Biographical evaluation refers to a discipline of Islamic religious studies within hadith terminology in which the narrators of hadith are evaluated. Its goal is to establish the credibility of the narrators, using both historic and religious knowledge, in order to distinguish authentic and reliable hadiths from unreliable hadiths. ʿIlm ar-rijāl is synonymous with what is commonly referred to as al-jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl – the criticism and declared acceptance of hadith narrators.
Abu Hanifa was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, ascetic, and eponym of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, which remains the most widely practiced to this day. His school predominates in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, Circassia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and some parts of the Arab world.
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Umar ibn Waqid al-Aslami was a historian commonly referred to as al-Waqidi. His surname is derived from his grandfather's name Waqid, and thus he became famous as al-Imam al-Waqidi. Al-Waqidi was an early Muslim historian and biographer of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, specializing in his military campaigns. He served as a judge (qadi) for the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun. Several of al-Waqidi's works are known through his scribe and student, Ibn Sa'd.
Abū Hurayra ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣakhr al-Dawsī al-Zahrānī, commonly known as Abū Hurayra, was a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the most prolific hadith narrator in Sunni Islam.
Al-Mustadrak 'ala al-Sahihayn or Mustadrak Al Hakim is a five volume hadith collection written by Hakim al-Nishapuri. He wrote it in the year AH 393, when he was 72 years old.
Al-Barāʾ ibn Mālik al-Anṣārī was one of the Sahaba, an Ansar belonging to the Banū al-Najjār branch of the Banu Khazraj. He was the brother of Anas ibn Malik.
Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī, commonly known as at-Tahawi, was an Egyptian Arab Hanafi jurist and Traditionalist theologian. He studied with his uncle al-Muzani and was a Shafi'i jurist, before then changing to the Hanafi school. He is known for his work al-'Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah, a summary of Sunni Islamic creed which influenced Hanafis in Egypt.
Yaḥyā ibn Maʻīn (774-847), was a classical Islamic scholar in the field of hadith. He was a close friend of Ahmad ibn Hanbal for much of his life. Ibn Ma'in is known to have spent all of his inheritance on seeking hadith to the extent he became extremely needy.
Hammam ibn Munabbih was an Islamic scholar, from among the Tabi‘in and one of the narrators of hadith.
Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Darimi was a Muslim scholar and Imam of Arab ancestry. His best known work is Sunan al-Darimi, a book collection of hadith.
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (Arabic: ابن حجر العسقلاني; 18 February 1372 – 2 February 1449 CE / 773 – 852 A.H.), or simply Ibn Ḥajar, was a classic Islamic scholar "whose life work constitutes the final summation of the science of hadith." He authored some 150 works on hadith, history, biography, exegesis, poetry, and Shafi'i jurisprudence, the most valued of which being his commentary of Sahih al-Bukhari, titled Fath al-Bari. He is known by the honorific epithets Hafiz al-Asr, Shaykh al-Islam, and Amir al-Mu'minin fi al-Hadith.
Abu Bakr Ahmad bin `Amr ad-Dahhak bin Makhlad ash-Shaibani, widely known as Ibn Abi Asim, was an Iraqi Sunni scholar of the 9th century. He is most famous for his work in the field of hadith science.
Abū Sufyān Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ ibn Malīḥ al-Ruʾāsī al-Kilābī al-Kufī (745/47–812) was a prominent hadith scholar based in Kufa. He was one of the principal teachers of the major Sunni Muslim jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
Abu Salih as-Samman was an early Islamic scholar of Medinah. He was a narrator of Hadith is among the Tabi'un generation of Muslims.
Abū Bakr az-Zubaydī, also known as Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Madḥīj al-Faqīh and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan az-Zubaydī al-Ishbīlī, held the title Akhbār al-fuquhā and wrote books on topics including philology, biography, history, philosophy, law, lexicology, and hadith.
Ibn Kullab was an early Sunni theologian (mutakallim) in Basra and Baghdad in the first half of the 9th century during the time of the Mihna and belonged, according to Ibn al-Nadim, to the traditionalist group of the Nawabit. His movement, also called Kullabiyya, merged and developed into Ash'arism, which, along with Maturidism and Atharism, forms the theological basis of Sunni Islam.
Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Karram al-Sijistani was an ascetic, hellfire preacher, hadith narrator, and a literalist theologian who founded the Karramiyya sect. His views were considered heretical, schismatic, and abominable by the majority of Sunni scholars. He was accused of holding the doctrine of anthropomorphism, and that his chief theological doctrine was that God is a substance (jawhar) and that he had a body (jism); for which reason his followers were commonly called the "Mujassima" (corporealists) and "Mushabbiha" (anthropomorphists).
Abū Abd al-Raḥmān Abdallāh Ibn Lahīʿa ibn ʿUqba ibn Furʿān ibn Rabīʿa ibn Thawbān al-Ḥaḍramī al-Aʿdūlī more commonly known as Ibn Lahi'a, was an Arab historian, scholar of hadith and Qadi of Egypt. Famed for being the first judge of Egypt to be appointed directly by a caliph.
