Al-Mizzī was born near Aleppo in 1256 under the reign of the last AyyubidemirAn-Nasir Yusuf. From 1260 the region was ruled by the na'ib al-saltana (viceroys) of the Mamluk Sultanate. In childhood he moved with his family to the village of al-Mizza outside Damascus, where he was educated in Qur’ān and fiqh. [4]
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.[4] He travelled across the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, Syria (الشَّام), and Ḥijāz and became the greatest `Ilm al-rijāl (عِلْمُ الرِّجال) scholar of the Muslim world and an expert grammarian and philologist of Arabic.[4] He died at Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyyah in Damascus in 1341/2 and was buried in the Sufiyyah graveyard.[7]
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 indispensable resource for the study of Muslim tradition that comprises al-Nasā’ī's Al-Sunan al-kubrā.[4]
^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; ISBN978-1-7845-3730-2.