General · EdgepediaOctober 10, 20265 min read

Rabi' ibn Khuthaym

Rabi' ibn Khuthaym (الربيع بن خثيم بن عائذ أبو يزيد الثوري) was a Kufan ascetic and hadith narrator of the first generation of the tabi'un (the generation after the Prophet's Companions), counted among the eight great ascetics (zuhhad thumaniya) and graded trustworthy (thiqa) by Sunni hadith critics¹. His kunya was Abu Yazid, and al-Dhahabi's Tarikh al-Islam calls him Abu Yazid al-Thawri al-Kufi, "of the leaders of the tabi'un and their virtuous men" and "among the discerning men of rijal"². The year of his death is disputed: reported dates include dates from 61 AH to 65 AH, with 63 AH (683 CE) judged closest to the truth by the Encyclopaedia of the Islamic World because he was alive after Karbala¹.

Key fact	Detail
Identity	Al-Rabi' ibn Khuthaym ibn 'A'idh ibn Abdullah ibn Mawhiba ibn Munqid, Abu Yazid al-Thawri al-Kufi³
Status	Mukhadram (lived in both the Jahiliyya and Islam) but not counted as a Companion; first-generation tabi'i¹
Narrator grade	Thiqa: al-'Ajli, "tabi'i thiqa, and he was among the best"; Yahya ibn Ma'in reliable; Ibn Hibban listed him in al-Thiqat⁴^•¹
Corpus	Few hadiths (qalil al-riwaya), several mursal reports from the Prophet; present in the Six Books except Abu Dawud's Sunan¹^•⁵
Death year	63 AH per hadith.dev (after Husayn's killing); Ibn Qani'a dated it 61 AH; Dhahabi wrote "before the year five [and sixty]"⁴^•²
Best-known trait	Zuhd: he dug a grave-like pit in his house and slept in it when his heart felt hardened¹

Life in Kufa

Rabi' belonged to the tribe of Thawr ibn Abdmanat, which is the source of his nisba al-Thawri, and he lived in Kufa¹. Some sources write his father's name as Khaytham, though Khuthaym is considered the correct form¹. He joined the circle of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, the leading Kufan authority among the Companions, and is described as a student of Ibn Mas'ud in exegesis, Qur'anic recitation, hadith, and the literary sciences¹^•⁵.

Siffin and the frontier. The sources transmit that at the battle of Siffin (37 AH / 657 CE) he and about 400 like-minded men declined to fight, asking Ali to send them to a frontier post instead; they were sent to Rayy and Qazvin, where a mosque named after him existed¹. A Shi'i-oriented account records the disagreement over this episode: some say he fought with Ali at Siffin, but the more likely view (al-arjah) in that account is that he did not participate, doubting the legality of the fighting and asking the Imam's leave⁶.

Late in life he was paralyzed and went to the mosque with help¹.

Hadith transmission

Rabi' is counted among the narrators of few hadiths (qalil al-riwaya), and he transmitted several reports from the Prophet in mursal form, that is, without naming a Companion link¹. Two of his better-known reports concern man and death and the merit of reciting "Qul huwa Allahu ahad" (Surat al-Ikhlas), cited from Ahmad ibn Hanbal's Musnad (2/33), Ibn Majah (2/1414), and Abu Nu'aym (2/137-138)¹.

His teachers among the Companions and senior figures included Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Layla, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, Abdullah ibn Abbas, and a woman of the Ansar¹. His transmitters include his son Abdullah, Ibrahim al-Nakha'i, Amir al-Sha'bi, Mundhir al-Thawri, Hilal ibn Yasaf, Amr ibn Maymun, and Bakr ibn Ma'iz¹; the Tahdhib al-Kamal entry adds Nusayr ibn Dhu'luq and Abu Burda ibn Abi Musa al-Ash'ari³.

Presence in the collections. His reports are found in the Six Books of hadith except Abu Dawud's Sunan⁵. The grading notation in the digital Tahdhib al-Kamal entry (خ م قد ت س ق) encodes that his material appears in the canonical collections including Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, and the musnads³. Sahih al-Bukhari cites a transmission path in which Hilal ibn Yasaf and Amr ibn Maymun narrate from Rabi' ibn Khuthaym, carrying words of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, via Maysara⁷.

Assessment by hadith critics

Sunni critics grade him thiqa. Al-'Ajli said "tabi'i thiqa, and he was among the best", and Ahmad ibn Hanbal transmitted his material in al-Zuhd⁴. Yahya ibn Ma'in considered him reliable, Ibn Hibban listed him in al-Thiqat (4/224), and al-Sha'bi counted him among the "mines of truthfulness"; he was also said to distinguish sahih from saqim hadith¹. The sunnah.com narrator index (narrator 1405) records him as "Trustworthy, Devout" (ثقة عابد), a mukhadram of the second tabaqa⁸.

The documented limitation on his narrations is not an explicit jarh verdict but his method: he is a mursal transmitter (أرسل) who narrates from the Prophet without a named Companion link, and he transmitted few hadiths¹^•⁹.

Piety and Quranic recitation

His most prominent trait in the biographical sources is zuhd (ascetic detachment). In his house he dug a grave-like pit in which he slept whenever he felt his heart harden, and he was described as the most devout worshipper among the companions of Ibn Mas'ud; he counseled seclusion and silence¹.

The Siyar A'lam al-Nubala preserves his sayings, including "we eat our provisions and await our appointed deaths" and "everything not done for the sake of God perishes", and reports via al-A'mash from Mundhir al-Thawri that Rabi' took to feeding the afflicted¹⁰. The same work carries a dedicated biography citing chains through Abu Nu'aym, al-Tabarani, and Abdan ibn Ahmad, with his counsel on preferring the good of the hereafter over worldly matters¹¹.

References

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026