al-Mizzi

Yusuf ibn Abdurrahman al-Mizzi (654-742 AH / 1256-1341 CE) was the foremost hadith scholar and biographer of narrators of his era, and the author of Tahdhib al-Kamal fi Asma ar-Rijal (Refinement of Perfection in the Names of Men), the most comprehensive biographical dictionary of hadith narrators in Islamic history. Born in Aleppo and raised in Damascus, he studied under the leading scholars of the Levant and Egypt.

Tahdhib al-Kamal is a monumental work covering the biographies of all narrators appearing in the six canonical hadith collections (al-Kutub as-Sittah) and their supplements. For each narrator, al-Mizzi provides their full name, teachers, students, the collections in which they appear, and the critical evaluations of hadith scholars regarding their reliability. The work was built upon earlier biographical dictionaries, particularly al-Kamal fi Asma ar-Rijal by Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi, but far surpassed them in thoroughness and accuracy. It became the foundation for all subsequent works on narrator biography, including adh-Dhahabi's abridgment and Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Tahdhib at-Tahdhib.

Al-Mizzi also authored Tuhfat al-Ashraf bi-Marifat al-Atraf, an index of the hadith in the six canonical collections organized by the companion narrators. He was the father-in-law of adh-Dhahabi and the teacher of Ibn Kathir. He died in Damascus in 742 AH (1341 CE). His biographical works remain indispensable for any scholar working in hadith authentication and narrator criticism.