Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi

Life

Al-Mizzī was born near Aleppo in 1256 under the reign of the last Ayyubid emir An-Nasir Yusuf. From 1260 the region was ruled by the na'ib al-saltana (viceroys) of the Mamluk Sultanate. In childhood he moved with his family to the village of al-Mizza outside Damascus, where he was educated in Qur'ān and fiqh. In his twenties he began his studies to become a muḥaddith and learned from the masters. His fellow pupil and life-long friend was Taqī al-Dīn ibn Taymiyya. It was also Taymiyya's ideological influence, which although contrary to his own Shāfi'ī legalist inclination, that led to a stint in jail.

Despite his affiliation with Ibn Taymiyya he became head of the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya, a leading ḥadīth academy in Damascus, in 1319. And although he professed the Ash'arī doctrine suspicion continued about his true beliefs. He travelled across the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, Syria (الشَّام), and Ḥijāz and became the greatest `Ilm al-rijāl (عِلْمُ الرِّجال) scholar of the Muslim world and an expert grammarian and philologist of Arabic. He died at Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyyah in Damascus in 1341/2 and was buried in the Sufiyyah graveyard.

Pupils

• Al-Dhahabī
• 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Subkī
• Ismā'īl ibn Kathīr Ibn Kathir married a daughter of al-Mizzī.
• Ibn al-Furat
• Najm ad-Din al-Tufi

Works

• Tahdhīb al-kamāl fī asmā' al-rijāl; biographical lexicon and comprehensive reworking of Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, a collection of narrator biographies of the transmitters of isnāds in the Six major Hadith collections and others, based upon the tarf (beginning segment) of the hadith. The Tahdhīb includes Ruwāt kuttub al-sitta. Al-Asqalānī and others wrote compendia of this work.
• Tuḥfat al-ashraf bi-Ma'rifat al-Aṭraf; alphabetically indexed encyclopaedia of the musnads of the first generation transmitters, the Companions of the Prophet. An indispensable resource for the study of Muslim tradition that comprises al-Nasā'ī's Al-Sunan al-kubrā.

References

Bibliography

References

1. "HADITH".
2. Laoust, Henri. (2012). ""Ibn Taymiyya." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.".
3. [[Al-Dimyati]]. (2016). "THE REWARDS FOR GOOD DEEDS المتجر الرابح [انكليزي]". [[w:de:Dar al-Kotob al-ilmiyah.
4. Makdisi, George. (1962). "Ashʿarī and the Ash'arites in Islamic Religious History I". Maisonneuve & Larose.
5. Makdisi, George. (1962). "Ashʿarī and the Ash'arites in Islamic Religious History I". Maisonneuve & Larose.
6. {{ws. [[s:ar:الرسالة المستطرفة. ''Al-Risalah al-Mustatrafah'']]. , by al-Kattani, pg. 208, ''Dar al-Basha'ir al-Islamiyyah'', Beirut, seventh edition, 2007.
7. Ibn Kathir I, Le Gassick T (translator), Fareed M (reviewer). (2000). "The Life of the Prophet Muhammad : English translation of Ibn Kathir's Al Sira Al Nabawiyya". Garnet.
8. Fozia Bora, ''Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World: The Value of Chronicles as Archives'', The Early and Medieval Islamic World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), p. 38; {{ISBN. 978-1-7845-3730-2.