Biographer

A historian who writes biographies, trying to make sense of the lives of real people, whether living or dead at the time.

"An important and distinctive type of Islamic writing sprang from an impulse similar to that which led to the giving of ijazas: the biographical dictionary. Its origin is to be found in the collection of hadiths. In order to verify a hadith, it was necessary to know who had transmitted it, and from whom he had himself learned it; it was important to be sure that the transmission had been continuous, but also that those who had transmitted it were honest and reliable. Gradually the collection of biographies was extended from the narrators of hadiths to other groups--legal scholars, doctors, Sufi masters, and so on."

Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991).