Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani أحمد بن علي ابن حجر العسقلاني

Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani (773 to 852 AH, 1372 to 1449 CE) was among the greatest hadith scholars in Islamic history, a jurist, biographer, and historian whose work is often described as the final summation of the hadith sciences. Born in Cairo into a family with roots in ʿAsqalan in Palestine, he was orphaned young and devoted himself to study, mastering law in the Shafiʿi school and following the Ashʿari creed. He served as a teacher, judge, and head of hadith instruction in Mamluk Egypt, and was honored with titles of renown such as Hafiz al-ʿAsr (Hafiz of the Age), Amir al-Muʾminin fi al-Hadith (Commander of the Faithful in Hadith), and Shaykh al-Islam. His masterwork is Fath al-Bari, a multivolume commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari that took more than two decades to complete and is still considered the indispensable explanation of that collection. Among his many other writings are Nukhbat al-Fikr, a concise primer on hadith terminology that he later expanded himself, al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba on the Companions, Bulugh al-Maram on hadiths of legal rulings, and al-Istiʿdad li-Yawm al-Maʿad on preparing for the Hereafter. He composed roughly 150 works across hadith, history, biography, Qurʾanic study, and poetry. His grading and analysis of narrations remain a foundation for serious students of hadith.