al-Hafiz al-Tahir ibn al-Ahdal, Yemen's musnid

The hafiz Jamal al-Din al-Tahir ibn al-Husayn ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Ahdal, hadith master of the Yemeni lands. He was born in 914 AH in the village of al-Marawi, then moved to Zabid, where he attached himself to the hafiz Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Dayba' and benefited from him to the point of perfection, and surpassed his peers. ¹.

Among his shaykhs were Abu al-Abbas al-Tanbadhawi, Wajih al-Din ibn Ziyad, al-Sayyid Abd al-Muhsin al-Ahdal and Burhan al-Din Mutayr. He travelled to Mecca and resided there, and met the Shaykh al-Islam Abu al-Hasan al-Bakri and the hafiz Abu al-Sa'adat al-Maliki. ¹.

After his shaykh Ibn al-Dayba' he alone held the leadership of hadith, and people travelled to him and many took from him. Among them were the hafiz Muhyi al-Din al-Yazzaz, al-Sabuni and Ibn Ja'man, and his maternal grandson, the scholar al-Sayyid al-Husayn ibn Abi Bakr ibn al-Tahir, was trained by him. He was the unique of his age in knowledge, practice, memorisation, precision and knowledge of the names of the transmitters and all the sciences of hadith, to the extent that he was the master of hadith of the world. He died on Wednesday, the seventeenth of Rabi' al-Awwal in Zabid, and was buried at the Bab Sahaam cemetery of his family. ¹.