60 – Ibn ʿAwf, Ismaʿil ibn Makki ibn Ismaʿil al-Zuhri*
The shaykh, the imam, the pillar of Islam, and leading authority of the Maliki school: Ismaʿil ibn Makki ibn Ismaʿil ibn ʿIsa ibn ʿAwf ibn Yaʿqub ibn Muhammad ibn ʿIsa ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Humayd, a descendant of the Prophet’s Companion ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn ʿAwf—may Allah be pleased with him. He was Qurashi, Zuhri, ʿAwfi, Alexandrian, and Maliki.

Born: 485 AH.

He studied jurisprudence under the master Abu Bakr al-Turtushi, excelled, surpassed his contemporaries, and trained many disciples. From al-Turtushi he transmitted the Muwattaʾ, and he also narrated from Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Razi.

Those who wrote from him include the hadith master al-Silafi—who counted him among his own teachers—and other huffaz: ʿAbd al-Ghani, Ibn al-Mufaddal, ʿAbd al-Qadir, and Sultan Salah al-Din (1). His grandsons through his son ʿAbd al-Wahhab—al-Hasan, ʿAbd Allah, and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz—also received transmissions from him. He recited the Muwattaʾ on numerous occasions.

He passed away in Alexandria on the twenty-fifth of Shaʿban 581 AH, at the age of ninety-six—may Allah have mercy on him.

Ibn al-Jumayzi (2) states in his Mashyakha: “He was the imam of his era, the unrivalled scholar of his time in …”