# Umar ibn Hafs (Abu Hafs al-Kufi)
**ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth** (عمر بن حفص بن غياث بن طلق النخعي أبو حفص الكوفي) was a tenth-generation Kufan hadith transmitter who narrated in both Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and who died in Kufa in Rabīʿ al-Awwal 222 AH during the caliphate of al-Muʿtaṣim.[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) • [2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) He was the son of the Kufan judge Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth, and al-Dhahabī says his authenticated narrations are from his father; a typical isnad continues from his father to the Kufan master al-Aʿmash.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name and kunya | ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth ibn Ṭalaq al-Nakhaʿī, kunya Abū Ḥafṣ, of Kufa[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) • [3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) |
| Death | Rabīʿ al-Awwal 222 AH in Kufa, under al-Muʿtaṣim; Ibn ʿAsākir and Kitāb al-Maṭīn add Sunday, the first of the month[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) |
| Age at death | About fifty-five, per al-Dhahabī[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) |
| Teachers | His father Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth (qadi of Kufa), Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs, Sulaymān al-Aʿmash, Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) • [3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) |
| Students | Al-Bukhārī himself, and Muslim's transmitter Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī[3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) |
| Corpus presence | Directly in the two Ṣaḥīḥs; the Sunan authors except Ibn Mājah narrate from him via an intermediary[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) |
| Grading | Abū Ḥātim: thiqah; Aḥmad: ṣadūq and thiqah; Ibn Ḥajar in al-Taqrib: "thiqah, rubbamā wa-him"; Tahrir al-Taqrib editors: "thiqah mutlaqan"[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) • [3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) |
## Identity and names
Al-Mizzī's entry (no. 4129 in the *Ikmāl Tahdhīb al-Kamāl*) gives the genealogy as ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth ibn Ṭalaq al-Nakhaʿī, with the kunya Abū Ḥafṣ and the nisba al-Kūfī.[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) Sunnah.com extends the line one generation further, to Ṭalaq ibn Muʿāwiya, and places him in the tenth generation of transmitters.[3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938)
**Disambiguation matters here.** His father Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth (117–194 AH) carried the kunya Abū ʿUmar and was qadi of the Sharqiyya of Baghdad under Hārūn al-Rashīd and then qadi of Kufa for thirteen years; the son's kunya Abū Ḥafṣ is the mirror image, and the two must not be conflated.[4](https://sunnah.com/narrator/2448) A further confusion risk comes from a different Kufan, Ḥafṣ ibn Sulaymān Abū ʿUmar al-Asadī (d. 180 AH), the famous Qurʾan reciter whose hadith narration was criticized by al-Dāraquṭnī and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn; a 2024 peer-reviewed study of that reciter notes he is universally recognized in recitation while his hadith was graded weak, a separate figure from ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth despite the overlapping Abū ʿUmar/Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kūfī labels.[5](https://katha.um.edu.my/index.php/JUD/article/view/57696)
## Life and teachers: a Kufan transmission line
Al-Dhahabī counts him among the verified scholars (al-ʿulamāʾ al-athbāt) and lists his sources as his father, the qadi of Kufa, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) The narrator databases add Sulaymān al-Aʿmash and Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid among twelve or more teachers, and record al-Bukhārī himself and Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī, Muslim's Kufan link, among his students.[3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) • [6](https://didnthesay.com/figures/narrators/umar-ibn-hafs-al-nakhai)
His position in the Kufan line runs almost entirely through his father. Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd called Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth the most reliable (athbat) of al-Aʿmash's companions, and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said all the father's hadith in Baghdad and Kufa was from memory, with three or four thousand hadith written down from his recital; ʿUmar is recorded among those who narrated from him.[4](https://sunnah.com/narrator/2448) ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī's early doubt about the father was settled when he saw ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ's copy of his father's written book of al-Aʿmash's narrations, a detail that shows the son also served as custodian of the family's written transmission.[4](https://sunnah.com/narrator/2448)
## Narrations and isnads
The two Shaykhs narrated from him directly in their Ṣaḥīḥs, while the authors of the Sunan, except Ibn Mājah, narrate from him through an unnamed man.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888)
The typical isnad formula is: "ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth narrated to us; he said: my father narrated to us, from al-Aʿmash."[6](https://didnthesay.com/figures/narrators/umar-ibn-hafs-al-nakhai) In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī his narrations include no. 346 (tayammum), 514, 538, 650, 657, 664 (the adhān and prayer times), 971 (the two Eids), 4227, 6230, and 6930.[7](https://sahibukhari.com/narrators/umar-bin-hafs-bin-ghyath) • [3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) A representative text is Bukhārī 538, from Abū Saʿīd: the Prophet said to pray Zuhr when it becomes a bit cooler, "as the severity of heat is from the raging of the Hell-fire."[7](https://sahibukhari.com/narrators/umar-bin-hafs-bin-ghyath)
## Critical assessment (jarh wa-taʿdil)
**The verdicts are broadly positive, with one caveat.** Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī declared him thiqah (reliable); Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal is recorded both as ṣadūq (truthful) and as thiqah; Ibn Ḥajar wrote in *al-Taqrib* "thiqah, rubbamā wa-him" (reliable, perhaps he erred or was confused); and the editors of *Tahrir al-Taqrib* conclude "thiqah mutlaqan" (reliable without qualification), noting that Ibn Ḥajar's caveat is taken from Ibn Ḥibbān's "rubbamā akhṭaʾa" (perhaps he erred) in *al-Thiqāt*.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) • [3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) Abū Dāwūd's testimony is a practical one: "I followed him to his house, but it did not happen that I heard from him," a statement of non-audition rather than criticism.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888)
Al-Dhahabī adds the structural observation that bears most on how his narrations should be weighed: no one authenticated hadith for him from anyone other than his father, and he narrated abundantly from his father and was devoted to him.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) In other words, his entire authenticated corpus rests on a single source, albeit a source graded thiqah and called the most reliable of al-Aʿmash's companions.[2](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888) • [4](https://sunnah.com/narrator/2448)
This grading sat inside a developed critical system. A study argues that early hadith criticism likely developed into a consistent system in the generation before al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820); it describes Muslim's criterion as accepting a transmitter's reports when they agree with those of other trustworthy transmitters.[8](https://brill.com/content/journals/10.1163/15685195-00244p01) Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d. 327/938) classified reliable transmitters into four tiers, from thiqah/mutqin/thabt down to ṣāliḥ al-ḥadīth, the framework in which Abū Ḥātim's tawthīq of ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ sits.[9](https://www.academia.edu/109427398/The_Ambiguity_of_Early_Hadith_Criticism_%CA%BFAl%C4%AB_b_al_Mad%C4%ABn%C4%AB_s_161_234_778_849_Evaluation_of_Hadith_Transmitters)
**Disagreement among critics was normal.** A study of ninth-century criticism finds that consensus rates among Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and al-Nasāʾī were only about 60 percent (83 to 88 percent excluding ambiguous cases), so grades of individual Kufan transmitters were often contested; ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ's mixed record of tawthīq with a precision caveat fits that pattern.[9](https://www.academia.edu/109427398/The_Ambiguity_of_Early_Hadith_Criticism_%CA%BFAl%C4%AB_b_al_Mad%C4%ABn%C4%AB_s_161_234_778_849_Evaluation_of_Hadith_Transmitters)
## By the numbers
Counts of his narrations differ by counting method, and the differences are instructive rather than contradictory. Al-Mizzī, citing al-Zahra, gives 84 hadiths that al-Bukhārī narrated from him and 14 from Muslim.[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) The Sahih al-Bukhari narrator index gives 87 hadiths in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.[7](https://sahibukhari.com/narrators/umar-bin-hafs-bin-ghyath) Across all collections, Sunnah.com lists 223 narrated reports attributed to him, while the Didn't He Say isnad database records 113.[3](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938) • [6](https://didnthesay.com/figures/narrators/umar-ibn-hafs-al-nakhai) The classical figures of 84 and 14 count distinct narrations in the two Ṣaḥīḥs specifically.[1](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729) His presence in Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Abū Dāwūd, or al-Nasāʾī individually is not quantified.
## References
1. [Al-Mizzī, Ikmāl Tahdhīb al-Kamāl, entry 4129: ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth al-Nakhaʿī Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kūfī (Shamela)](https://shamela.ws/book/89/2729)
2. [Al-Dhahabī, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, vol. 10, tarjama 223: ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth Abū Ḥafṣ (Shamela)](https://ftp.shamela.ws/book/10906/6888)
3. [ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ al-Nakhaʿī, Narrators Encyclopedia, Sunnah.com](https://sunnah.com/narrator/5938)
4. [Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth al-Nakhaʿī (father), Narrators Encyclopedia, Sunnah.com](https://sunnah.com/narrator/2448)
5. [Imam Hafs b. Sulayman Abu 'Umar al-Asadi: A Critical Comparative Analysis, Jurnal Usuluddin 52:2 (2024)](https://katha.um.edu.my/index.php/JUD/article/view/57696)
6. [ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ al-Nakhaʿī, Didn't He Say](https://didnthesay.com/figures/narrators/umar-ibn-hafs-al-nakhai)
7. [ʿUmar bin Hafs bin Ghyath, Narrator in Sahih al-Bukhari](https://sahibukhari.com/narrators/umar-bin-hafs-bin-ghyath)
8. [The Principles of Hadith Criticism in the Writings of al-Shafi'i and Muslim, Islamic Law and Society 24:4 (2017)](https://brill.com/content/journals/10.1163/15685195-00244p01)
9. [The Ambiguity of Early Hadith Criticism: ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī's Evaluation of Hadith Transmitters](https://www.academia.edu/109427398/The_Ambiguity_of_Early_Hadith_Criticism_%CA%BFAl%C4%AB_b_al_Mad%C4%ABn%C4%AB_s_161_234_778_849_Evaluation_of_Hadith_Transmitters)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Philosophy, religion, and mythology › Religion and spirituality › Religious biographies › Jewish, Islamic, and Dharmic religious leaders › Islamic religious leaders and scholars › Sunni imams and classical Islamic scholars › Hadith scholars and traditionists › Kufan traditionists*
*Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026*
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