caliphate to spare himself further torture, he answered: "People follow us in acting. If we consent, how will we be able to explain this to them?" Hisham's successor Umar II (a maternal grandson of Umar), who governed Medina in 706-712, on the other hand consulted Sa'id in all of his executive decisions. Hadith Those who received Islamic rulings and Traditions from Sa'id include Umar II, Qatadah, al-Zuhri and Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Ansari, among others. Sa'id appears mainly to have argued from his own reasoning, by analogy, by the examples of Umar and Muhammad and by the Qur'an. He did not treat the hadith as a science with isnads (chains of transmission) in the way of those after him (especially al-Zuhri). As a result many of his rulings have been equipped with spurious isnads and converted into hadiths. It is similar with tafsir (Qur'anic interpretation): Sa'id argued his points from the Qur'an, but refused to expound on verses for their own context or meaning. To the extent a "tafsir of Ibn al-Musayyib" ever existed it was compiled by his students based on his rulings. The leading jurisprudents Malik ibn Anas and al-Shafi'i took as unquestionably authentic the hadiths that Sa'id narrated from Umar or Muhammad as authentic, without mentioning from whom he received them. In their view, Sa'id was of the same rank as the sahaba in knowledge and narration of hadiths. See also Salaf References External links Biodata at MuslimScholars.info Sa'id 642 births 715 deaths 7th-century Muslim scholars of Islam 7th-century jurists 7th-century Arabs 8th-century Arabs 8th-century jurists Banu Makhzum Hadith scholars Tabi‘un hadith narrators