Hishām ibn ʿUrwah (Arabic: هشام بن عروة, c. 680–763) was a prominent narrator of hadith.
He was born in Medina in the year 61 A.H. (680 C.E.). His father was Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, the son of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Asma bint Abu Bakr, and his mother was an unnamed concubine.
Malik ibn Anas (Arabic: مَالِك بْن أَنَس, romanized: Mālik ibn ʾAnas; c. 711–795), also known as Imam Malik, was a Muslim scholar, jurist, muhaddith and traditionalist who is the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence in Sunni Islam.
Born in Medina into the clan of Humayr which belonged to the Banu Taym of Quraysh, Malik studied under Hisham ibn Urwa, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Ja'far al-Sadiq, Nafi ibn Sarjis and others. He rose to become the premier scholar of hadith in his day, Referred to as the Imam of Medina by his contemporaries, his views in matters of jurisprudence became highly cherished both in his own life and afterward, becoming the eponym of the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. His school became the normative rite for Sunni practice in much of North Africa, al-Andalus (until the expulsion of medieval native Iberian Muslims), a vast portion of Egypt, some parts of Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, and Khorasan, and the prominent orders in Sufism, the Shadili and Tijani.
Urwa ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam al-Asadi (Arabic: عُرْوَة بْن الزُّبَيْر بْن الْعَوَّام الأَسَدِيّ, romanized: ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām al-ʾAsadī; c. 644–713) was an early Muslim traditionist, widely regarded as a founding figure in the field of historical study among the Muslims. He was a son of Muhammad's close aide al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, and a nephew of his wife A'isha. He spent much of his life in Medina, witnessed the First Fitna (656–661) as a youth, and supported his elder brother Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in his failed attempt to establish his caliphate in the Second Fitna (680–692). After Abd Allah's elimination by his Syria-based Umayyad rivals, Urwa reconciled with the Umayyads, whom he paid occasional visits and maintained a literary correspondence with.
Urwa's relations with important early Islamic figures gave him access to first-hand accounts on the early Islamic period, which he collected from his father, his aunt, and a number of companions of Muhammad, passing these on to his students, above all Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri and his son Hisham. A large number of these traditions are reported in the hadith and historical literature. Some of his literary correspondences with the Umayyad caliphs Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 685–705) and al-Walid I (r. 705–715) have also been reported in historical works. Combined, they cover almost all important events of Muhammad's prophetic career as well as early caliphate, and are central to the historical study of Muhammad. Modern Western Historians have debated the authenticity of the Urwa corpus of traditions. Some hold that most of the traditions reported on his authority did indeed originate with him and the core of the information contained therein is genuine, although they have been modified and colored by later transmitters to some extent. On the other hand, some hold that much of the corpus is later, retrospective attribution to Urwa.