Jabir b. 'Abd Allah

Ikrimah (may Allah have mercy on him) was a leading Tabi'i scholar and the freed slave (mawla) of Abdullah ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him). Born into slavery, he was acquired by Ibn Abbas as a young man and trained under him in Quranic exegesis and Islamic sciences for many years. He memorized an enormous corpus of tafsir narrations from Ibn Abbas, reportedly having read the entire Quran to him multiple times and questioned him on every verse. He became one of the foremost authorities on Quranic interpretation of his generation and traveled widely — to North Africa, Khurasan, and other regions — to teach and transmit hadith. Some early hadith scholars, including Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, expressed reservations about certain of his positions, but the majority of the major hadith critics including Imam al-Bukhari, Yahya ibn Ma'in, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal accepted him as reliable. His narrations appear in all six of the major hadith collections. He passed away around 105–107 AH. This entry is a variant spelling of the narrator also listed as Ikrima.