Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi

Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi (full name Abd al-Rahim ibn al-Husayn al-Iraqi, 725-806 AH / 1325-1404 CE) was a leading Sunni scholar of hadith (the reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds) of the Shafi'i legal school, active in Mamluk Cairo. Biographers report that he was born in Cairo to a father of Kurdish origin from the Rāznān region near Erbil; the family nisba "al-Iraqi" preserves that geographic origin. (One brief source instead says he was "born in Iraq" — most detailed biographies place his birth in Cairo.) Orphaned of his father at age three, he memorized the Qur'an young and, on the advice of his teacher Ibn Jama'a, turned decisively to hadith.

He is remembered as among the foremost hadith authorities of his age. His best-known works are an Alfiyya — a didactic poem of roughly a thousand rajaz verses on hadith terminology, building on Ibn al-Salah's earlier manual — and al-Mughni, a study identifying and grading the hadiths cited in al-Ghazali's Ihya' Ulum al-Din. He undertook scholarly journeys (riḥla) through Syria and the Hijaz, and reportedly served for several years as judge, prayer-leader and preacher at the Prophet's Mosque in Medina before returning to Cairo. There he revived the long-lapsed tradition of public hadith dictation sessions (imlāʾ). His students included the celebrated commentator Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani — said to have studied with him for a decade — and Nur al-Din al-Haythami. He died in Cairo.