Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi

Timeline

1. 1002–1028Baghdad · IraqAl-Khatib al-Baghdadi was born at Darzijan near Baghdad into a religious family; his father was a mosque preacher. From childhood he studied hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, and history in Baghdad under several renowned scholars, showing exceptional memory and scholarly aptitude at an early age; he is said to have begun recording hadith at the age of eleven.
2. c. 1028–1060Nishapur, Damascus, Tyre, and elsewhere · Greater Khorasan and Greater SyriaOwing to political turmoil in Baghdad (the late Buyid period and the Seljuk takeover), al-Khatib traveled across the Islamic world, studying under teachers in Nishapur, Damascus, Tyre, and elsewhere while teaching hadith and collecting a great deal of biographical material. During this period he began compiling Tarikh Baghdad, consulting surviving scholars and texts and accumulating decades of primary source material.
3. c. 1060–1071Baghdad · IraqIn his late years al-Khatib returned to Baghdad, where he completed and finalized Tarikh Baghdad, a fourteen-volume work containing some 7,800 biographies of scholars, statesmen, and poets connected with Baghdad and a high point of Islamic biographical literature. Before his death he donated his entire library and property to a group of scholars; he died in Baghdad in 1071 at about the age of 69.