Imām al-Qudūrī
His name
He is Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Baghdādī al-Qudūrī. Some have said that he comes from a town near Baghdad called Qudūrah, and that the nisbah al-Qudūrī derives from it. Others trace the name to the trade in pots, the Arabic for which is qidr (pl. qudūr).
His birth and childhood
He was born in 362 AH and grew up in a household of learning. His maternal grandfather, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿUbayd b. ʿAmr b. Khālid b. Rafīl, better known as Ibn Maslamah, was a great ascetic.
His search for knowledge
From his earliest years he applied himself to the Islamic sciences and outpaced his contemporaries. That early effort placed him among the foremost scholars of his time. ʿAllāmah Ibn Khaldūn calls him the shaykh of his age in Ḥanafī fiqh, the imām of the madhhab and a jurist of the highest rank.
Despite his standing within the school, he was not partisan. His works show that whenever he encountered a ruling outside the madhhab that he judged stronger, he said so plainly.
His teachers
Imām al-Qudūrī studied the sacred sciences under a number of scholars. Notable among them are:
- Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Jurjānī, with whom he studied fiqh
- ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Hawshabī
- Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Suwayd al-Muʾaddib
His students
Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Thābit al-Khaṭīb al-Ḥāfiẓ, better known as al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, author of Tārīkh Baghdād, narrates ḥadīth from Imām al-Qudūrī and is among his many students. Qāḍī Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Dāmighānī is another.
His ranking
Some place Imām al-Qudūrī in the fourth generation in the gradation of fuqahāʾ1; others place him in the fifth grade, the aṣḥāb al-tarjīḥ. The author of al-Hidāyah, ʿAllāmah al-Marghīnānī, came much later, though some have placed him in the same ṭabaqah as Imām al-Qudūrī.
Imām al-Qudūrī was known for his frequent recitation of the Qurʾān. In his lifetime he was the foremost expert on Ḥanafī fiqh in Iraq, and a reliable and trustworthy narrator of ḥadīth.
His death
He died on Sunday, 5 Rajab 428 AH in Baghdad. Reports of his age at death give sixty-four or sixty-six. He was buried first at his own house, and later moved to lie beside the Ḥanafī jurist Abū Bakr al-Khwārizmī.
His books
He authored:
- Mukhtaṣar al-Qudūrī, the most famous of his works, still used as a primer in Ḥanafī fiqh in madāris worldwide
- Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Karkhī, a commentary on the summary by Imām al-Karkhī
- al-Tajrīd, on the differences between the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī schools
- al-Taqrīb, on the differences between Imām Abū Ḥanīfah and his two companions
- Sharḥ Adab al-Qāḍī, a commentary on the work of Imām Aḥmad Abū Bakr al-Khaṣṣāf on the Islamic legal system
Bibliography
Hidāyat al-ʿĀrifīn Asmāʾ al-Muʾallifīn wa Āthār al-Muṣannifīn, Ismāʿīl Bāshā al-Baghdādī. Muʾassasat al-Tārīkh al-ʿArabī.
Kashf al-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa al-Funūn, Ḥājī Khalīfah. Beirut, Lebanon: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī.
Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, Vol. 17, page 574, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿUthmān al-Dhahabī. Beirut, Lebanon: Muʾassasat al-Risālah.
Footnotes
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ʿAllāmah al-Lakhnawī, ʿAllāmah al-Marjānī et al. have criticised the grading system of Ibn Kamāl Pāshā, on the grounds that most are placed below their capacity. See https://uloom.com/dibaj/article/140813501. ↩