Abū Ibrāīm Ismā'īl ibn Yahyā Ibn Ismā'īl Ibn 'Amr Ibn Muslim Al-Muzanī Al-Misrī (791–878 AD/ 174-264 Hijri) was an Islamic jurist and theologian and one of leading member of Shafi'i school. A native of Cairo, he was a close disciple and companion of Imam Shafi'i. He has been called Al-Imam, al-'Allamah, Faqih al-Millah, and 'Alam az-Zahad.[2] He was skilled in the legal verdicts and became one of the inheritors of Imam Shafi’i. Imam Shafi’i said about him: " al-Muzani is the standard-bearer of my school". He lived an ascetic life and died at the age of 89 on the 24th of Ramadan 264/30 May 878 and was buried near Imam al-Shafi'i.
Isma'il ibn Yahya Al-Muzani | |
|---|---|
| Personal life | |
| Born | AH 174 (790/791) CE |
| Died | AH 264 (877/878) CE Cairo, Egypt |
| Era | Abbasid Caliphate |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Sunni |
| Jurisprudence | Shafi'i |
| Muslim leader | |
Influenced by | |
Influenced | |
Works
editInitially a Hanafi, Muzani changed to the Shafi school upon meeting Al-Shafi. He wrote several works, his most famous one being his abridgement of Imam Shafi’i's al-Umm entitled Mukhtasar al-Muzani. An abridgement has been done to this work a 150 years later by the great jurist known as Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni who authored a celebrated work entitled Nihayat al-Matlab fi Dirayat al-Madhhab and is considered the only known abridgement of Mukhtasar al-Muzani.[3] He wrote several other works such as Sharh al-Sunnah, al-Jami’ al-Kabir, al-Saghir, al-Manthur, al-Targhib fi al-‘Ilm, al-Masa’il al-Mu’tabarah, and al-Watha’iq. After Shafiis death he was chastised by many traditionalists for accepting the doctrine that the Quran was created.[4] He then abandoned this position but his reputation was tarnished to such an extent he was not allowed to teach for over a decade.[4]
He was known to have debated many scholars on a variety of issues, mostly with the Hanafi scholars. He is also the uncle of Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi, an important scholar and Imam of the Hanafi school. Muzani was apparently in shock over Tahawis decision to leave to Shafism for Hanafism.[4]
References
edit- ^ "Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal and the Qur'an". jstor.org. JSTOR. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021.
Men would assert as a badge of orthodoxy that their creed was Aḥmad's (e.g. Muzanī, Ṭabirī, Ashʿarī).
- ^ "الكتب - سير أعلام النبلاء - الطبقة الرابعة عشر - المزني- الجزء رقم12". library.islamweb.net. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
- ^ Powers, David; Arabi, Oussama; Spectorsky, Susan (9 October 2013). Islamic Legal Thought A Compendium of Muslim Jurists. Brill. p. 274. ISBN 9789004255883.
- ^ a b c El Shamsy, Ahmed (2015). The canonization of Islamic law: a social and intellectual history (1. paperback ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-54607-3.
