104 – Yūsuf ibn Khalīl ibn Qarajā ʿAbd Allāh, Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Dimashqī.

The Imām, the ḥadīth master, the truthful narrator, the inveterate traveller and transmitter; teacher of the ḥadīth scholars, the narrator of Islam’s legacy. He was Abū al-Ḥajjāj Shams al-Dīn al-Dimashqī, known as al-Adamī, the cobbler, long-time resident and leading shaykh of Aleppo.

He was born in 555 AH.

He remained occupied with earning a livelihood (1) until he was nearly thirty; thereafter the study of ḥadīth became dear to him. He devoted himself to transmission, listened to a vast amount, journeyed far and wide, and in his neat, elegant hand copied a great many works. He procured the major source-books and possessed sound learning, fine understanding, and strong competence in the chains of transmission and the texts, in both lofty and ordinary isnāds, and in the critical selection of reports.

In Damascus, after the year 580 AH, he heard from: Yaḥyā al-Thaqafī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ṣadaqah, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī al-Khirqī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥamzah ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Mawāzinī, Ismāʿīl al-Janzawī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Khushūʿī, and their peers.

He kept the company of the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī and studied with him for some time. At his urging he set out on his travels, journeying to Baghdad in 586 AH, where he heard from: Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Salām,