al-Najashi

Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Najashi al-Asadi (born 372/982; died, by the traditional reckoning, 450/1058-9) was a Twelver (Imami) Shia scholar of ilm al-rijal — the science of "men," meaning the critical study of who transmitted hadith reports and whether they were reliable. He belonged to the Arab tribe of Banu Asad and traced his descent to Abdullah al-Najashi, reported to have governed al-Ahwaz under the early Abbasid caliph al-Mansur and to have corresponded with the Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq. He is sometimes called Ibn al-Kufi.

Sources place his birth in 372/982 but disagree whether it was in Kufa or Baghdad; his epithet points to a Kufan family. By his own time he was based in Baghdad, where the leading Imami scholars taught, and he is reported to have made few journeys, chiefly pilgrimage to the shrine cities of Iraq.

He studied under teachers including al-Shaykh al-Mufid, Husayn ibn Ubaydallah al-Ghada'iri, and Ibn Nuh al-Sirafi. His enduring work, Fihrist asma' musannifi l-Shi'a — universally known as Rijal al-Najashi — catalogues Shia authors, their books, and the chains by which those books reached him, and remains a foundational reference for Imami hadith scholarship.

His death date is disputed: the familiar figure of 450 AH was first recorded centuries later by al-Allama al-Hilli, but because al-Najashi himself noted a death occurring in 463 AH, some scholars conclude he lived later, perhaps to about 463/1071.