Died 1423
Scholar

Traveling Scholar. Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Rahim, known as Ibn al-'Iraqi, was born in Cairo in 1360 into a prominent intellectual family. His father, also known as Ibn al-'Iraqi, took an early hand in his son's education and, before the boy was three years of age, took him before some of the best-known teachers in Cairo. At age three, Ahmad made his first journey of "learning" with his father, traveling to Damascus and Jerusalem, where he visited the leading scholars and hadith transmitters of the time, hearing their lessons and hadiths firsthand. Although it seems doubtful that he would remember much of anything from these encounters, his father was able to secure ijazahs that later gave his son the distinction of having connections to a previous generation of transmitters. Ahmad's education in Cairo focused on law, grammar, and hadiths, and he received fellowships in...