When the Yemeni scholar ash-Shawkani was asked whether anyone could still write a commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, he answered with a pun on a hadith: there is no emigration after the Conquest — no commentary after Al-Fath. He meant Al-Hafiz Shihab ad-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (ابن حجر العسقلاني, 773–852 AH / 1372–1449 CE), an orphan from old Cairo who became the chief judge of Egypt, wrote more than 150 books, and spent twenty-five years producing the single most important work of hadith commentary in Islam. This is a documented account of his life, drawn from the classical sources, along with a note on his creed as understood by Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jama‘ah.
Name, Lineage and Birth
He is Abul-Fadl Shihab ad-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Kinani al-‘Asqalani ash-Shafi‘i, known to the world as Ibn Hajar. His family descended from the Arab tribe of Kinanah and traced its home to ‘Asqalan in Palestine, though he himself was Egyptian by birth and by life.
He was born on 12 Sha‘ban 773 AH (February 1372 CE) in old Cairo, on the bank of the Nile. He was orphaned young: his mother died while he was an infant, and his father — a scholar and poet in his own right — died in 777 AH, when Ibn Hajar was four. He was raised by his appointed guardian, the merchant Zaki ad-Din al-Kharrubi, who took his education seriously.
He completed memorising the Qur’an at nine. At twelve his guardian took him to Makkah, where he stayed and where he led the Tarawih prayer in the Sacred Mosque. He then memorised the standard teaching texts of the age — Al-‘Umdah, Al-Hawi as-Saghir, Mukhtasar Ibn al-Hajib and others — and recited the Qur’an in the seven canonical readings before at-Tanukhi.
Ten Years With Al-‘Iraqi
His turn towards hadith came in his early twenties and it was decisive. He attached himself to Al-Hafiz Zayn ad-Din al-‘Iraqi, the leading hadith scholar of Egypt, and remained with him for ten years. Al-‘Iraqi is the teacher who made him; it was he who first called his student hafiz and authorised him to teach and issue fatwa.
He also studied under Siraj ad-Din al-Bulqini and Siraj ad-Din Ibn al-Mulaqqin in Shafi‘i fiqh, al-‘Izz ibn Jama‘ah in the Qur’anic and hadith sciences, and Majd ad-Din al-Fayruzabadi — the author of the great dictionary Al-Qamus al-Muhit — in language. He then travelled for hadith in the classical manner, to the Hijaz, Yemen, Syria and Palestine, collecting narrations and elevated chains.
Chief Judge of Egypt
Ibn Hajar taught tafsir, hadith and fiqh, and preached at al-Azhar, the Mosque of ‘Amr and elsewhere. He dictated to students from memory, and scholars travelled to Cairo specifically to hear him.
He was reluctant to take judicial office and initially refused it, accepting only when al-Bulqini pressed him to sit in his place. He was appointed Chief Judge (Qadi al-Qudat) of the Shafi‘is on 12 Muharram 827 AH, and held the post on and off for more than twenty-one years, resigning and being recalled repeatedly — the last time in 852 AH, the year he died. Syria was added to his jurisdiction. The repeated resignations are themselves informative: he was a scholar pressed into administration, not an administrator with scholarly credentials.
As-Sakhawi, who knew him closely, describes a man who was forbearing, patient and unfailingly courteous to high and low alike, ascetic in his own habits and generous with what he had, given to voluntary fasting and night prayer — and, unusually for the genre, notes that he was good company, fond of a light joke and a well-told anecdote.
Fath al-Bari
He wrote the introduction, Hady as-Sari, in 813 AH, began the commentary proper in 817 AH, and finished it in Rajab 842 AH — roughly twenty-five years of work. On its completion he held a banquet for the scholars and dignitaries of Cairo, spending five hundred dinars on it; the book was then copied for kings, one of whom paid three hundred dinars for a single copy.
Six centuries later, no serious study of Sahih al-Bukhari proceeds without it. It is not merely an explanation of the text: it reconciles apparent contradictions, traces every narrator, adjudicates between the fiqh positions the hadith touch, and gathers the variant routes of each narration.
| Work | Field & Note |
|---|---|
| Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari | The commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari. The single most consulted work of hadith commentary in Islam. |
| Bulugh al-Maram min Adillat al-Ahkam | 1,358 hadith of legal rulings, arranged by chapter of fiqh, with the source of every narration named and the differences between versions noted. The standard first text in ahadith al-ahkam worldwide. |
| Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz as-Sahabah | The definitive biographical dictionary of the Companions, distinguishing established Companions from those wrongly claimed as such. |
| Tahdhib at-Tahdhib & Taqrib at-Tahdhib | His refinement of the narrator biographies of the Six Books, and its condensation into a single-volume verdict on each narrator — still the working reference of every student of rijal. |
| Lisan al-Mizan | His expansion of adh-Dhahabi’s Mizan al-I‘tidal on criticised narrators. |
| Nukhbat al-Fikar & Nuzhat an-Nazar | A short treatise on hadith terminology and his own commentary on it — the most widely taught introduction to mustalah al-hadith ever written. |
| Talkhis al-Habir & Al-Matalib al-‘Aliyah | Verification of the hadith cited in Shafi‘i legal works, and a compilation from the less-circulated Musnad collections. |
| Ad-Durar al-Kaminah & Inba’ al-Ghumr | Biographical and historical chronicles of the eighth and ninth centuries AH — primary sources for Mamluk history. |
His students carried the work forward: Shams ad-Din as-Sakhawi, who wrote his biography and the standard manual of hadith methodology; Burhan ad-Din al-Biqa‘i; Zakariyya al-Ansari, later Chief Judge himself; and Ibn Qutlubugha the Hanafi.
His Death
He died after the ‘Isha prayer on the night of Saturday, 28 Dhul-Hijjah 852 AH (22 February 1449 CE), in Cairo, at the age of seventy-nine. As-Sakhawi records that the funeral drew an enormous crowd — the sultan and the caliph among them — and that prayers in absentia were performed for him as far away as Makkah and Damascus.
He had been an orphan with a guardian and a memorised Qur’an. He left behind a library that the Ummah has not stopped reading since. The Prophet ﷺ said:
“When a man dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: an ongoing charity, knowledge that is benefited from, or a righteous child who supplicates for him.”
Sahih Muslim 1631
May Allah have mercy on Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar and reward him on behalf of the Ummah of Muhammad ﷺ.
Books by Ibn Hajar Al-‘Asqalani at Dar-us-Salam
- Bulugh Al-Maram (English)
Arabic text with English translation, and brief explanatory notes drawn from Subul as-Salam of Muhammad ibn Isma‘il as-San‘ani. Each hadith carries its grading and its source. If you buy one book of ahadith al-ahkam, this is it. - Arabic: Bulugh Al-Maram (Large)
The Arabic text alone, in a large, clearly set edition for study and memorisation. - Arabic: Bulugh Al-Maram (Pocket Size)
The same text sized to carry — the traditional way this book has always been memorised. - Urdu: Bulugh-ul-Maram (2 Vol. Set)
Arabic with Urdu translation by Mawlana Abdul-Wakeel Alawi and commentary by Shaykh Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri.
Closely related titles. Not by Ibn Hajar, but the works his own scholarship was built upon:
- Sahih Al-Bukhari (9 Vol. Set)
The collection that Fath al-Bari exists to explain, in Dar-us-Salam’s complete English edition. - Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari
2,220 hadith condensed into one volume, for the reader not yet ready for the full nine.
