Al-Bazdawi


Abu al-Hasan 'Ali ibn Muhammad al-Bazdawi , known with the honorific title of Fakhr al-Islam, was a leading Hanafi scholar in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. He is author of the acclaimed Kanz al-Wusul ila Ma'refat al-Usul, popularly known as Usul al-Bazdawi, a seminal work in Hanafi Usul al-Fiqh.
'Abd al-Qadir ibn Abi al-Wafa' al-Qurashi has praised him in his Hanafi biographical dictionary, Al-Jawahir al-Mudiyya fi Tabaqat al-Hanafiyya.

Works

His most famous book is Kanz al-Wusul ila Ma'refat al-Usul, popularly known as Usul al-Bazdawi, which is a seminal book in Hanafi Usul al-Fiqh and was a standard teaching text for centuries.
In this work, he focuses on issues such as rules and methods of determining a variety of sources and methods for making the right decision and discourses on rules of working with texts, and so on. The Uzbek Academy of Sciences has more than a dozen copies of this work.
The book has generated numerous commentaries, the most popular of which being Kashf al-Asrar by 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Bukhari.
His other works include:
  • Sharh al-Jami' al-Kabeer, and Sharh al-Jami' al-Sagheer.
  • Sharh al-Jami' al-Sahih.
  • Al-Mabsut fi Furu' al-Fiqh.
  • Kitab al-Muyassar fi al-Kalam, a manuscript of which still survives.
He also wrote on Tafsir.

Teachers

Al-Bazdawi studied under Shams al-A'imma 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Halwani who was also a teacher to Al-Sarakhsi.

Students