Died
852 AH/1449 CE, Cairo, Egypt
He is Shihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. The word Ḥajar is the name of one of his grandfathers. His kunyā is Abu ’l-Faḍl and his laqab is Shihāb al-Dīn. al-ʿAsqalānī is a noun of ascription relating to Asqalān in Syria, where his great-grandparents lived.
Birth, Family and Early Life
Abu ’l-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn Ḥajar's family originated in the district of
Qābis in Tunisia. Some members of his family had settled in Palestine,
which they left when faced with the Crusader threat, but he himself was
born in Egypt in 773 AH/1372 CE - the son of the Shāfiʿī scholar and
poet Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī and the learned and aristocratic Tujjār. Both died
in his infancy, and he was later to to praise his elder sister, Sitt
al-Rakb, for acting as his 'second mother'.
The two children became wards of the brother of their father's
first wife, Zakī al-Din al-Kharrūbī, who entered the young Ibn Ḥajar
into a Qur'ānic school (kuttāb) when he reached five years of
age. Here he excelled, learning Surāh Maryam in a single day, and
progressing to the memorisation of texts such as the Mukhtaṣar of Ibn al-Ḥājib on uṣūl.
By the time he accompanied al-Kharrūbī to Makkah at the age of 12, he
was competent enough to lead the Tarāwīḥ prayers in the Holy City, where
he spent much time studying and recalling Allāh amid the pleasing
simplicity of Kharrūbī's house, the Bayt al-ʿAynā, whose windows looked
directly upon the Black Stone.
Two years later his protector died, and his education was
entrusted to the ḥadīth scholar Shams al-Dīn ibn al-Qaṭṭan, who entered
him into courses given by the great Cairene scholars al-Bulqīnī (d. 806
AH) and Ibn al-Mulaqqin (d. 804 AH) in Shāfiʿī fiqh, and of
Zayn al-Din al-Irāqī (d. 806 AH) in ḥadīth, after which he was able to
travel to Damascus and Jerusalem, where he studied under Shams al-Din
al-Qalqashandī (d. 809 AH), Badr al-Dīn al-Balisī (d. 803 AH) and
Fāṭimah bint al-Manja al-Tanūkhiyya (d. 803 AH). After a further visit
to Makkah and Madīnah, and to Yemen, he returned to Egypt.
His Later Life
When he reached 25, he married the brilliant and lively Ānās Khātūn,
then 18 years of age. She was a ḥadīth expert in her own right, holding ijāzas from
Zayn al-Din al-Irāqī, and she gave celebrated public lectures in the
presence of her husband to crowds of ulema, among whom was Imām
al-Sakhāwī. After the marriage, Ibn Ḥajar moved into her house where he
lived until his death. So widely did her reputation for sanctity extend
that during her fifteen years of widowhood, which she devoted to good
works, she received a proposal from Imām ʿAlam al-Din al-Bulqīnī, who
considered that a marriage to a woman of such charity and barakah would be a source of great pride.
Once esconced in Egypt, Ibn Ḥajar taught in the Sūfi lodge (khāniqāh)
of Baybars for some twenty years, and then in the ḥadīth school known
as Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Kāmiliyya. During these years, he served on occasion
as the Shāfiʿī chief qadi of Egypt. It was in Cairo that the Imām wrote
some of the most thorough and beneficial books ever added to the
library of Islāmic civilisation. Among these are al-Durar al-Kāmina, a commentary on Imām al-Nawawī's Forthy Ḥadīth, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, Fatḥ al-Bārī fī Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, al-Iṣāba fi tamyiz al-Ṣaḥāba and Bulūgh al-Maram min adillat al-aḥkām.
Fatḥ al-Bārī
Ibn Ḥajar's magnum opus, Fatḥ al-Bārī (lit.
'Victory of the Creator') is the most celebrated commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ
al-Bukhārī. He commenced the enormous task of assembling it in 817 AH,
expending over 25 years of his life on its compilation. It began as a
series of formal dictations to his ḥadīth students, after which he wrote
it out in his own hand and circulated it section by section to his
pupils, who would discuss it with him once a week. As it progressed and
Ibn Ḥajar's fame grew, the
Islāmic world took a close interest in the
new work. In 833 AH, Tīmūr's son Shāh Rūkh sent a letter to the Mamluk
sultān al-Ashraf Barsbay requesting several gifts, including a copy of
the Fatḥ, and Ibn Ḥajar was able to send him the first three volumes. In
839 AH, the request was repeated, and further volumes were sent, until,
in the reign of al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq, the whole text was finished and a
complete copy was dispatched. Similarly, the Moroccan sultān Abū Faris
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥafṣī requested a copy before its completion.
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| All volumes of Fatḥ al-Bārī in Arabic. |
When it was finished, in Rajab 842 AH, a great celebration was held
in an open place near Cairo, in the presence of the ulema, judges and
leading personages of Egypt. Ibn Ḥajar sat on a platform and read out
the final pages of his work, and then poets recited eulogies and gold
was distributed. It was, said one historian, 'the greatest celebration of the age in Egypt.'
The work is appreciated by the ulema for the doctrinal soundness
of the author, for its complete coverage of Bukhārī's material, its
mastery of the relevant Arabic sciences, the wisdom it shows in drawing
lessons (fawā'id) from the aḥadīth it expounds upon. The
dicussions include detailed investigations of the precise linguistic and
lexicological meaning of the Prophetic speech, studies of the isnād, debates of the circumstances surrounding the genesis of each ḥadīth (asbāb al-wurūd), and issues of abrogation by stronger or later aḥadīth or by Qur'ānic texts.
His Death
Ibn Ḥajar died in 852 AH. His funeral was attended by 'fifty thousand people', including the sultān and caliph; 'even the Christians grieved'. He was remembered as a gentle man, short, slender and white-bearded, a love of calligraphy and much inclined to charity; 'good to those who wronged him and forgiving to those he was able to punish.'
