Al-Dhahabi

He began his study of hadith at age eighteen, travelling from Damascus to Baalbek, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, Nabulus, Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Hijaz, and elsewhere, before returning to Damascus to teach and write.

He authored many works and was widely renown as a perspicuous critic and expert examiner of the hadith.

He wrote an encyclopaedic biographical history and was the foremost authority on the canonical readings of the Qur'an.

[9] Adh-Dhahabi lost his sight two years before he died, leaving three children: the eldest, his daughter, Amat al-'Aziz, and his two sons, 'Abd Allah and Abu Hurayra 'Abd al-Rahman.

His history of medicine begins with Ancient Greek and Indian practices and practitioners, such as Hippocrates, Galen, etc., through the Pre-Islamic Arabian era, to Prophetic medicine — as revealed by the Muslim prophet Muhammad— to the medical knowledge contained in works of scholars such as Ibn Sina.