Introduction

Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah (The Correct Determination of the Companions' Status) is the definitive biographical dictionary of the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ in the Islamic scholarly tradition. It was compiled by Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani (773–852 AH / 1372–1449 CE), the foremost hadith scholar of the ninth Islamic century. Born in Cairo to a family originally from 'Asqalan in Palestine, Ibn Hajar studied under the greatest teachers of his age across Egypt, the Hijaz, and Syria. He served as the chief Shafi'i judge of Egypt (Qadi al-Qudat) for twenty-one years and produced an output — estimated at over one hundred and fifty works — that reshaped virtually every field of hadith scholarship. His most celebrated work, Fath al-Bari, the multi-volume commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, remains unsurpassed as an authoritative reference in its field.

Al-Isabah was composed as the culmination of a long tradition of Companion biography stretching from Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat al-Kubra through Ibn 'Abd al-Barr's Al-Isti'ab and Ibn al-Athir's Usd al-Ghaba. Ibn Hajar explicitly described his work as a synthesis and correction of these predecessors, incorporating entries they had missed, resolving contradictions between their accounts, and applying rigorous hadith-critical methodology to the question of who deserves the designation of Sahabi (Companion). He organised the work into four sections: those whose status as Companions is established by transmission; those known only through mursal or isolated reports; those whose names appear in earlier sources but whose Companionship is doubtful; and women Companions — each section arranged alphabetically by given name (ism).

The work contains entries for approximately twelve thousand individuals, ranging from major figures such as Abu Bakr, Umar, and Aisha — for whom the entries run to many pages — to obscure names known only from a single narration or a brief mention in a genealogical chain. For each entry Ibn Hajar typically gives: the individual's name, kunya (teknonym), and nasab (lineage); their tribe and place of origin; the reports attesting to their Companionship; any hadith they transmitted from the Prophet ﷺ with evaluation of the chains; the names of those who transmitted from them; and, where known, the date and place of death. His source citations are meticulous, and the work functions simultaneously as a biographical reference and as a guide to the hadith corpus attributed to each Companion.

The scholarly consensus places Al-Isabah above its predecessors in both coverage and critical rigour. Al-Suyuti praised it as the most comprehensive work on the Companions ever written. Later scholars such as al-Shawkani and Ibn 'Abidin cite it as the standard authority on Companion identification, and it remains an indispensable tool for hadith scholars verifying transmitter identity in the first generation. The standard modern edition (Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, Beirut) runs to nine volumes with indices.

On Islam.wiki, chapters follow the alphabetical arrangement of the original, with each chapter covering a letter of the Arabic alphabet. Entries within chapters vary greatly in length according to the prominence of the individual and the density of the historical record. Readers researching a specific Companion should use the search function to locate the relevant entry directly, while those wishing to understand the methodology should begin with Ibn Hajar's own introduction, which outlines the criteria for Companion status and the structure of the work in full.