Nur al-Din al-Haythami

Nur al-Din Ali ibn Abi Bakr al-Haythami (735-807 AH / c. 1335-1405 CE) was a hadith scholar of Mamluk-era Cairo, remembered above all for the work of gathering and grading Prophetic traditions. He belonged to the Shafi'i madhhab (one of the four Sunni schools of law) and, by the report of later biographers, held the Ash'ari theological creed; both labels are how the tradition classifies him rather than claims he made about himself.

As a young man he attached himself to the renowned traditionist Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi, who was only about a decade his senior. Biographers report that the bond became both scholarly and familial: al-Iraqi gave him his daughter in marriage, and al-Haythami accompanied him on his teaching travels across Egypt and the wider region. He is described as a modest man content to work in his teacher's shadow.

His enduring contribution is the science of zawa'id, the "additions": tracing hadith that appear in major collections such as the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the works of al-Tabarani but not in the six canonical books, and assessing their reliability. His best-known compilation, Majma' al-Zawa'id wa-Manba' al-Fawa'id, organises thousands of such reports by legal topic with notes on their soundness. Among his students was the great hadith master Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. He is traditionally reported to have died in Cairo on 19 Ramadan 807 AH (1405 CE).