al-Jujari
- Died
- 889 AH
- Born in
- -
Shams al-Din al-Jujari (821–889 AH / 1418–1484 CE) was an Egyptian Shafi'i jurist and grammarian, best known for his extensive commentary on Ibn Hisham al-Ansari's grammatical manual Shudhur al-dhahab .
Background and education
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Mun'im ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Mun'im ibn Abi al-Tahir Isma'il al-Jujari al-Qahiri al-Shafi'i, also bearing the kunya Abu Abd Allah, was born in one of the two months of Jumada (likely Jumada al-Thaniyya) in 821 AH—or in the following year—in Jujar, a town near Damietta in Egypt . In his hometown he was known as Ibn Nabih al-Din, and outside it as al-Jujari . Following his father's death, his paternal grandfather brought him at the age of seven to Cairo, where he completed memorizing the Quran . He also memorized the legal manual Minhaj al-talibin, the legal theory text Minhaj al-wusul, and Ibn Malik's Alfiyyah .
Al-Jujari studied Arabic grammar under al-Hinnawi, al-Shihab al-Sakhawi, and Abu al-Qasim al-Nuwayri . He studied hadith, its terminology, and Quranic exegesis under Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, heard portions of Sahih Muslim from Zayn al-Din al-Zarkashi, and read al-Qadi Iyad's al-Shifa and Sahih al-Bukhari with Sa'd al-Din Ibn al-Dayri . He studied theology (usul al-din) under Muhyi al-Din al-Kafiyaji, al-Shumunni, al-Shirwani, al-Nuwayri, and Abu al-Fadl al-Maghribi; rhetoric (al-ma'ani wa-l-bayan) under them and al-Qayati; prosody under al-Shihab al-Absiti; and inheritance mathematics under Ibn al-Majdi .
Scholarly career and students
Al-Jujari was authorized to teach and issue legal opinions while many of his own teachers were still alive, and Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli sent students to study his own writings and other texts under him . He served briefly as a judicial deputy before resigning from the position . In his later years he became known as the foremost scholar of Cairo (shaykh al-Qahira), where large numbers of students attended his reading circles .
Among his most prominent students were the Sufi jurist Ahmad Zarruq, the Meccan scholar Abd al-Aziz ibn Fahd, Mu'ammar ibn Yahya al-Siraj al-Makki, al-Shihab al-Bayjuri, Abu al-Fadl ibn al-Muharraqi, and Burhan al-Din al-Khujandi . For his student Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Makki, al-Jujari prepared an abridgment of his own major commentary on Shudhur al-dhahab . He also composed a four-volume legal commentary titled Sharh al-Irshad on Ibn al-Muqri's Shafi'i manual .
Controversy and death
Al-Jujari was involved in a notable scholarly dispute with Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti regarding the beatific vision of God in Paradise . When asked whether women would see God in Paradise, al-Jujari issued a fatwa stating that no textual transmission affirmed it; after learning that al-Suyuti maintained the opposite, al-Jujari authored a rebuttal, which prompted al-Suyuti to respond with a critical tract titled al-Lafz al-jawhari fi radd khubat al-Jujari .
Al-Jujari died in Cairo on 12 Rajab 889 AH (1484 CE) .
Answer updated
List of Works
Sharh Shudhur al-Dhahab lil-Jawjari is an extensive Arabic grammatical commentary on Ibn Hisham al-Ansari's grammatical treatise Shudhur al-Dhahab. It stands as the earliest complete extant commentary on the text following Ibn Hisham's own self-commentary, providing an exhaustive, word-by-word exposition of the base text accompanied by extensive examples, poetic evidence, and detailed analytical notices.