Muhammad ash-Shawkani

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<region> scholar
Medieval era
Name
name
Birth 1759 CE [1]
Death 1834 CE [1], 1250 AH
School/tradition
Influenced by
Influenced

Muhammad ash-Shawkani (1759-1834 CE [1]) was a Yemeni scholar of Islam, jurisprudent, and reformer.

Contents

[edit] Name

His full name was Muhammad Ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abdullaah al-Shawkani [2]. The surname "ash-Shawkani" is derived from Hijrah ash-Shawkan, which is a town outside San‘a’[3]

[edit] Biography

He was from the Zaydi school of law originally, and called for a return to the textual sources of the Quran and hadith. He viewed himself as a mujtahid, or authority to whom others in the Muslim community had to defer in details of religious law. Of his work issuing fatwas, ash-Shawkani stated "I acquired knowledge without a price and I wanted to give it thus."[4] Part of the fatwa-issuing work of many noted scholars typically is devoted to the giving of ordinary opinions to private questioners. Ash-Shawkani refers both to his major fatwas, which were collected and preserved as a book, and to his "shorter" fatwas, which he said "could never be counted" and which were not recorded.[5]

He is credited with developing a series of syllabi for attaining various ranks of scholarship and used a strict system of legal analysis based on Sunni thought. He insisted that a jurists who wanted to be a mujtahid fī'l-madhhab (a scholar who is qualified to exercise ijtihad within a school of Islamic law), was required to do ijtihad, which stemmed from his opposition to taqlid for a mujtahid, which he deemed to be a vice with which the Shariah had been inflicted.[6]

  • Despite his Shiite background, he is regarded as a great revivalist by Sunni Islamic movements and has influenced contemporary Islamic movements in other parts of the Muslim world such as the Ahl-i Hadith in South Asia. His legal decisions and discussions are frequently used in contemporary debate among Muslim scholars.

[edit] Works

  • Nayl al-Awtar
  • Fath al-Qadir - Tafsir al-Shawkani [7]
  • al-Badr at-tali [8]
  • Tuhfatu al-Dhakirin - Sharh Uddatu Hisna al-Haseen: a superb one volume commentary on the collection "Uddatu Hisna al-Haseen", on ahadith of Adhkar, by Ibn Al-Jazari (d. 833H)
  • Al-Fawaid al-Majmu'ah Fil Ahadith ul Mau'zoo'ah
  • Irshad ul Fuhool - a book on jurisprudence, considered as one of the best and one of the most scholarly introductions to Islamic Jurisprudence

[edit] Legacy

  • Books written about him: Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani by Bernard Haykel[9].

[edit] Views

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Fatwa / What does "family" mean?
  2. ^ “Dogs in the Islamic Tradition and Nature” (Article Included)
  3. ^ al-Badr at-Taali' bi Mahaasin man Ba'd al-Qarn as-Sabi' , vol. 2 pg.214
  4. ^ cited in Messick, Brinkly The Calligraphic State:Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society, Berkeley 1993:145
  5. ^ Ibid, p.150
  6. ^ On his call for ijtihad and opposition to taqlid, see Hallaq 1984:32-33
  7. ^ Fath al-Kadeer (2 volume set) Imam Shawkani ARABIC ONLY
  8. ^ Fatawa of the rightly guided Imams on Mawlid
  9. ^ Book review: Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani