Al-Juwayni

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Al-Juwayni was a Sunni Shafi'i hadith and Kalam scholar.

1 Name
2 Biography
3 Legacy
4 Works
5 See also
6 Links

[edit] Name

Sadruddin Ibrahim bin Muhammad bin al-Hamawayh al-Juwayni al-Shafi'i (419 - 478)

[edit] Biography

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He was one of the most famous and perhaps most important (after Imam Ashari himself of the scholars of the Asharite school of theological thought.

His full name was Abd al-Malik ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Yusuf, Abu al-Ma'ali ibn Rukn al-Islam Abi Muhammad al-Juwayni al-Naysaburi al-Shafi'i he was the teacher of the famous Sufi and Islamic scholar Imam al-Ghazali.

He was also known by the nickname of 'Imam al-Haramayn meaning 'the Imam of the two sanctuaries' (i.e Mekka and Medina) He served in the Niamiyya seminaries built by the Seljuq Turks who favoured the Asharite school of thought where he educated numerous scholars of the Asharite school.

Some modern Muslims who belong to the Salafi (sometimes refered to as Wahabi though actual followers of this thought reject this title as offensive) have claimed that al-Juwayni abandoned the Asharite school of thought for their own school of thought (a more literalist interpritation preached by ibn Taymiyah his student ibn al-Qayyim and Muhammad Abdul Wahab) Needless to say, Asharites refute such a claim. The links below provide both sides to the argument.

[edit] Legacy

Al-Dhahabi says in Tadhkirat al-huffaz, vol. 4, p. 298, that al-Juwayni was a great scholar of Hadith.

Also see his biographical note in Ibn Hajar Asqalani , al-Durar al-kaminah, vol. 1, p. 67.

He was one of the most famous teachers of the Asharite theology along side al-Bayhaqi, Shatibi and others. Due to him teaching at the Nizamiyya school and it's patronage by the Seljuqs he was a contributing factor to the spread of the Asharite school in the Islamic world.

[edit] Works

Fara'id al-Simtayn

In fiqh: Ghiyath al-Umam, Mughith al-Khalq, Nihaya al-Matlab fi Diraya al-Madhhab ("The End of the Quest in the Knowledge of the [Shafi'i] School"), his magnum opus, which Ibn 'Asakir said had no precedent in Islam, and Mukhtasar al-Nihaya.

In usûl: al-Burhan, al-Talkhis, and al-Waraqat.

In kalâm: al-Shamil, al-Irshad (a book which has been translated into English), and al-Nizamiyya.