يوسف بن عبد الرحمن المزي

al-Mizzi (RH)

Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Mizzi

Also known as: Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi, Abu al-Hajjaj al-Mizzi

654–742 AH · 1256–1341 CE

Hadith Shafi'i

Damascene master of the science of narrators, author of Tahdhib al-Kamal and teacher of al-Dhahabi.

Al-Mizzi was born just outside Aleppo in 1256 and grew up in al-Mizza, a village by Damascus, from which he takes his name. He studied hadith in Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo and the Hijaz, along with Arabic and fiqh, and became the leading authority of his age on the narrators of hadith. He was a lifelong friend of Ibn Taymiyyah, and in 1319 he became head of the Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyyah in Damascus, which he led until his death in 1341.

His Tahdhib al-Kamal reworked and greatly expanded 'Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's dictionary of the narrators of the six books, and later works on narrators by al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar were built on it. His Tuhfat al-Ashraf indexes every hadith of the six books by the Companion who narrated it and the chains through which it came. Al-Dhahabi, who called him the greatest hadith master he had met, and Ibn Kathir, his son-in-law, were among his students.

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