Ali ibn Al-Hassan ibn Hibatullah, better known as Ibn Asakir, was born in the last 10 days of the first month of year 499 A.H., corresponding to A.D. 1106. He belonged to the Shafie school of Islamic law or Fiqh, which means that we find information about him in books that provide biographical notes on scholars belonging to the Shafie school. Yet we read in one of these written by the scholar Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Subki that "none of his ancestors was called Asakir, but we have received his name as such." The amazing aspect of this is that our scholar is best known by a name giving him an ancestor he never had.
Be that as it may, his early childhood showed fine promise which encouraged his father and his elder brother to take good care of him, educating him in Hadith and other disciplines. He started learning Hadith when he was only 6 years of age. By the time he was 20, he started his travels in pursuit of Hadith. In 520 A.H. he was a diligent student of Hadith in Baghdad, studying under the disciples of Al-Barmaki, Al-Tanookhi and Al-Jawhari. He then returned to Damascus, his hometown, before embarking on another major trip that took him to Naisapur, Harah, Isfahan, and other areas in Iran and the eastern parts of the Muslim land.
His main interest was Hadith scholarship. In this field, he apparently acquired a great deal of knowledge and was able to go through a large number of works. He is said to have attained a level of scholarship that placed him above all his contemporaries. It is well known that the study of Hadith branches into a study of the text of each Hadith, or matn, and a study of the chains of transmission, or sanad. Ibn Asakir excelled in both.
Nevertheless, when he went to Baghdad, he attended Fiqh circles as well, and was a regular student at the Nazzamiyah school, where he studied differences between scholars of Fiqh, as well as linguistics. His Baghdad teachers greatly admired his intelligence, giving him the nickname "a flame of fire," referring to his sharp intelligence and great understanding. Imam Al-Nawawi, a great figure of the Shafie school of law and a scholar of Hadith who wrote the best known explanation of the Sahih Hadith collection by Imam Muslim, describes Ibn Asakir as "the main Hadith scholar of Al-Sham (a name that refers to greater Syria including Palestine and Lebanon), nay, the main Hadith scholar of the whole world."
Ibn Asakir also wrote fine poetry. It is said that whenever he dictated something to his students in his circle, he would invariably conclude with a few lines of poetry.
King Noor Al-Deen Mahmood ibn Zanki, who ruled Syria and fought hard against the Crusaders scoring many victories, built him a school which was known as Dar Al-Hadith Al-Nooriyah for the teaching of Hadith. Ibn Asakir taught there until his death.
Despite all his study of Hadith and other subjects, Ibn Asakir is best known for his great book, Tareekh Dimashq, or the History of Damascus which he wrote in emulation of Tareekh Baghdad, or the History of Baghdad by Al-Khateeb Al-Baghdadi. It is an encyclopedic work in 80 volumes. To appreciate the value of this work, we may quote Ibn Khillikan, a highly distinguished scholar of history who wrote extensively on the biographies of a great number of important figures and scholars. He mentions that Ibn Asakir and his work were discussed in one of the circles of his own teacher Abd Al-Azeem Al-Mundhiri, whereupon Al-Mundhiri took out one volume of this work and after a long discussion he said: "I imagine that the man decided to work on this history very early in his academic life and began to collect its material at that very early stage. Otherwise a man’s life is too short to start working on such a book after one has started work and been alerted to its need."
Ibn Khillikan comments: "He (i.e. Al-Mundhiri) has said the truth. Whoever knows this book can appreciate his statement. How can any man find the time to write such a book, considering that he only composed it after having made a number of drafts which he revised and corrected. He also wrote other works of value and great interest. His poetry is of good standard."
Such is the scholarly view of Ibn Asakir’s major work. Another scholar who studied this book in depth describes it as a garden where scholars of Hadith, Fiqh, literature, linguistics and history find much that is of interest. Similarly politicians, orators and teachers will find in it much that is useful to them in their respective careers. These are the words of Abd Al-Qadir Badran (d. 1346 A.H., corresponding to A.D. 1928) who produced a summarized version of the book. He writes in his introduction to his abridged version: "However, the author has made it too long by including every chain of transmission, and a repetition of events which was acceptable in his own time. But nowadays it has been neglected because people now find such repetition tedious." Nevertheless, people these days could benefit immensely by this book. Therefore, I decided to reproduce it to them without the repetition and the chains of transmission. I rose up to the challenge, ridding its text of repetition, and leaving chains of transmission in the original work for anyone who needs them. Thus anyone who reads my version will not miss anything of the original and will not be bored by its extensive details.
"I also clarified events as much as possible, and indicated the grades of authenticity of the Hadiths mentioned, and corrected whatever has been distorted of its vocabulary by copy writers."
There is no doubt that the abridged version makes Ibn Asakir’s work much more accessible to modern readers.
Ibn Asakir died in 571 A.H., corresponding to A.D. 1176. May God bestow abundant mercy on his soul.
