Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi

Abd al-Ghani ibn Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi (Arabic: عبد الغني بن عبد الوحيد المقدسي, romanized: ʿAbd al-Ghāni ibn ʿAbd al-Waḥīd al-Maqdisī; 1146 – 1203) was a classical Sunni Islamic scholar and a prominent hadith master.^[3] He was born in 1146 CE (541 AH) in the village of Jummail in Palestine. He studied with scholars in Damascus; many of whom were from his own extended family. He studied with the Imam of Tasawwuf, Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani. He was the first person to establish a school on Mount Qasioun near Damascus. He died in 1203 CE (600 AH).^[5]

He was a relative of Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi, as his mother and Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi's grandmother were sisters.^[6] He had three sons named Muhammad, Abdullah and Abdur-Rahman, all of whom became prominent scholars. The scholar, Ibn Qudamah al-Maqdisi was the maternal cousin of Abdul-Ghani, and Ibn Qudāmah described his association with Abdul-Ghani as:

"My friend in childhood and in seeking knowledge, and never did we race to goodness except that he would precede me to it, with the exception of [a] small [number of occasions]"^[7]

He was the author of Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, a collection of biographies of hadith narrators within the Islamic discipline of biographical evaluation.