Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi


Shihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Abi ’l-ʿAlāʾ Idrīs ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yallīn al-Ṣanhājī al-Ṣaʿīdī al-Bahfashīmī al-Būshī al-Bahnasī al-Miṣrī al-Mālikī, was a Maliki jurist and legal theoretician of Sanhaja Berber origin who lived in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt.

Biography

He was born in Bahfashīm, a village in the province of Bahnasa in 1228. This village belonged to the district of Būsh, a town just a few miles to the north of Beni Suef. He apparently grew up in al-Qarafa in Old Cairo, whence his sobriquet of al-Qarafi. Of Berber origin, from the Sanhaja tribe.
He is considered by many to be the greatest Maliki legal theoretician of the 13th century; his writings and influence on Islamic legal theory spread throughout the Muslim world. His insistence on the limits of law underscores the importance of non-legal considerations in determining the proper course of action, with significant implications for legal reform in the modern Islamic world. His views on the common good and custom provide means to accommodate the space-time differential between modern and premodern realities.

Works

The most important of his many works are Al-dhakhirah, Al-furuq, Nafais al usul, and Kitab al-ihkam fi tamyiz al-fatawa an al-ahkam wa tasarrufat al-qadi wal-imam.
His work Al-dhakhirah is one of the most important works in the Maliki madhhab, spanning several volumes, where the imam explains fiqh with evidences from usul al-fiqh in detail and has a strong personality in the way he presents the school.