الدرر العلمية

Ibn al-Dayyan was a Jewish physician who attended the gatherings of the great hadith scholar al-Hafidh al-Mizzi, as well as the gatherings of other scholars. When the scholars were recording the names of everyone who had attended a hadith lesson, they hesitated over whether they should include Ibn al-Dayyan’s name because he was Jewish. They asked Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah about this, and he told them: "Write his name." The reason for this is that being a non-Muslim did not prevent him from hearing and receiving the hadith (تحمّل الحديث). However, if he later wanted to narrate those hadiths, the necessary conditions for accepting his narration would have to be verified. So they recorded his name among those who had attended and heard the book. Interestingly, this became a means of his being guided to Islam. He eventually accepted Islam and then began narrating the hadiths he had heard from the scholars.