Ibn Asakir

Ali ibn al-Hasan ibn Asakir was born in Damascus into an illustrious family of Shafi'i scholars. He traveled across Syria, Iraq, Khurasan, and the Hijaz for decades, studying under thirteen hundred male and eighty female hadith masters before returning to Damascus under the patronage of Atabeg Nur ad-Din Zengi, who built the Dar al-Hadith al-Nuriyya college for him.

Ibn Asakir dedicated his life to compiling Tarikh Madinat Dimashq (The History of the City of Damascus), an extraordinary eighty-volume biographical encyclopedia containing biographies of every notable figure who lived in or visited Damascus from antiquity to his era. It remains an unparalleled monument of medieval Islamic historiography.