Ibn Nur al-Din
- Died
- 825 AH
- Born in
- -
Ibn Nur al-Din (d. 825 AH / 1422 CE) was a Yemeni Shafi'i jurist, grammarian, and Quranic exegete, best known for his work on legal exegesis, Taysir al-Bayan li-Ahkam al-Quran.
Name and Background
His full name was Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn Ibrahim ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr ibn al-Khatib al-Sha'bi al-Namari al-Mawza'i. He was commonly known as Ibn Nur al-Din as well as Ibn al-Khatib, an appellation tracing back to his ancestor Abd Allah ibn Abi Bakr, and he bore the kunya Abu Abd Allah. He was born in the town of Mawza', located approximately 90 kilometers west of Ta'izz in Yemen, into a family renowned for scholarly pursuits and religious piety; his year of birth is not recorded in the biographical sources.
Education and Scholarly Life
Ibn Nur al-Din left his hometown to pursue Islamic sciences in Zabid. During his studies, he was known for extreme scrupulousness regarding lawful sustenance, relying on provisions sent from his family and refusing public endowment stipends. When his personal funds were temporarily delayed, his principal teacher, Jamal al-Din al-Raymi, arranged a daily food allowance for him; after three days, Ibn Nur al-Din declined further assistance, explaining that receiving it had clouded his spiritual clarity. In addition to al-Raymi, he studied under scholars of the Banu al-Nashiri family and other contemporary authorities across jurisprudence, legal theory, Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and exegesis.
Upon receiving teaching authorizations in all these disciplines, Ibn Nur al-Din returned to settle in Mawza', where he devoted himself to teaching, issuing legal rulings (ifta), and scholarly writing. He initiated the construction of the Grand Mosque of Mawza'; when funds ran short, Farhan, the wife of the Rasulid Sultan al-Ashraf Ismail, provided substantial financial support to complete the structure, and the remaining surplus was used to purchase agricultural land endowed for the mosque's maintenance. In linguistic scholarship, he authored Masabih al-Ma'ani fi Huruf al-Ma'ani on Arabic grammatical particles.
Controversy over Ibn Arabi
During the reign of the Rasulid dynasty, Ibn Nur al-Din became a prominent opponent of the doctrines of Ibn Arabi after the chief judge of Yemen, Ahmad al-Raddad, began collecting and circulating Ibn Arabi's works. Ibn Nur al-Din openly censured the study of these texts. In response, al-Raddad summoned him from Mawza' to Zabid for a public debate held before an assembly of jurists and Sufis.
During the debate, Ibn Nur al-Din argued against Ibn Arabi's ideas directly from the texts; when the opposing assembly attempted to harm him, the local governor, Prince Muhammad ibn Ziyad, intervened and secured his safe return to Mawza'. Following this incident, he composed a dedicated polemical treatise titled Kashf al-Zulmah 'an Hadhihi al-Ummah (Dispelling Darkness from this Community). His student al-Ahdal remarked that Ibn Nur al-Din was the first jurist in Yemen to undertake a direct textual critique of Ibn Arabi's writings.
Students and Death
A number of prominent Yemeni scholars studied under Ibn Nur al-Din, including:
- Al-Husayn ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Ahdal, mufti of Yemen and author of Tuhfat al-Zaman
- Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Radi al-Din al-Khatib, who assumed leadership in teaching after his master's death
- Radi al-Din Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Da'sin al-Qurashi, who served as judge of Mawza'
- Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Umar al-Hajjari, judge of Mawza', who married Ibn Nur al-Din's daughter Khadijah
Ibn Nur al-Din died in 825 AH (1422 CE), while an earlier chronicle notes his death generally as having occurred after 810 AH.
Answer updated
List of Works
Taysir al-Bayan li-Ahkam al-Quran (Simplifying the Exposition of the Legal Rulings of the Quran) is a work of legal Quranic exegesis (tafsir ayat al-ahkam). Completed in 808 AH (1405/1406 CE), the book focuses on deriving and explaining legal rulings from the Quran by integrating comparative jurisprudence, legal theory, Arabic grammar and rhetoric, hadith, and exegesis.