al-Kāsānī

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ʿAlā 'ad-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn Masʿūd al-Kāsānī ( Arabic علاء الدين ابو بكر بن مسعود الكاساني, DMG ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn Masʿūd al-Kāsānī ; † August 3, 1191 ), with the surname Malik al-ʿulamāʾ ("King of Scholars "), was a lawyer of the Hanafi teaching direction . His main work, entitled Badāʾiʿ aṣ-ṣanāʾiʿ, is one of the most important Islamic legal handbooks .

Life

Al-Kāsānī came from the town of Kāsān in the Ferghana Valley and was a student of the Hanafi legal scholar ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Muhammad ibn Ahmad as-Samarqandī (d. 1144), who gave him his daughter Fātima, who was herself trained in Fiqh , as his wife. As a bridal gift he is said to have given her his own commentary on her father's law compendium Tuatfat al-fuqahāʾ .

At an unknown time he emigrated to Asia Minor, where he worked at the court of the Rum Seljuks in Konya . Here he had an argument with another legal scholar, in which he acted so violently that the ruler Mas'ud I could not possibly keep him at court. The subject of the dispute was a question related to the epistemological assessment of ijtihad : If two mujtahids arrive at different results in their ijschtihad, are both right or only one? While al-Kāsānī's opponent accepted the former and referred to Abū Hanīfa because he had said: “Every mujtahid is right” ( kull muǧtahid muṣīb ), al-Kāsānī himself denied this and said that from Abū Hanīfa only the opposite is correct It is believed that there is always only one mujtahid in the right. Al-Kāsānī accused his opponent of representing Muʿtazilite teachings. When al-Kāsānī finally knocked on his opponent's door, the ruler stepped in and ended the discussion.

Since al-Kāsānī had made himself impossible by his behavior at court, the ruler, on the advice of his vizier, sent him as an envoy to the Zengid Nur ad-Din in Aleppo . Here he was appointed as the successor to Radī ad-Dīn as-Sarachsī (d. 1149) professor for Hanafi law at the Madrasa Hallāwīya. Not much is known about the rest of his life. Al-Qari reports that he was deeply connected to his wife Fatima and that after her death he visited her grave at the Abraham Shrine in the citadel of Aleppo every Thursday evening. After his death in 1191 he himself was buried next to her.

As al-Qari mentioned, the grave of the couple by the residents of Aleppo was often sought and was called "the grave of the woman and her husband" ( Qabr al-Mar'a wa-z zauǧi-hā known). Apparently, Kāsānī's wife was even more important than he to visitors to the tomb. Qari reported that they told about her grave that the prayer will heard from him.

Works

Al-Kāsānī's main work is his handbook “Unheard-of skills in the arrangement of the provisions of religious law” ( Badāʾiʿ aṣ-ṣanāʾiʿ fī tartīb aš-šarāʾiʿ ), which occupies seven volumes in the modern print edition. It should be identical to the commentary that al-Kāsānī wrote on the manual of his teacher as-Samarqandī, but it does not have the character of a commentary, but rather that of a strictly systematic presentation of the various areas of law. Al-Kāsānī begins each chapter with an outline in which he explains the subjects he intends to cover. Despite its methodological clarity and erudition, the work did not have any great influence on the later development of Hanafi law. In contrast to the hidāya of his contemporary al-Marghinānī , it has never been commented on. It was not until the appearance of the modern print edition in the early 20th century that the work attracted greater attention. Since then, it has had a central role in Hanafi teaching.

In addition to the Badāʾiʿ , al-Kāsānī also wrote a commentary on the Koran and a work on dogmatics. The Koran commentary has been preserved in handwriting.

literature

Arabic sources
Secondary literature
  • Salma Abu-Ghosh: Islamic maintenance law according to al-Kasani, introduced, translated and commented on. Frankfurt am Main [u. a.], Lang, 1989.
  • Carl Brockelmann : History of Arabic Literature. First volume. 2nd edition, Leiden 1943. Page 465.
  • Jochen Gentz: The guarantee in Islamic law according to al-Kāsānī . Walldorf, Verl. Für Orientkunde Vorndran 1961.
  • W. Heffening, Y. Linant de Bellefonds: Art. "Al-Kāsānī" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, p. 690.
  • Friedrich-Wilhelm Lehmann: The legal institution of the comparison aṣ-ṣulḥ in Islamic law according to al-Kāsānī . Bonn, Univ., Diss. D. Ed., 1970.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b See al-Qārī: al-Aṯmār al-ǧanīya . Sheet 88a.
  2. ↑ a b Cf. Brockelmann: History of Arabic literature. 1943, p. 465.
  3. ↑ See Heffening, de Bellefonds 690b.
personal data
SURNAME Kāsānī, al-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Abū Bakr ibn Masʿūd al-Kāsānī
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Islamic legal scholar of Hanafi teaching
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH August 3, 1191