Ibn Asakir
Damascene hadith scholar and historian, author of the History of Damascus
He spent half a century collecting the biographies of Damascus's people until his book ran to some eighty volumes.
Ibn Asakir — Ali ibn al-Hasan ibn Hibat Allah — was born in Damascus in 1105 CE (499 AH), into a Damascene family with a long scholarly tradition known as the Banu Asakir. He travelled in search of hadith to Baghdad, Mecca, Khurasan, and elsewhere, hearing from hundreds of teachers, then settled as a hadith instructor at the Umayyad Mosque.
His most famous work, the Tarikh Madinat Dimashq (History of the City of Damascus), was begun in 1134–1135 and completed under the patronage of Nur al-Din Zengi around 1164. It is among the largest works of Islamic historiography: some eighty volumes exceeding eight million words, combining the city's history with biographies of its scholars, governors, and poets — everyone of note who lived in or passed through Damascus — and has been described as a book without parallel written for any city.
When Nur al-Din founded the Dar al-Hadith al-Nuriyya in Damascus around 1170 CE — described by scholars as the first institution in Islamic history dedicated to hadith teaching — he made Ibn Asakir its first professor, and teaching there remained in his descendants for generations.
He died in Damascus on 25 January 1176 CE (11 Rajab 571 AH), was buried after a mass funeral in the Bab al-Saghir cemetery, and later historians such as Ibn al-Athir and Ibn Khallikan drew extensively on his books. The History of Damascus remains the primary reference for the city's medieval history.
