Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilālī al-ʿĀmirī (, died before 714, was one of the Tabi‘un and a companion of Ali towards the end of the latter's life. Sulaym was also a loyal companion of Ali's sons Hasan and Husayn, the latter's son Ali Zayn al-'Abidin, and Muhammad al-Baqir. He is the purported author of an early Shi'ite hadith collection, the Kitab Sulaym ibn Qays ('The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays'), the attribution of which to Sulaym is generally considered false. Scholars also dispute whether he ever existed as a historical figure. Biography Historicity Much of the information about Sulaym comes from Shia Muslim tradition. According to the modern historian Moktar Djebli, "the very existence of this man, and of his work, should be regarded with caution". Hossein Modarressi calls it "obvious that such a person never existed and that the name is only a pen name". Other scholars, such as Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, have been more cautious in rejecting Sulaym ibn Qays' historicity, but do agree that the attribution of the extant Shi'i hadith collection to him is false. Ibn al-Nadim himself, as well as later biographers including al-Tusi, relied on the Alid writer Ali ibn Ahmad al-Aqiq (d. 911). The Sunni Shafi'i scholar Ibn Abi'l-Hadid, questioned Sulaym's existence, claiming "he had heard" certain Twelver Shi'a scholars assert that Sulaym was "pure invention of the imagination" and "his alleged book being nothing but the apocryphal work of a forger". The Twelver scholars Ahmad ibn Ubayda (d. 941) and Abu Abd Allah al-Ghadhanfari (d. 1020) based their denial of the existence of Sulaym's book on three factors: a segment in the book indicates there were thirteen imams instead of the traditionally held twelve; another segment states Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr condemned his dying father Abu Bakr despite Muhammad being a three-year-old child; and the book was allegedly solely transmitted to Aban ibn Abi Ayyash, despite the fact that the latter was only fourteen-years-old. However, the prominent Twelver scholar al-Hilli rejected theories about Sulaym's non-existence, though Djebli asserts al-Hilli's "arguments were too unconvincing to sweep away such doubts". Nonetheless, later Shi'a biographers produced al-Hilli's arguments verbatim, and Sulaym's book is considered by Shi'a scholars as among the oldest sources of Shi'a thought and superior to the much later four Sunni tradition, namely the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Musnad Ibn Ḥanbal and Muwaṭṭaʾ Imām Mālik. Traditional account Early life Sulaym ibn Qays was born