Abu Hatim al-Razi

Muhammad ibn Idris Abu Hatim al-Razi (195–277 AH / 798–875 CE) was one of the most rigorous and strict hadith critics of the classical period. Based in Ray, he traveled extensively to collect hadiths and evaluate narrators. His collected judgments, preserved by his son Ibn Abi Hatim in al-Jarh wa al-Ta'dil (a massive encyclopedic work on narrator evaluation), are among the most authoritative and widely-cited in hadith scholarship. He was known for the strictness of his standards, accepting fewer narrators as fully reliable than some of his peers. His son's encyclopedia based on his evaluations is a primary reference in hadith criticism.