Imam al-Dhahabī
شمس الدين محمد بن أحمد الذهبي
al-Ḥāfiẓ · al-Muʾarrikh
Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Dhahabī
- Birthplace
- Damascus, Syria
- Madhhab
- Shāfiʿī in fiqh, Atharī in ʿaqīdah
- Reference
- Wikipedia ↗
Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ — the monumental biographical dictionary of Islamic scholarship, from the companions of the Prophet ﷺ through al-Dhahabī's own era. A working-scholar reference used for seven centuries.
Al-Dhahabī was the great historian and biographer of Sunni Islam. Born in Damascus, he studied hadith with over a thousand teachers across Syria, Egypt, and the Hijāz, and dedicated his life to the sciences of rijāl (the biographies and integrity of hadith transmitters) and tārīkh (the history of the tradition).
His magnum opus, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ — Biographies of Eminent Nobles — is a roughly forty-volume work that traces the lives of the most significant scholars, narrators, statesmen, and saints from the Prophet's ﷺ generation through the 8th Islamic century. It is one of the most cited works in the Islamic biographical tradition, still consulted daily by scholars working with hadith, tafsīr, fiqh, and the chain of transmission. His Tārīkh al-Islām is a parallel grand history, and his works on the ḥuffāẓ and the critique of transmitters remain standard references.
- Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (Biographies of Eminent Nobles)
- Tārīkh al-Islām al-Kabīr (The Great History of Islam)
- Mīzān al-Iʿtidāl fī Naqd al-Rijāl (The Scale of Justice on the Critique of Transmitters)
- Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ (Memorial of the Hadith Masters)
- Al-Kāshif fī Maʿrifat man lahu Riwāya fī al-Kutub al-Sittah
Al-Dhahabī's Siyar is, without exaggeration, the reference work on Islamic scholarly history. Seven centuries after his death, any serious student of hadith or Islamic biography still begins with him.