shia books,^[7] and Mohammad-Baqer Majlesi mentioned the book and the author in his book, Al-Ghaibah.^{[citation needed]}

However, the scholars Ahmad ibn Ubayda (d. 941) and Abu Abd Allah al-Ghadhanfari (d. 1020) considered the book to be unreliable on the basis of three factors: a segment in the book indicates there were thirteen Imams instead of the traditionally held twelve; another segment states that Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr rebuked his dying father Abu Bakr despite Muhammad being a three-year-old child; and the book was purportedly transmitted by Aban ibn Abi Ayyash at a time when the latter was only fourteen years old.^[8]

Currently, several variant manuscripts of this book exist, and it has been suggested that content was added to it and altered in it over time.^[9]

An analysis of a tafsir-related passage suggests that this passage dates to the early 9th century, or perhaps the late 8th century CE.^[10]

• Djebli, Moktar (1960–2007). "Sulaym b. Ḳays". In Bearman, P.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C.E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W.P. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_7152.
• Gleave, Robert M. (2015). "Early Shiite hermeneutics and the dating of Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 78 (1): 83–103. doi:10.1017/S0041977X15000038.
• Modaressi, Hossein (2003). Tradition and Survival: A Bibliographical Survey of Early Shīʿite Literature. Oxford: Oneworld. ISBN 1-85168-331-3.
• Khetia, Vinay (2013). Fatima as a motif of contention and suffering in Islamic sources (Thesis). Concordia University.

• English Translation of Kitab al-Sulaym ibn Qays
• Rovshan Abdullaoglu. "İlk Kitab (II nəşr)" (in Azerbaijani). qedimqala.az. Archived from the original on 2015-08-19. Retrieved 2015-08-09.