Ibn al-Qaisarani

Abu al-Fadl Muhammad ibn Tahir ibn Ali al-Qaysarani (; 1057–September 1113), known simply as Ibn Tahir, was an Islamic scholar, historian and traditionist. He is largely credited with being the first to delineate and define the Six Books of Sunni Islam after the Qur'an, and the first person to include Sunan Ibn Maja as a canonical work.

Biography Ibn Tahir was born in Jerusalem in about 1057 to an Arab family originally from Caesarea, hence his name. Because of the Arabic name for Jerusalem being "Bait al-Maqdis," he was often nicknamed "Maqdisi" or the man from Jerusalem instead. His birth date is recorded by Ibn Khallikan as 6 Shawwal in 448 on the Islamic calendar, which William McGuckin de Slane reckoned as December 1056 on the Gregorian calendar.

Ibn Tahir traveled extensively in search of hadith, or narrations and reports, from the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He began learning hadith at the age of twelve and moved to Baghdad at the age of nineteen; after spending some time in Iraq, he returned to his hometown briefly before proceeding to perform the Muslim pilgrimage at Mecca.

Ibn Tahir died in Baghdad on a Friday while returning from another pilgrimage at Mecca, which he had performed multiple times during his life. Ibn Khallikan records the date as 28 Rabi al-awwal in the Hijri year 507, reckoned by de Slane as September 1113 Gregorian.

Works Ibn Tahir is widely regarded as the first person to index the six canonical books of Sunni tradition: , , , , , and the aforementioned .

It was also due to Ibn Tahir's indexing efforts that Ibn Maja's collection was allotted the same respect as the other five main canonical Sunni works. Prior to Ibn Tahir's inclusion of Ibn Majah's collection in his indexing of the Sunni cannon, major hadith scholars such as Ibn al-Salah didn't actually hold Ibn Majah's work in the high esteem it would later enjoy. Ibn Tahir's index was also the first instance of formally organizing the Sunni cannon based around specific books of hadith. Given that his index predates Ali ibn al-Athir's The Complete History and Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal by at least a century, modern scholarship has credited Ibn Tahir with the establishment of the foundation for the Sunni Muslim cannon. Having also been a practitioner of Sufism, Ibn Tahir wrote about the subject in both prose and poetry. OCLC 715731207

Original works Al-Mu'talif wa-l-mukhtalaf fi-l-ansab. Dar al-Kotb al-Ilmieh, 1991. Arabic. 225 pages. Amazon Standard Identification Number B004C2LSEO