Suyūṭī’s father taught Shāfi`ī religious law, and acted as a qāḍī. He died when his son was only 5, but he had made financial arrangements that allowed Suyūṭī to pursue a path of scholarship.  Suyūṭī studied Islamic religious sciences under various teachers; this included the study of ḥadīth, arithmetic for the solution of problems of inheritance, and probably the study of mīqāt and traditional medicine. At 18, he assumed his father’s former position of teaching religious law at the Shaykhū mosque and provided juridical consultative opinions. In 1467, Suyūṭī reinitiated the study of ḥadīth at the mosque of Ibn Ṭulūn. He taught ḥadīth at the Shaykhūniyya madrasa in 1472, and then was given a royal appointment by the Mamlūk Sultan Qā’it Bāy (r. 1468–95) to the directorship of the Baybarsiyya khānqāh; he withdrew from public life in 1501, following a conflict over the finances of the Ṣūfī lodge, and spent the rest of his days editing and revising his works. [A. Dhanani]