عبد الرحيم بن الحسين العراقي

Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi (RH)

'Abd al-Rahim ibn al-Husayn al-'Iraqi

Also known as: al-Hafiz al-Iraqi, Zain al-Din al-Iraqi, al-'Iraqi, Zainuddin al-Iraqi

725–806 AH · 1325–1404 CE

Hadith Shafi'i Fiqh

Leading hadith master of Mamluk Egypt, author of the Alfiyya on hadith terminology and teacher of Ibn Hajar.

Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi was born in Cairo in 1325 to a family from near Irbil in Iraq. He first studied the Quran readings and Shafi'i fiqh, then gave himself to hadith, studying in Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem and the Hijaz, and became the leading hadith master of Egypt in his time. He served for about three years as judge, preacher and imam of Madinah, and in Cairo he revived the old practice of dictating hadith in public sessions.

His Alfiyya, a poem of about a thousand verses on the terms and methods of hadith study, became the standard teaching text of its field, explained by himself and later by al-Sakhawi and others. In al-Mughni 'an Haml al-Asfar he traced the sources of the hadith in al-Ghazali's Ihya' and judged their strength, and the work is printed with the Ihya' to this day. His students included Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, Nur al-Din al-Haythami, who was also his son-in-law, and his own son Wali al-Din Abu Zur'a. He died in Cairo in 1404.

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