177 – ʿAlī ibn Sirāj Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Abī al-Azhar al-Ḥarashī *

The imām and outstanding ḥadīth master, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Abī al-Azhar al-Ḥarashī, their Egyptian client, was a prolific author who travelled widely and wrote down both the higher and the lower isnāds (1).

He studied under Abū ʿUmayr ʿĪsā ibn al-Naḥḥās, Saʿīd ibn Abī Zaydūn al-Qaysarānī, Yūsuf ibn Baḥr, Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr al-Sakūnī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ashʿath, Fahd ibn Sulaymān, Abū Zurʿah al-Dimashqī, and many others.

He later settled in Baghdad, where he collected material and composed his works.

Among those who narrated from him were Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAssāl, Abū Bakr al-Jiʿābī, Abū ʿAmr ibn Ḥamdān, ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Sukkarī, and others.

Al-Dāraqutnī said: “He had the ḥadīth committed to memory.”

Al-Khaṭīb said: “He was knowledgeable about people’s chronicles and circumstances, and he was a memorizer.”

It is said that he died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the year 308 AH.