A brief biography of Abdur Rahmãn bin 'Amr Al 'Awzãee (d. 156 Hijri) (May Allah have mercy on him)

[Shehzad Sattar]

He was the scholar of Fiqh for the people of Shãm and the first to author books in that country. He was born during the end of the period of the Companions and was from the students of Az-Zuhree and Yahya bin Abi Kathēr. Both of them gave Al 'Awzãee a sahēfah (scripture) containing hadiths and they both permitted him to narrate to the people from these scriptures. Al 'Awzãee used to say,


"We act upon these narrations, but we don't narrate them".

This is because Al 'Awzãee didn't read these suhuf (scriptures) to them, thus it didn't please him to narrate from them.

Al 'Awzãee had written vast amounts of hadith and sunan in his youth. He wrote fourteen books from his shaykh, Yahya bin Abi Kathēr then they were burnt. He had a school of thought in Fiqh, just like the four schools of thought and he has followers in Shãm and Spain and then it became extinct.

ترجمة مختصرة لعبد الرحمن بن عمرو الأوزاعي رحمه الله تعالى (٨٨-١٥٦هـ) مأخوذ من كتاب 'تاريخ تدوين السنة وشبهات المستشرقين' ص ٨٧

(Translation by Ismaeel Beaumont for Markaz-us-Sunnah, Rabi Al Akhir, 1435)