You can probably narrate the life of a footballer, a singer, or the characters of a show you finished last week. Their childhood, their feuds, their downfall.
Now answer honestly: could you name the ten companions promised Paradise while they were alive?
We have memorized the lives of people who will not weigh a single atom in our favor on the Day of Judgement, but for those that strived to teach us our deen are stranger to us.
Nearly a thousand years ago, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (رحمه الله), commenting on the Muwaṭṭaʾ in his al-Istidhkār, ranked knowledge of this history as a mark of the people of knowledge itself.
Knowing the biographies, the days of Islam, the lives of the Prophets and the scholars, and even the dates they passed away, he said, is from the knowledge that belongs to the people of knowledge.
Then the line that should sting:
«وأنه مما لا ينبغي لمن وسم نفسه بالعلم جهلُ ذلك»
"It does not befit anyone who brands himself with knowledge to be ignorant of this."
Knowing the people this religion stands on was never extra.
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istidhkār