Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Tulun

Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn al-Ṣāliḥī al-Dimashḳī al-Ḥanafī was a Damascene scholar of ḥadīth and fiqh of the Ḥanafī school. He is best known today for his autobiography and his historical writings, which covers the contemporary Ottoman conquest of Mamlūk Egypt.

Life

Ibn Ṭūlūn was born in al-Ṣāliḥiyya, a suburb of Damascus, in 1475. On his father's side, he could trace his ancestry back to a mamlūk, Khumārwayh ibn Ṭūlūn. His mother, Azdān, was from Anatolia, either a Turk or a Greek. She died of bubonic plague while he was a child.
In 1484, Ibn Ṭūlūn received a scholarship to study fiqh at the Māridāniyya madrasa. He received an ijāza from al-Suyūṭī. He spent his life teaching and writing. In old age, he declined the positions of khaṭīb of the Umayyad Mosque and Ḥanafī muftī of Damascus. He never married and had no children. He died in Damascus on 9 August 1546.

Works

Ibn Ṭūlūn wrote an autobiography, al-Fulk al-mashḥūn fī aḥwāl Muḥammad ibn Ṭūlūn, in which he lists all the scholars he studied with, all the books he ever read and all of his writings. He gives 750 titles to his name, although these range from short pamphlets to long multi-volume works. Less than 100 of his works are preserved. The History of the Arabic Written Tradition knows of 75, but the library of Aḥmad Taymūr in Cairo may have contained 100 uncatalogued manuscripts of Ibn Ṭūlūn. As of 2004, only 25 of his works have been printed.