Abu Muhammad Abdullah ibn Abd al-Hakam ibn A'yan al-Misri al-Maliki was born in 150 AH (767 CE) in Alexandria and became the foremost Maliki jurist of Egypt. Having received Imam Malik's law and legal methodology from three great Egyptian scholars — Ibn al-Qasim, Ibn Wahb, and Ashhab al-Qaysi — he succeeded Ashhab as the leading mufti of the Maliki school in Egypt. He authored a biography of the caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz and three legal compendia (al-Mukhtasar al-kabir with some 18,000 issues, al-awsat, and al-saghir), and was the patriarch of the family that produced the historian Ibn Abd al-Hakam through his sons Muhammad, Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Hakam, and Sa'd. He died in Ramadan 214 AH (November 829 CE) in Cairo and was buried beside the grave of Imam al-Shafi'i in the Qarafa cemetery (Ibn Hibban gives 213 AH). Sources: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi "İbn Abdülhakem, Abdullah" (vol. 19, pp. 276–277); Qadi Iyad, Tartib al-madarik.