Ruwwīnā and Rawaynā: Reading the Verb That Opens an Isnād

Open Muqaddimah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and you meet one word on almost every page: روينا, the verb with which Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ introduces report after report, "...روينا from Isḥāq ibn Rāhūyah", "...روينا from al-Bukhārī", "...روينا from al-Khaṭṭābī". It occurs some 170 times. The manuscripts leave it unvocalised, so the reader has to supply the vowels, and there are two ways to do it. Does the difference matter?

Two readings of one word

The same written letters can be read in two ways:

• Rawaynā (رَوَيْنَا) is active (mabnī lil-maʿlūm), with a light wāw (takhfīf). It means "we transmitted it on to others." Here the speaker is the one giving the report.
• Ruwwīnā (رُوِّينَا) is passive (mabnī lil-majhūl), with a doubled wāw carrying kasra (tashdīd). It means "it was transmitted to us," that is, "our shaykhs handed it down to us." Here the speaker is the one receiving the report, as it comes down to him through a chain.

So the two readings point in opposite directions: rawaynā looks forward (I pass it on), ruwwīnā looks back (it reached me). As we will see, a number of scholars held that the choice is not random, and that Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ in particular chose between them on purpose.

Where the word comes from

To see why one reading is passive and doubled, it helps to trace the root ر-و-ي. Its base sense is not "to narrate" at all, but "to carry water." Ibn Fāris fixes the whole family to a single origin: the rāwiya is the one who fetches water for people, and "then the one who brings a people knowledge or a report was likened to him, as though he had brought them their water from it."¹

Al-Fayyūmī shows, step by step, how the verb is built up from that image, and it ends exactly at our two readings:

So the doubling has a clear purpose. Rawā in Form I takes one object ("I transmitted the ḥadīth"). Doubling the middle letter (Form II, rawwā) lets it reach a second person ("I transmitted to Zayd the ḥadīth"). Put that doubled form into the passive and you get ruwwīnā, "it was transmitted to us." Rawaynā, by contrast, is the plain Form I active with its light wāw. The dictionaries keep the same picture throughout: a rāwiya is a great bearer (of water, or of reports), the hāʾ added for emphasis, and the word for the great transmitter is taken from the camel that carries the water-skins.³

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ's own convention

Al-Biqāʿī, commenting on al-ʿIrāqī's Alfiyya, reports that the doubled passive was not a copyist's accident but Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ's settled practice, adopted out of scrupulous precision:

Be careful about what the passive marks here. Ruwwīnā, "our shaykhs transmitted it to us," does not mean the chain is broken: the isnād is fully connected either way. The passive only shows that the speaker is the one who received the report, rather than taking it directly from the distant figure he names. A direct link to that figure, whether by hearing (samāʿ) or by licence (ijāzah), is what moves the report to the active rawaynā side; without such a link, the passive ruwwīnā is used, even though the chain reaching back to that figure is sound and connected.

Al-Zarkashī had already noted the same vocalisation in the manuscripts, and attached to it a memorable exchange:

Al-Zarkashī then turns to the lexical basis. He cites al-Zamakhsharī, who derives transmission straight from carrying ("rawā the ḥadīth means he carried it, from their saying: the camel rawā the water, i.e. carried it"), and then enters a careful objection of his own:

The point underneath all this is the one that matters for our verb: because the root means "to bear," the passive ruwwīnā ("it was borne to us") sits naturally on a report received through a chain, while the active rawaynā ("we bore it onward") sits on a report the speaker himself passes down.

What most scholars actually read

Even so, the reading most scholars use is the simpler, active one. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, opening his commentary on the Forty of al-Nawawī, states the balance plainly:

So two readings stand: rawaynā for the majority, ruwwīnā as "the better" for a group of verifiers. Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī, in his own commentary on the Forty, notes that some scholars read it in yet a third way, a lighter passive (ruwiya, "it was transmitted to us"), and that the active reading works too. Either way, both the active and the passive stay sound.⁸

Many of the major works on Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ do not raise the question at all. Al-Nawawī's al-Taqrīb, al-Suyūṭī's Tadrīb al-Rāwī, al-ʿIrāqī's al-Taqyīd wa-l-Īḍāḥ and his Sharḥ al-Tabṣira, al-Sakhāwī's Fatḥ al-Mughīth, and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī's own Nukat and Nuzhat al-Naẓar all use the word freely, without stopping to vocalise it or explain it. Al-ʿIrāqī simply writes the word; it is his commentator al-Biqāʿī who adds the note. The distinction, then, is a fine point raised by a few careful scholars, not a rule the whole field insists on.

Is the distinction binding?

This is the question Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah took up, and his answer is the most useful summary we have. He first records that both vocalisations are simply permissible, then relates the stricter teaching he received from his own teacher, Shaykh Muḥammad Rāghib al-Ṭabbākh, the muḥaddith and historian, while reading Muqaddimah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ with him:

Shaykh al-Ṭabbākh, as Shaykh Abū Ghuddah records, made the distinction sound obligatory. So Shaykh Abū Ghuddah put the question to three of his other senior teachers, al-Kawtharī, Aḥmad Shākir, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṣiddīq al-Ghumārī: is it actually binding when one reads the Muqaddimah? All three said it is not. Saying "ruwwīnā from Jābir" or "ruwwīnā from al-Bukhārī" when you never met them simply means "it was transmitted to us, by our chain, back to Jābir (or al-Bukhārī)."¹⁰ Shaykh Abū Ghuddah then checked the major lexica, al-Ṣaḥāḥ, al-Mughrib, al-Miṣbāḥ al-Munīr, Lisān al-ʿArab and Tāj al-ʿArūs, and found Shaykh al-Ṭabbākh's distinction sound in itself, but not something the language compels.

There is, finally, a recommendation that takes a middle position. Shaykh Abū Ghuddah relates that after writing all of the above he performed the Ḥajj of 1383 AH and, in the library of Shaykh ʿĀrif Ḥikmat in Madīnah, found a note in the margin of a manuscript of al-Zarkashī's Nukat:

This middle path, the light active where there is any real connection of hearing or licence and the doubled passive where there is none, matches the position Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī states in his commentary on the Forty.¹² Shaykh Abū Ghuddah's own verdict, after weighing all of it, is to follow the majority:

Conclusion

Both readings are sound Arabic and both are accepted. Rawaynā (active) means "we transmitted it on to others"; it is the lighter and more common reading, and it fits the speaker who is himself passing the report along. Ruwwīnā (passive) means "it was transmitted to us," that is, "our shaykhs handed it down to us through a chain"; it is the doubled reading preferred by a careful minority, and, on al-Biqāʿī's report, the form Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ chose on purpose for reports that reached him in this way.

The most one can say for the distinction is the middle position of Ibn Ḥajar's marginal note and Shaykh al-Ṭabbākh's teaching: use rawaynā ("we transmitted it on") when you have a real link to the one you quote, having heard from him or holding his ijāzah; and use ruwwīnā ("it was transmitted to us") when you have no such link and reach him only through a chain, as when you quote Jābir or al-Bukhārī, whom you never met. It is a small mark of precision, a way of showing in a single vowel how the report reached you, not an obligation. As Shaykh Abū Ghuddah concluded, both are permissible, and the easier reading carries no fault.

Footnotes

1. Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, root ر-و-ي: "the root is what is opposed to thirst, then it is turned in speech to the one who carries what is drunk from... then the one who brings a people knowledge or a report was likened to him." ↩

2. Al-Fayyūmī, al-Miṣbāḥ al-Munīr fī Gharīb al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr, root ر-و-ي. ↩

3. See Lisān al-ʿArab and Tāj al-ʿArūs, root ر-و-ي: a rāwiya is the camel (or the man) on which water is drawn, and is used of one whose transmission is abundant, "the hāʾ being for intensiveness." al-Jawharī, al-Ṣaḥāḥ, gives the same conjugation, rawaytu al-ḥadīth riwāyatan and the Form II rawwaytuhu al-shiʿr tarwiyatan ("I made him transmit it"); al-Muṭarrizī, al-Mughrib, even cites the attested usage innā ruwwīnā fī al-akhbār. ↩

4. Al-Biqāʿī, al-Nukat al-Wafiyya bi-mā fī Sharḥ al-Alfiyya, ed. Māhir Yāsīn al-Faḥl, vol. 2, p. 172. ↩

5. Al-Zarkashī, al-Nukat ʿalā Muqaddimah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn ibn Muḥammad, vol. 1, pp. 128-129. The manuscripts write the verb unvocalised; the contrast is carried by the vocalisation note, not by distinct spellings. ↩

6. Al-Zarkashī, al-Nukat ʿalā Muqaddimah Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, vol. 1, pp. 129-130, quoting al-Zamakhsharī, Asās al-Balāgha, root ر-و-ي ("rawā the ḥadīth: he carried it, from their saying: the camel carries (yarwī) the water"). ↩

7. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn bi-Sharḥ al-Arbaʿīn, p. 101. ↩

8. Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī, al-Mubīn al-Muʿīn li-fahm al-Arbaʿīn (sharḥ al-Arbaʿūn al-Nawawiyya), ed. Ḥamza al-Bakrī (Dār al-Lubāb), pp. 88-89, on al-Nawawī's wa-qad ruwwīnā: «(فقد رَوَيْنا) بفتح أوَّلَيه مع تخفيف الواو عند الأكثرين، من: روى، إذا نقل عن غيره. وقال جمعٌ: الأجودُ ضمُّ الراء وكسرُ الواو مشدَّدةً، أي: رَوّانا مشايخُنا، أي: نقلوا لنا فسمعنا. قال بعضُ المحققين: وهو يعمّ روايةً ودرايةً. واختار أنه بصيغة المجهول مخفَّفًا على طريق الحذف والإيصال، أي: رُوِيَ إلينا أو نُقِل لدينا سماعًا أو قراءةً أو إجازةً ... أو بصيغة المعروف، ليكون قوله: (أنَّ) مع صلتها مفعولًا له.» Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah quotes the passage, lightly abridged, in al-Ajwibah al-Fāḍilah, pp. 184-185. Al-Qārī's opening matches Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī's almost word for word (note 7). ↩

9. Shaykh Muḥammad Rāghib al-Ṭabbākh, as reported in Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah's taʿlīq on al-Laknawī, al-Ajwibah al-Fāḍilah li-l-Asʾilah al-ʿAshara al-Kāmilah, p. 184. ↩

10. Shaykh Abū Ghuddah, al-Ajwibah al-Fāḍilah, p. 184: "they said: there is no need for it, and they do not hold it binding." ↩

11. As reported by Shaykh Abū Ghuddah, al-Ajwibah al-Fāḍilah, p. 185. Shaykh Abū Ghuddah presents this as a marginal annotation he found in a manuscript of al-Zarkashī's Nukat, attributing it to "Ibn Ḥajar in al-Ifṣāḥ"; the attribution is given as he found it. ↩

12. The substance of the marginal note, the light reading where there is samāʿ or ijāzah and the doubled reading otherwise, matches the position Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī states in al-Fatḥ al-Mubīn; the "Ibn Ḥajar" of the manuscript margin is most plausibly read in that light. ↩

13. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah, taʿlīq on al-Ajwibah al-Fāḍilah, p. 185. He develops the discussion further in his notes to Ṭāhir al-Jazāʾirī, Tawjīh al-Naẓar ilā Uṣūl al-Athar, pp. 920-921. ↩