Imam Qasim ibn Qutlubugha al-Hanafi

Abū al-ʿAdl Zayn al-Dīn Qāsim ibn Quṭlūbughā ibn ʿAbd-Allāh al-Sūdūnī al-Jamālī (frequently referred to as Ibn Quṭlūbughā, al-Shaykh Qāsim, or Qāsim al-Ḥanafī) [39] was born in Cairo in Muḥarram of either 801/1398 or 802/1399.[40] His father, Sayf al-Dīn Quṭlūbughā ibn ʿAbd-Allāh, was one of a number of Mamluk bondsmen freed by the Amir Sūdūn al-Shaykhūnī, a vicegerent of the Sultan, and from whence the family received the name ‘Sūdūnī’.[41] The father was himself a Ḥanafī faqīh in his time, but died a little over a year after the birth of his son Qāsim, in mid-Jumāda i 803.[42] Ibn Quṭlūbughā thus grew up an orphan; in his youth, he memorised the Koran as well as a number of books that he then recited to the famous Shāfiʿī jurist, al-ʿIzz Ibn Jamāʿa,[43] all whilst supporting himself as a tailor (at which, Sakhāwī remarks, he became quite accomplished and skilful). He soon turned himself over completely to his studies with a number of teachers, of whom his most long-standing fellowship was with the Ḥanafī jurist Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-Humām.[44]

Ibn Quṭlūbughā studied a wide array of linguistic and traditional religious sciences with a number of scholars. After beginning his studies with ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn Jamāʿa, he learnt the science of Koran recitation from Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Zarātītī; Koranic exegesis (tafsīr) with ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Bukhārī; the sciences of hadith with Tāj al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Farghānī al-Nuʿmānī, the judge of Baghdād; fiqh with Ibn Jamāʿa, Sirāj al-Dīn Qāriʾ al-Hidāya, Majd al-Dīn al-Rūmī, al-Naẓẓām al-Sayrāmī, ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Baghdādī, and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Kirmānī; legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) with the aforementioned Bukhārī, Qāriʾ al-Hidāya, and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Subkī; the principles of religion (uṣūl al-dīn) with Bukhārī and Shams al-Dīn al-Bisāṭī; theology under Saʿd al-Dīn Ibn al-Dayrī, with whom he studied the master’s commentary on the ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafī; inheritance law and timekeeping (mīqāt) with Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bārnabārī; arithmetic (ḥisāb) with al-Sayyid ʿAlī al-Azharī, a student of Ibn al-Majdī;[45] Arabic with Bukhārī, al-Farghānī al-Nuʿmānī, Rūmī, and Subkī; morphology (ṣarf) with Bisāṭī; the sub-disciplines of Arabic rhetoric (al-maʿānī and al-bayān) with Bukhārī, Naẓẓām, and Bisāṭī; and logic with Subkī. He spent time reading collections of poetry and literature, and memorising great amounts therefrom. However, he benefitted most as a scholar from his fellowship with Ibn al-Humām. He audited the majority of Ibn al-Humām’s lessons in a range of disciplines, from the year 825/1421–1422 until Ibn al-Humām’s death in 861/1457. He read with him the first fourth of the master’s commentary on al-Hidāya, Fatḥ al-Qadīr, a portion of the Tawḍīḥ in scholastic jurisprudence of Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Maḥbūbī, and the entirety of the master’s own work on the Muslim creed entitled al-Musāyara.[46]

He also embarked upon the study of hadith, studying under Ibn Ḥajar al- ʿAsqalānī, Ibn al-Jazarī, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī, Zayn al-Dīn al-Zarkahsī, Shams al-Dīn Ibn al-Miṣrī, Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥusayn al-Buṣīrī, Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Fāqūsī, Tāj al-Dīn al-Sharābīshī, Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī, ʿĀʾisha al-Ḥanbaliyya, and others of that generation of narrators of hadith. In his early years, he travelled with his teacher Tāj al-Dīn al-Nuʿmānī to the Levant, hearing from his teacher Khwārazmī’s Jāmiʿ Masānīd Abī Ḥanīfa, with the master’s chain of transmission from&nbsp;Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan Ḥaydara ibn Abī al-Faḍāʾil Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-ʿAbbāsī (the lecturer of the Mustanṣiriyya in Baghdad) < Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd-Allāh ibn al-Ṣabbāgh < the author, Abū al-Muʾayyad Muḥammad al-Khwārazmī. On the same trip, he studied the ʿUlūm al-ḥadīth of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and other works, after which Nuʿmānī granted him a licence of scholarship in 823/1428–1429. He also spent time in Alexandria, studying there under Kamāl al-Dīn ibn Khayr and Qāsim al-Tarūjī.[47]

He travelled to Damascus, performed the Hajj-pilgrimage multiple times, and visited Jerusalem; during these travels, he accumulated a number of licences to teach, from as early as the year 816/1413. Sakhāwī reports that Ibn Quṭlūbughā began authoring works in 820/1417–1418, at approximately the age of 19.[48] He soon became known for his strong memory and sharp intelligence, and began to draw attention for the breadth of his knowledge, and received the licence to give fatwas and to teach (ijāzat al-iftāʾ wa-al-tadrīs) from an array of scholars. He was soon being described by his own teacher al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn al-Dayrī as ‘the sheikh, the scholar, the most intelligent (al-shaykh al-ʿālim aldhakī)’, and by 835/1431 was praised by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī as ‘the imam, the most learned, the hadith-master, the jurist, the memoriser of hadith (al-imām al-ʿallāma al-muḥaddith al-faqīh al-ḥāfiẓ)’, and—after completing a recital of Ibn Ḥajar’s work al-Īnār bi-maʿrifat ruwāt al-āthār—as ‘al-shaykh al-fāḍīl al-muḥaddith al-kāmil al-awḥad’, noting that the master had himself benefitted from the student in many instances during their classes together. (Sakhāwī even mentions that the phrase ‘some of our brethren’ and the loving, almost humble, words which follow in the introduction to Ibn Ḥajar’s work is a reference to Ibn Quṭlūbughā.)

Upon being given the licence, and after returning from his travels, he began to teach a number of students ‘beyond count’ in Cairo.[49] He was teacher of hadith to the Mamluk al-Nāṣirī Ibn al-Ẓāhir Juqmuq, brother of the future al-Malik al-Manṣūr ʿUthmān (r. 857/1453), who became a long-standing fellow of the scholar, and to members of the family of Muḥibb al-Dīn Muḥammad Ibn al-Shiḥna, all of whom attended his narration of the Jāmiʿ Masānīd Abī Ḥanīfa of Abū al-Muʾayyad al-Khwārazmī.[50] Both the Shāfiʿī judge Sharaf al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Munāwī (d. 871/1467), and the Ḥanafī judge Badr al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn al-Ṣawwāf benefitted most in the period of their studies from Ibn Quṭlūbughā. Sakhāwī relates that he himself studied under Ibn Quṭlūbughā in hadith and its sciences, after which they formed a lasting friendship.[51]

Ibn Quṭlūbughā was a prolific author, having begun writing at approximately the age of 18 according to Sakhāwī, authoring over a hundred works over his lifetime. [52] What is noticeable, nonetheless, is the breadth of his involvement in a large number of disciplines, most prominent of which were fiqh and hadith. A number of the works are apologetic works vindicating the Ḥanafī madhhab’s principles, particular jurists, or their works, against historical or contemporary critiques.[53] Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s participation in juristic and social debates as to the changes in the structure of the economy of the Mamluk realm has begun to be studied by Baber Johansen and by Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith,[54] based upon works of the Mamluk jurist such as Ijārat aliqṭā ʿ.[55] The sciences of the Koran, lexicography, prosody, biography, Sufism, hadith-narration criticism, comparative madhhab-law, jurisprudential theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), ethics, worship, logic, inheritance law, and other disciplines all feature prominently. The breadth of the genres in which he wrote is equally wide: he authored fourteen works of takhrīj of hadith (the editing of an existing work in order to attribute hadiths cited therein to their primary sources); five taʿlīqas (legal-reports and notes taken from law-professors’ classroom disputations); [56] redactions and summaries of popular scholarly works; various epistles on a range of legal and other scholarly problemata; and a large number of commentaries and super-commentaries, reflecting his involvement with the tradition of juristic and other scholarly debates spanning centuries and continents.

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[39] The principal sources of Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s biography are Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ, 12 vols. in 6 (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-Ḥayāt, n.d.), 6:184–190; idem, Wajīz al-kalām fī al-dhayl ʿalā tārīkh al-Islām, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, ʿIṣām Ḥarastānī, and Aḥmad Khuṭaymī, 4 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1416/1995), 2:859; Maqrīzī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda fī tarājim al-aʿyān al-mufīda, ed. Maḥmūd al-Jalīlī, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1423/2002), 21–22; Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī, ʿUnwān al-zamān fī tarājim al-shuyūkh wa-al-aqrān, ed. Ḥasan Ḥabashī, 5 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub wa-al-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 1430/2009), 4:144–145; and, its redaction, ʿUnwān al-ʿunwān bi-tajrīd asmāʾ al-shuyūkh wa-baʿḍ al-talāmidha wa-al-aqrān, ed. Ḥasan Ḥabashī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1423/2002); Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī wa-al-mustawfī baʿd al-Wāfī, ed. Muḥammad Muḥammad Amīn, 13 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub waal-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 1984–2009), 9:10–12; idem, al-Dalīl al-shāfī ʿalā al-Manhal al- ṣāfī, ed. Fahīm Muḥammad Shaltūt, 2 vols. (Mecca: Jāmiʿat Umm al-Qurā, Markaz al-Baḥth al-ʿIlmī wa-Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1983), 2:527; Ibn al-Ḥimṣī, Ḥawādith al-zamān wa-wafayāt al-shuyūkh wa-al-aqrān, ed. ʿUmar al-Tadmurī, 3 vols. (Ṣaydā: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1999), 1:205–206; Shawkānī, al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ bi-maḥāsin man baʿd al-qarn al-tāsiʿ, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan Ḥallāq, 2 vols. in 1 (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1427/2006), 600–602; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, ed. Maḥmūd al-Arnaʾūṭ, 11 vols. (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1989), 9:487–488; Kattanī, Fihris al-fahāris wa-al-athbāt wa-muʿjam al-maʿājim wa al-mashyakhāt wa-al-musalsilāt, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1982–1986), 972–973; Ibn Iyyās, Badāʾiʿ al-ẓuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, 3 vols + index (Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1311ah), 2:151; Fawāʾid, 297 n. 4 (in the biographical entry for Ibn Kamāl); Hadiyyat, 1:830–831. From the modern period, entries for Ibn Quṭlūbughā are provided in Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn, 8:112; Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 5:180; Brockelmann, ii 99f., Suppl. ii 93; ei2, s.v. ‘Ibn Ḳuṭlūbughā’ by F. Rosenthal. Interestingly, neither Qinālīzāda in Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya nor Laknawī in Tāj al-tarājim make any mention of Ibn Qūṭlūbughā.

[40] Sakhāwī states that he learnt Ibn Quṭlubughā’s date of birth, which he gives as 802ah, directly from the jurist (see Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmīʿ, 184). This date is given as approximate by Biqāʿī in ʿUnwān al-zamān (4:144), though, in his later redaction, ʿUnwān al-ʿunwān, he reiterates that this date is approximate, with the source likely being Ibn Quṭlūbughā himself, but that the jurist had later related, from his mother, that he had been born on ‘Āshūrā’ (10 Muḥarram) of 801ah (Biqāʿī, ʿUnwān al-ʿunwān, 139–140). Suyūṭī, in Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara fī tārīkh Miṣr wa-al-Qāhira (ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, 2 vols. [Cairo: ʿIsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1387/1967–1968]), 1:478–489, has an entry for one ‘Sayf al-Dīn al-Ḥanafī Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Quṭlūbughā al-Baktamarī’, who despite sharing some similarities with our author, is clearly not the same person.

[41] Maqrīzī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda, 22; Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 184. On Sūdūn ibn ʿAbd-Allāh al-Shaykhūnī (d. 798/1396), see Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī, 6:104; and idem, al-Dalīl al-shāfī, 1:328.

[42] Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira, 13:23.

[43] On Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, al-ʿIzz Ibn Jamāʿa (759/1357–819/1416), see Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 7:171–174; and Brockelman, gal, 2:94 and Suppl. ii 111–112.

[44] Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 6:184–185.

[45] ‘al-Azharī’: Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 5:197.

[46] Ibid., 6:184–185.

[47] Ibid., 185.

[48] Ibid., 186.

[49] Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab, 9:487.

[50] Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 6:185–186.

[51] Ibid., 189.

[52] Ḍiyāʾ Yūnus, the editor of al-Taṣḥīḥ wa-al-tarjīḥ, has produced what seems to be the most complete catalogue of Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s output, citing 123 works; he has organised them according to discipline, and referenced the bibliographical source for every work he attributes to Ibn Quṭlūbughā (Taṣḥīḥ, editor’s introduction, 53–66; compare with the editor’s introduction to Tāj, 16–38, where he lists 116 titles). See also Maqrīzī, Durar al-ʿuqūd al-farīda, 22; and esp. Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 6:186–187, where Sakhāwī presents brief insights into the motives behind the authoring of the work, and short assessments.

[53] For example, al-Ajwiba ʿan iʿtirāḍāt Ibn Abī Shayba ʿalā Abī Ḥanīfa; Ajwiba ʿan iʿtirāḍāt Ibn al-ʿIzz ʿalā al-Hidāya; Ajwiba ʿan iʿtirāḍāt al-ʿIzz ibn Jamāʿa ʿalā uṣūl al-Ḥanafiyya; Tabṣirat al-nāqid fī kayd al-ḥāsid. See Tāj, editor’s introduction, 16.

[54] Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent (London: Croom Helm, 1988); and&nbsp;Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith, Governing Property, Making the Modern State (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 12–13.

[55] Tāj, editor’s introduction, 16.

[56] On the taʿlīqā, see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981); and idem, ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes’, History and Theory 25/2 (1986), 173–185, esp. 178.

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Biography taken from HERE