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Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
1372 CE–1449 CE · Cairo
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.
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Stop 1 of 4
CairoקהירEgypt
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
Cairo in this era
Under the Mamluk sultans (1250-1517) Cairo was the largest city of the Islamic world west of Persia and, after the fall of Baghdad in 1258, the seat of a line of Abbasid caliphs in name. Its many madrasas, mosques and Sufi lodges drew scholars of hadith, law and mysticism, among them Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and Ibn Ata Allah.
About Cairo
Cairo, at the head of the Nile delta, grew from two foundations: Fustat, the garrison town built by the Arab conquerors in 641, and al-Qahira ('the Victorious'), the walled city founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969, where the mosque of al-Azhar opened in 970-72 and became a great centre of learning. Under the Ayyubids (from 1171) and the Mamluks (1250-1517) it was one of the largest cities of the Islamic world. Fustat's Jewish community, home to Maimonides in the 12th century, left the Cairo Geniza, a vast store of medieval documents. Later ruled by the Ottomans and, from 1882, under British occupation, Cairo is the capital of modern Egypt.
Across the traditions, in Cairo at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.