Abu’l-Fadl Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Ali al-Kannani al Asqalani, better known by the name of Imam Ibn Hajar, was born in Cairo in 773/1372. He began his studies at the age of five and completed the memorisation of the Qur’an by the age of nine. A Shafi`i scholar and hadith master, he studied under renowned scholars in Cairo, Yemen, and the Hijaz. Known as Shaykh al-Islam, scholars travelled from faraway lands to take knowledge from him. Appointed to the position of chief-judge several times, he authored more than fifty works on hadith, history, biography, Quranic exegesis, poetry, and Shafi`i jurisprudence; among the most famous of them is his fourteen-volume commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari called Fath al-Bari. He passed away in Cairo in 852/1449.