Abū Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUmar b. Aḥmad b. Mahdī al-Dāraquṭnī (306-85/918-95) was a leading Sunnī ḥadīth scholar of the fourth/tenth century. Known as "the imām of his time" in ḥadīth , later Sunnī scholars often saw al-Dāraquṭnī as the last great ḥadīth scholar of the halcyon days of the Sunnī tradition. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071), who was a great admirer, referred to him as "one of the forefathers (mutaqaddimīn)." Born in Baghdad, al-Dāraquṭnī took his unusual nisba from Dār al-Quṭn,