near the place where Kufa was later built. The exact date of Sulaym's birth is not known. He belonged to the Banu Hilal branch of the Banu 'Amir tribe. Immigration to Medina It is documented that Sulaym moved to Medina during the caliphate of Umar. He is among the people who never met Muhammad. While in Medina, Sulaym became very attached to Ali ibn Abi Talib. His attachment led him to become a partisan of Ali, along with Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, Salman al-Muhammadi, Miqdad ibn Aswad, and Ammar ibn Yasir. Ibn al-Nadim stated that Sulaym ibn Qays was among the devout companions of Ali in his book about the early Muslim scholars and hadith contributors. Final days In 694, Sulaym fled to Persia with his writings because al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the Umayyad general and persecutor of the Alids, became the governor of Kufa; Al-Hajjaj sought to arrest and execute Sulaym. In Persia, Sulaym stayed in Nobandegan. There he found a fifteen-year-old boy, by the name of Aban ibn Abi-Ayyash. He became rather fond of him and started to educate him about the teaching of the Ahl al-Bayt. Through Sulaym, Aban became a Shi'a. Aban offered him shelter in recognition of him being a companion of Ali. When Sulaym was inspired about his death, he told Aban, O the son of my brother, I am about to leave this world, as Prophet has informed me so. Eventually, Sulaym entrusted all of his writings that he had compiled to Aban. Aban had made a solemn oath not to talk of any of the writings during Sulaym's lifetime and that after his death he would give the book only to trustworthy Shi'a of Ali. He died before al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, who died in 714 CE (95 AH). Writings A book was falsely attributed to him, which became known as the Kitab Sulaym ibn Qays (The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays). It is a collection of traditions, teachings, and eye witness accounts of historical events. Kitab Sulaym belongs to earliest known hadith collections, having been composed in the second century after the death of Muhammad. The precise dating of this work is not clear. The modern scholar Hossein Modarressi dates the original core of this work to the final years of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik's reign (), which would make it one of the oldest Islamic books that are still extant. However, the fact