One Name, Two Lives: Nāfiʿ, the Freedman of Ibn ʿUmar, in the Imagination of Early-Abbasid muḥaddithūn

Abstract In this article, I examine Nāfiʿ, the mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar, and his role in early ḥadīth transmission and jurisprudence. I highlight several aspects of Nāfiʿ’s activity as a traditionist that have previously evaded scholarly attention, focusing on his perception by early-Abbasid ḥadīth transmitters and critics, as well as his network of informants from the first two generations of Muslims. Given the many contradictions in his biography and the reported death dates of his informants, Nāfiʿ’s image appears to split into two chronologically distinct figures. A prosopographical analysis aligns with Schacht’s observation that Nāfiʿ is historically vague, while also providing possible explanations for this vagueness. The article further shows that Mālik b. Anas played a major role in elevating Nāfiʿ’s status, though Juynboll’s claim that Mālik fabricated most of his Nāfiʿ isnād s as a shortcut to Ibn ʿUmar requires further testing through corpus analysis.