The Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir by Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Sa’d is one of the most important and earliest surviving collections of biographical details of the early Muslims,

The Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir by Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn Sa'd is one of the most important and earliest surviving collections of biographical details of the early Muslims, spanning just over the first two centuries of Islam. It is a rich storehouse of information compiled from all the sources available to Ibn Sa'd, as a result of which, the reader is given a vivid insight into the lives of the early Muslims and how extraordinary they were. The scope of Ibn Sa'd covers the time of the Rashidun khalifs, the Umayyads and the 'Abbasids. This sixth volume of the Tabaqat (Volume VI) deals firstly with the scholars of Makka, Ta'if, Yemen, Yamama and Bahrayn and then the bulk of the book is devoted to the scholars of Kufa.