Zain ad-Din, Abu al-Faraj, 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn Ahmad ibn 'Abd ar-Rahman ibn al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Abi al-Barakat Mas'ud as-Sulami, al-Baghdadi, al-Hanbali, also known as Ibn Rajab, which was a nickname he inherited from his grandfather who was born in the month of Rajab, was a Muslim scholar.
Biography
Imam Ibn Rajab was born in Baghdad in 1335. His grandfather was a scholar of Islam with a focus in Hadith. His father, also born in Baghdad, studied under a number of scholars. At the age of five Ibn Rajab's family moved to Damascus, then traveled to Jerusalem where he studied under al-Alla'i, then back to Baghdad and from there to Mecca. While in Mecca his father arranged for him to study Islam as well. He then traveled to Egypt before returning to Damascus, where he taught students of his own. Some of the scholars he studied under were Ibn an-Naqeeb, as-Subki, al-Iraqi, and Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Khabbaz. He also studied with Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah up to Ibn al-Qayyim's death. Ibn Rajab's commentary on the forty hadith of Nawawi is one of the largest and is generally considered the best commentary available. Near the end of his life, Ibn Rajab began composing a commentary on Sahih Bukhari, but unfortunately only reached the chapter on the funeral prayers before he died. He had named his work Fath al-Bari and what he did write has been published by Dar Ibn al-Jawzi in seven volumes. This amounts to less than a sixth of Sahih Bukhari. Twenty years after Ibn Rajab's death, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani began his commentary on Sahih Bukhari and gave his own work the same title in honour of Ibn Rajab.
Death
Ibn Rajab died on a Monday night 4th of Ramadhan 795AH, at the age of fifty-nine, in a garden area he had rented in Damascus. His funeral prayer was performed the next day and he was buried in the Baab as-Sagheer graveyard.
Ibn Qadi Shuhbah said of him in his biography: "He read and became proficient in the various fields of science. He engrossed himself with the issues of the maddhab until he mastered it. He devoted himself to the occupation of knowledge of the texts, defects and meanings of the Hadith. And he withdrew himself in seclusion in order to write." Al-Hafidh ibn Hajr al-Asqalani said of him: "He was highly proficient in the scientific disciplines of Hadith in terms of the names of reporters, their biographies, their paths of narration and awareness of their meanings." Imaam ibn Muflih al-Hanbali said of him: "He was the Shaikh, the great scholar, the Hafidh, the one who abstained from the worldly life. He was the Shaikh of the Hanbali maddhab and he wrote many beneficial books."
