Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf ibn al-Zakī ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yūsuf ibn ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Yūsuf al-Kalbī al-Quḍā’ī al-Mizzī, ( ar, يوسف بن عبد الرحمن المزي), also called Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abī al-Ḥajjāj, was a Syrian

muhaddith Hadith studies ( ar, علم الحديث ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith", also science of hadith, or science of hadith criticism or hadith criticism) consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in th ...

and the foremost `Ilm al-rijāl

Islamic scholar In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...

Life

Al-Mizzī was born near Aleppo in 1256 under the reign of the last Ayyubid

emir Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cer ...

An-Nasir Yusuf An-Nasir Yusuf ( ar, الناصر يوسف; AD 1228–1260), fully al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn al-Aziz ibn al-Zahir ibn Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shazy (), was the Ayyubid Emir of Syria from his seat in Aleppo (123 ...

. From 1260 the region was ruled by the ''na'ib al-saltana'' (viceroys) of the

Mamluk Sultanate The Mamluk Sultanate ( ar, سلطنة المماليك, translit=Salṭanat al-Mamālīk), also known as Mamluk Egypt or the Mamluk Empire, was a state that ruled Egypt, the Levant and the Hejaz (western Arabia) from the mid-13th to early 16t ...

. 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 (), and Ḥijāz and became the greatest `Ilm al-rijāl () 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., by al-Kattani, pg. 208, ''Dar al-Basha'ir al-Islamiyyah'', Beirut, seventh edition, 2007.

Pupils

* Al-Dhahabī * ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Subkī * Ismā‘īl ibn Kathīr Ibn Kathir married a daughter of al-Mizzī. *

Ibn al-Furat Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. ʿAlī al-Miṣrī al-Ḥanafī () (1334–1405 CE), better known as Ibn al-Furāt, was an Egyptian historian, best known for his universal history, generally known as ''Taʾrīkh al-duwal wa � ...

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; . * 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 The ''Kutub al-Sittah'' ( ar-at, ٱلْكُتُب ٱلسِّتَّة, al-Kutub as-Sittah, lit=the six books) are six (originally five) books containing collections of ''hadith'' (sayings or acts of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) compiled by six S ...

and others, based upon the ''tarf'' (beginning segment) of the

hadith Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approva ...

. 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 indespensible resource for the study of Muslim tradition that comprises al-Nasā’ī's ''Al-Sunan al-kubrā''.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jamal Din Mizzi 1256 births 1342 deaths 13th-century Arabs 14th-century Arabs Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam Shafi'is Atharis Hadith scholars People from Damascus 14th-century Muslim scholars of Islam Proto-Salafists 13th-century jurists 14th-century jurists Biographical evaluation scholars Banu Kalb