Life
Ibn Sa'd has an account purporting to be in al-Zuhri's own words describing how he left his home in Madinah, went to Damascus to seek his fortune and was recruited into the administration of the Caliph Abd al-Malik. The Caliph observed that his father had supported Ibn al-Zubayr against him in the recent civil war. But the Caliph's policy toward the Zubayrites was reconciliation and his father's politics were not held against him.
No connected account of al-Zuhris life after that has come down to us. There is no evidence he ever again lived in Madinah. Abd al-Malik died in AH 86 (705 CE) and al-Zuhri continued to serve the Umayyid court the rest of his life. He died in AH 124 (741–2 CE).
In the initial conversation with Abd al-Malik the names of earlier Islamic scholars whom al-Zuhri had come in contact with in Madinah are mentioned: 'Abdullah ibn Tha'laba al-'Adawi (though he is disparaged), Said ibn al-Musayyib, Urwah ibn Zubayr, 'Ubaydullah ibn 'Abdullah ibn 'Utba, Abu Bakr ibn 'Abdul-Rahman ibn al-Harith, Kharija ibn Zayd ibn Thabit and 'Abdul-Rahman ibn Yazid ibn Jariya. There are many stories about the strength of al-Zuhri's learning and all the scholar's in the west who were alive when he died quoted from him in their own works.
Some sources, but not Ibn Sa'd, say that he had a son named Ahmad ibn Abu Bakr al-Zuhri.
Read more about this topic: Ibn Shihab Al-Zuhri
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