Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (773-852 AH / 1372-1449 CE) was a Sunni scholar of the Shafiʿi school and a leading hadith authority of the late Mamluk period, based for nearly his entire life in Cairo, where he was born and died. His best-known work, Fath al-Bari, is a vast and widely cited commentary on the hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari, and his al-Isaba fi tamyiz al-Sahaba is a major biographical dictionary of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad. He undertook scholarly travels (rihla) to Syria, the Hijaz, and Yemen to collect hadith from leading teachers of his day. He also served several terms as a chief judge (qadi al-qudat) in Mamluk Egypt and authored roughly 150 works across hadith, history, biography, Quranic exegesis, and jurisprudence.