Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani was born in Cairo in 1372. He began his studies at the age of five and completed the memorisation of the Quran by the age of nine. A Shafi 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 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 1449.