Al-Mizzī was born near
Aleppo in 1256 under the reign of the last
Ayyubid emir An-Nasir Yusuf. From 1260, the region was ruled by the ''na'ib al-saltana'' (viceroys) of the
Mamluk Sultanate. In childhood, he moved with his family to the village of
al-Mizza outside
Damascus, where he was educated in Qur'ān and fiqh. In his twenties he began his studies to become a
muḥaddith and learned from the masters. His fellow pupil and life-long friend was
Taqī al-Dīn ibn Taymiyya. It was also Taymiyya's ideological influence, which, although contrary to his own Shāfi'ī legalist inclination, that led to a stint in jail. Despite his affiliation with Ibn Taymiyya, he became head of the
Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Ashrafiyya, a leading ḥadīth academy in Damascus, in 1319. And although he professed the
Ash'arī doctrine suspicion continued about his true beliefs. He travelled across the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt,
Syria (), and
Ḥijāz and became the greatest
`Ilm al-rijāl () scholar of the Muslim world and an expert grammarian and philologist of Arabic. He died at
Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyyah in Damascus in 1341/2 and was buried in the
Sufiyyah graveyard. ==Pupils==