Imam Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti جلال الدين عبد الرحمن بن أبي بكر السيوطي

One of the most prolific scholars in Islamic history, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (849-911 AH / 1445-1505 CE), whose full name was Abu al-Fadl ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Khudayri al-Suyuti, was born and raised in Cairo. Orphaned in childhood, he memorized the entire Qurʾan by the age of eight and went on to study under many of the leading teachers of Mamluk Egypt, gathering ijazas from scholars across the Muslim world. He was a Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed, and at one point regarded himself as the mujaddid, the renewer, of his age. Biographers credit him with close to six hundred works, from brief epistles to large reference compilations, spanning tafsir, hadith, fiqh, Arabic grammar and rhetoric, history, and more. He is best remembered as co-author of Tafsir al-Jalalayn, completing the concise verse-by-verse Qurʾanic commentary begun by Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli, and for al-Itqan fi ʿUlum al-Qurʾan, a landmark survey of the Qurʾanic sciences. Among his other enduring works are al-Jami al-Saghir, a much-used collection of Prophetic hadith, Tadrib al-Rawi on hadith methodology, Tarikh al-Khulafaʾ on the caliphs, and Husn al-Muhadara on the history of Egypt. In his forties he withdrew from teaching and public life, secluding himself on Rawda Island on the Nile to write, where he remained until his death in Cairo in 911 AH.