al-Suyuti

[9][10] Considered the mujtahid and mujaddid of the Islamic 10th century,[11] he was a leading muhaddith (hadith master), mufassir (Qu'ran exegete), faqīh (jurist), usuli (legal theorist), sufi (mystic), theologian, grammarian, linguist, rhetorician, philologist, lexicographer and historian, who authored works in virtually every Islamic science.

[16] His biographical dictionary Bughyat al-Wuʻāh fī Ṭabaqāt al-Lughawīyīn wa-al-Nuḥāh contains valuable accounts of prominent figures in the early development of Arabic philology.

[17] Al-Suyuti was born to a family of Persian descent on 3 October 1445 AD (1 Rajab 849 AH) in Cairo in the Mamluk Sultanate.

He became a Ḥāfiẓ of the Qu'ran at the age of eight years, followed by studying the Shafi'i and Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh), traditions (hadith), exegesis (tafsir), theology, history, rhetoric, philosophy, philology, arithmetic, timekeeping (miqat) and medicine.

[12] In his thirst for quest for knowledge, Al-Suyuti travelled to Syria, Hejaz (Mecca & Medina), Yemen, Iraq, India, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mali as well as to educational hubs in Egypt such as Mahalla, Dumyat, and Fayyum.

Al-Suyuti became the head master of Hadith at the Shaykhuniyya school in Cairo, at the suggestion of Imam Kamal al-Din ibn al-Humam.

In 1486, Sultan Qaitbay appointed him shaykh at the Khanqah of Baybars II, a Sufi lodge,[21] but was sacked due to protests from other scholars whom he had replaced.

[22] Ibn Iyas, in his book called Tarikh Misr, said that when al-Suyuti became forty years of age, he left the company of men for the solitude of the garden of al-Miqyas, close to the River Nile, where he abandoned his friends and former co-workers as if he had never met them before.

[12] Rich and Influential Muslims and rulers would visit him with large sums of money and gifts but he rejected their offers and also refused the king many times when he ordered al-Suyuti's to be summoned.

In his writing, Al-Suyuti presented that he considered Ibn 'Arabi a Wali (Friend of Allah) whose books are prohibited to those who read them without first learning the sophisticated terms used by the Sufis.

[24][25] He does, however, agree with Al-Ghazali's conservative view of kalam, which states that the science should be studied by scholars who meet the necessary requirements to administer the appropriate dosages as bitter medicine to people who are in dire need.

"Al-Suyuti claimed to be a mujtahid (an authority on source interpretation who gives legal statements on jurisprudence, hadith studies, and Arabic language).

He focuses on diet and natural remedies for serious ailments such as rabies and smallpox, and for simple conditions such as headaches and nosebleeds, and mentions the cosmology behind the principles of medical ethics.

[31] Al-Suyuti also wrote a number of Islamic sexual education manuscripts that represent major works in the genre, which began in the 10th-century in Baghdad.