Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās

Training under al-Dimyāṭī, Quṭb al-Dīn al-Qasṭallānī and Muḥammad Ibn-Ibrāhīm Ibn-Ǧamāʿa is recorded. Al-Dhahabi and Ṣafadī, Khalīl ibn Aybak are recorded as having studied under Fatḥ al-Din Ibn Sayyid al-Nās. the recorded working language is Arabic. Works named in the authority record are ʻUyūn al-athar fī funūn al-maghāzī wa-al-shamāʼil wa-al-siyar, Nūr al-ʿuyūn fī talẖīṣ sīraẗ al-amīn al-maʾmūn and al-Nafḥ al-shadhī fī sharḥ Jāmiʻ al-Tirmidhī.

• Region — Egypt • Era — Medieval era • Name — Ibn Sayyid al-Nas • Born — 1272 • Birthplace — Cairo • Died — 1334 • School Tradition — Zahiri

Although Ibn Sayyid al-Nas was himself an Egyptian, he was descended from a Muslim Andalusian family from Seville. The family fled due to hostility from Christians, who eventually took the city in 1248. His grandfather Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Ahmad was born in 1200 and settled in Tunis, where Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' father was born in October 1247. His grandfather died in 1261. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas died in the year 1334, corresponding to 734 in the Hijri calendar. He was known as an adherent of the Zahiri school of Sunni Islam.

Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' biography of the prophet Muhammad is well known. Some of the isnads, or chains of narration establishing the historicity of claims, are unique; Ibn Hisham, arguably the most respected classical biographer, included events in his version of the prophetic biography whose chains of narration are only available in Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' work. During his time, he was also considered one of Cairo's greatest composers of poetry in praise of Muhammad. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas along with Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati were often the presiding "judges" during poetic contests during the reign of Mamluk sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad. Slimane of Morocco, the sultan of Morocco in the early 1800s who greatly restricted the acceptable reading material in his sultanate, designated Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' prophetic biography as one of only two approved works. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas was respected among hadith circles for his transmissions of a recension of Sahih al-Bukhari, the most significant collection of prophetic tradition in Sunni Islam. In regard to the widely reported raid of Hudhayl, Ibn Sayyid al-Nas' transmission is nearly identical to the narrations of Muhammad al-Bukhari himself, save seven small differences, six copyist errors and one difference in a single word.