Mukhadram (one who straddled the Jahiliyya and Islam)

The mukhadramun are a class of Successors whom al-Nawawi treats in al-Taqrib and al-Suyuti explains in Tadrib al-Rawi: a single one is mukhadram, with a on the r, one who lived through the Jahiliyya and the Prophet's time and accepted Islam without seeing him. ^{1 2} Al-Suyuti adds: and he had no companionship; this is the term as hadith scholars use it. ²

Al-Suyuti gives several explanations of the word. First, that such a man hovers between two classes and it is not known to which he belongs, from "mukhadram meat", of which one cannot tell whether it came from a male or a female, as in al-Muhkam and al-Sihah, and "mukhadram food", neither sweet nor bitter, reported from Ibn al-A'rabi. ² Others derived it from khadrama, cutting, as in "they khadramu the camels' ears", that is, cropped them, because he was cut off from the Companions even though he lived in their time, for want of seeing the Prophet. ² Others took it from "a mukhadram man", one of deficient standing, not of noble lineage, of doubtful descent, of unknown parents or born of concubines, since he falls below the Companions in rank by not seeing the Prophet when he could have. ^{2 3} The editor Muhammad Awwama notes that this last reasoning does not fit the opinion it follows, but that this is how the manuscripts have it. ²

Some lexicographers read mukhadrim, with i, and Ibn Khallikan reports muhadrim, with an unpointed h and i. ^{4 5} Abu Hilal al-Askari wrote in al-Awa'il that mukhadram is one of the notions that arose in Islam and were given names that had other meanings in the Jahiliyya; its root is "I khadramtu the boy", circumcised him, or "the ear", cut its tip, as though the time of the Jahiliyya had been cut off from him — or else "mukhadram camels", bred from Arabian and Yemeni stock, which he said was the more pleasing of the two to him. ⁵

Al-Nawawi said in his commentary on Muslim: the time before the Prophet's mission. ³ Al-Iraqi found this doubtful: to him it most likely means having known one's people or others still in unbelief before the conquest of Mecca, since after it the Arabs hastened to Islam, the Jahiliyya was over, and the Prophet declared its ways void in his sermon at the conquest. ³ He points out that Muslim listed Yusayr ibn Amr among the mukhadramun although he was born after the Hijra. ³ Al-Suyuti adds that it makes no difference whether half of one's life fell in the Jahiliyya or not. ³

For the lexicographers a mukhadram is one who lived half his life in the Jahiliyya and half in Islam, whether or not he was a Companion; so each sense is wider than the other in one respect. ⁴ Thus Hakim ibn Hizam is a mukhadram in the lexical sense but not the hadith sense, being a Companion, while Yusayr ibn Amr is one in the hadith sense but not the lexical. ⁴

Muslim counted twenty of them, among them Abu Amr Sa'd ibn Iyas al-Shaybani, Suwayd ibn Ghafala, Shurayh ibn Hani', Amr ibn Maymun al-Awdi, al-Aswad ibn Yazid al-Nakha'i, al-Ma'rur ibn Suwayd, Abu Uthman al-Nahdi, Abu Raja' al-Utaridi and Jubayr ibn Nufayr al-Hadrami. ^{5 6} Al-Nawawi says there are more, and that among those Muslim did not mention are Abu Muslim al-Khawlani and al-Ahnaf. ⁶ Al-Iraqi added others, including Uways al-Qarani, Shurayh the judge, Abu Wa'il, al-Sunabihi, Alqama, Qays ibn Abi Hazim, Ka'b al-Ahbar and Masruq. ⁶ Al-Suyuti then names further men from among the many that Ibn Hajar records in al-Isaba, and hopes to devote a separate work to them. ⁷ The editor points to a treatise by Sibt Ibn al-Ajami on those said to be mukhadram and to Ibn Nasir al-Din's lectures on the subject. ⁸

A note printed on the page points out that the mukhadramun appear in books on the Companions only because they are close to that class, not because they belong to it; among those who said so clearly were Ibn Abd al-Barr and before him Ibn Shahin, who apologised for including an entry on the Negus on the ground that he believed in the Prophet in his lifetime; and the hadiths of such men are mursal by the agreement of hadith scholars, as Ibn Abd al-Barr states in al-Tamhid. ²