Do You Have To Know CIL To Make A Compiler for .NET?

Question

Assume one wants to create a simple .NET language, or slightly more difficult, a compiler for an existing .NET language. Do you absolutely need to be familiar with the CIL (Common Intermediate Language) to implement a compiler? And do you have to translate the syntax of your language to CIL by hand? Or is there another (more preferable) way? If not, what is the best way to learn CIL and especially to learn how to translate High-Level code to CIL?