13th-century biographers

Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi () (October 1233 – 21 December 1277) was a Sunni Shafi'ite jurist and hadith scholar. Al-Nawawi died at the relatively early age of 45. Despite this, he authored numerous and lengthy works ranging from hadith, to theology, biography, and jurisprudence that are still read to this day. Al-Nawawi, along with Abu al-Qasim al-Rafi'i, are leading jurists of the earlier classical age, known by the Shafi'i school as the Two Shaykhs (al-Shaykhayn).

Moorish historian

'''Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan 'Alī ibn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm ibn 'Abd al-Wahid al-Shaybānī (), called al-Qifṭī' (; – 1248), was an Egyptian Arab historian, biographer, encyclopedist and administrator under the Ayyubid rulers of Aleppo. His biographical dictionary Kitāb Ikhbār al-'Ulamā' bi Akhbār al-Ḥukamā'' (, tr. 'History of Learned Men') is an important source of Islamic biography. Much of his vast literary output is lost, including his histories of the Seljuks, Buyids and the Maghreb, and biographical dictionaries of philosophers and philologists.

Moroccan scholar