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Part I
Al-Rāʿī and his Intiṣār
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1
The Author of the Intiṣār
Al-Rāʿī’s Early Life
The author of our text, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Rāʿī, was born in or around the year 782/1380 in Granada, the capital of the Naṣrid kingdom in al-Andalus in present-day southern Spain. It was there that he grew up and began his life as a scholar, studying under a number of the most important scholars of his day, among whom the biographers mention:
- Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Idrīs ibn Saʿīd al-Andalusī, from whom al-Rāʿī learnt fiqh, uṣūl al-fiqh and Arabic grammar.1
- Ibn Abī ʿĀmir, under whom he studied ḥadīth.2
- Al-Ḥaffār, the imām and muftī of Granada, under whom he studied ḥadīth.3
- Al-Mintūrī, a Granadan scholar from whom he learnt the Ājurrūmiyya (or Jurrūmiyya) on grammar, which al-Mintūrī had learnt from Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Sālim al-Judhāmī, from Qadi Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥaḍramī, from its author, Ibn Ājurrūm; and also the Khulāṣat al-bāḥithīn fī ḥaṣr al-wārithīn, by Qadi Abū Bakr ʿAbdallāh ibn Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, which al-Mintūrī had learnt directly from its author.4
- Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Samʿat (?) al-Gharnāṭī,5 whom al-Rāʿī cites as an authority in his Intiṣār.6 Elsewhere, al-Rāʿī mentions having studied under him in the Qaysāriyya Mosque (i.e. the Grand Mosque) in Granada,7 and how he would go to his house in the countryside near Granada and serve him there.8
- Ibn Sirāj, who was muftī and Chief Judge of Granada, and the author of many works, including a commentary on Khalīl’s Mukhtaṣar.9 Al-Rāʿī refers directly to this shaykh as an authority in his Intiṣār10 and, elsewhere, mentions studying under him in the Grand Mosque of Granada.11
- Ibn Fattūḥ (?), who was muftī of Granada,12 and whom al-Rāʿī mentions having studied under in the Yūsufiyya Madrasa in Granada.13
The biographers also mention that al-Rāʿī received ijāzas from a number of shaykhs,14 including the following four from the Maghrib:
- Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Abdallāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Judhāmī.
- Qadi Qāsim ibn Saʿīd al-ʿUqbānī, the Chief Judge of Tlemcen, who, on his way to ḥajj in the year 830/1427, passed through Cairo, where the biographers note that he attended the dictation sessions of Ibn Ḥajar,15 and where al-Rāʿī may have met him.
- Ibn al-Imām, another scholar from Tlemcen, known for his extensive knowledge of many disciplines, including fiqh and taṣawwuf.16
- Ibn Marzūq al-Ḥafīd (“The Grandson”), also a famous scholar of Tlemcen known for his knowledge of the sciences of both the outward and the inward.17
The following four from the East are also mentioned by the biographers:
- Al-Kamāl ibn Khayr, a Mālikī scholar from Alexandria who, in the year 819/1416, towards the end of a long life, went to Cairo, where he taught Qadi ʿIyāḍ’s Shifā, among other books, in the Azhar Mosque.18
- Al-Zayn al-Marāghī, a famous ḥadīth scholar of Egyptian background who settled in Madina, where he became imām and qāḍī in the year 809/1406–7 and who, in the years 814–15, towards the end of his life, also spent some time teaching in Makka.19
- Al-Zayn al-Ṭabarī, who was born and died in Madina, but spent most of his life in Makka.20
- Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm [ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm] ibn al-ʿAfīf al-Nābulsī.
It was from these, and others like them, that he mastered the basic disciplines of fiqh and its sources, together with the Arabic language, which was to become his forte and the subject for which he was best known.
For reasons which are not specified, but which may have involved not only the desire to go on ḥajj and study with the scholars of the East but also the desire to do hijra from a country which was being progressively taken over by the Christians in their Reconquista, al-Rāʿī left al-Andalus for the East when he was in his early forties.21 He arrived in Cairo in the year 825/1422, and then, after doing the ḥajj, settled there. He must also have travelled East on at least one earlier occasion, since, as mentioned above, we are told that he received ijāzas from two scholars who were based in the Ḥijāz, al-Zayn al-Ṭabarī and al-Zayn al-Marāghī. Since the first of these died in the latter half of 815 AH and the second in 816 – and assuming that the ijāzas were granted personally – al-Rāʿī must have visited the Ḥijāz at least once in or before the year 815, the last year when both these scholars were Alīve.22
Apart from the occasional journey further afield, including at least one back to “the West”,23 al-Rāʿī spent the rest of his life in Egypt, where he died in his living quarters in the Sāliḥiyya Madrasa24 in the year 853/144950. The janāza prayer was done for him in the Azhar Mosque and he was buried in the “Ṣaḥrāʾ”, or Desert Plain to the east of the city,25 near the tomb of the famous ḥadīth scholar Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī.
Al-Rāʿī in Cairo
In Cairo, al-Rāʿī’s life was primarily that of a teacher, particularly of the Arabic language. We do not know exactly where he taught, but, in addition to having living quarters in the Ṣāliḥiyya Madrasa, where he presumably spent a fair amount of time and may well have done some teaching, we are told that he was imām of the Muʾayyadiyya Madrasa “for a time” (amma bi-l-Muʾayyadiyya waqtan).26 This latter mosque-madrasa complex had been built only shortly before al-Rāʿī’s arrival in Cairo by the Mamluk sultan al-Muʾayyad Shaykh between 819/1416 and 824/142127 and, due to lavish endowments from this sultan, it became, in Petry’s words, “one of the prominent academic institutions of the fifteenth century [= ninth century AH]”.28 It was for the four schools of law and was dedicated specifically to Sufi students. (We note here, contrary to the assumptions of many today, the complete compatibility between Sufism and fiqh.) In addition to professorial chairs in each of the four madhhabs, one of the associated appointments was an imām to lead the public prayer, and this was presumably the appointment that al-Rāʿī held.29
While in Cairo al-Rāʿī naturally also took the opportunity to benefit from the great ʿulamāʾ who were living there at the time. It was in Cairo that he met and studied under the great Ibn Ḣajar (d. 852/1449), who has been described as “the most eminent Egyptian ʿālim of the age”30 and “possibly the single most important scholar of the later Middle Ages”,31 and among whose many appointments was that of being the first professor of Shāfiʿī fiqh in the same Muʾayyadiyya Madrasa where al-Rāʿī became imām.32 As Ibn Ḣajar began this appointment in 822/1419 and seems to have been still teaching there at the time of al-Rāʿī’s arrival in Cairo,33 we may even surmise that it was Ibn Ḥajar’s presence in the Muʾayyadiyya that highlighted this madrasa for al-Rāʿī. Ibn Ḣajar later became Chief Judge in Cairo, as well as khaṭīb in the Azhar Mosque and, later, khaṭīb in the Mosque of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ.34 Al-Rāʿī refers to him frequently in the Intiṣār, and always with the greatest respect.
Other scholars from whom al-Rāʿī benefited in Cairo who are mentioned by the biographers include the ḥadīth scholar al-Shihāb al-Matbūlī; Ibn al-Jazarī, the famous scholar of qir āʾāt;35 and sāliḥ al-Zawāwī, who, like al-Rāʿī, had journeyed East from the Maghrib and settled in Cairo, and who, again like al-Rāʿī, taught in the Muʾayyadiyya, and whom al-Rāʿī cites directly as an authority in his Intiṣār36
Among his students, the biographers make particular mention of:
- Ibn Fahd, i.e. presumably, the noted ḥadīth scholar Najm al-Dīn ibn Fahd, who was born in Makka but travelled extensively in the central Islamic lands, including visits to Cairo in 836/1432 and 850/1446, in either or both of which years he could have studied under al-Rāʿī.37
- Al-Burhān al-Biqāʿī,38 a noted Shāfiʿī scholar from Khirbat Rūhā in Syria but with a somewhat tarnished reputation in the eyes of some.39 He passed through Cairo to visit Ibn Ḥajar in the year 844/1442, during which visit presumably he studied under al-Rāʿī. He was the author of numerous works (of which Brockelmann, for instance, lists twenty-two titles).40
- Ibn al-Muḥibb, a Cairene scholar who was known for his excellence in Arabic, which he had studied under al-Rāʿī, and who became Shaykh of the Mālikīs in the Sāliḥiyya Madrasa. The biographers also mention that he wrote a little (yasīran) on the Mukhtasar of Khalīl, and concentrated on tasawwuf at the end of his life.41
- Al-Sanhūrī, who became Shaykh of the Mālikīs during his time in Egypt, and was the author of commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Khalīl and the Ājurrūmiyya of Ibn Ājurrūm.42
Al-Rāʿī’s Books
Al-Rāʿī’s written output was not large, but the sources name at least eight works:
1 Intiṣār al-faqīr al-sālik li-tarjīḥ madhhab al-imām al-kabīr Mālik, the subject of the present translation, on the qualities and worth of Mālik and the Mālikī madhhab.43
2 Al-Ajwiba al-marḍiyya ʿan al-asʾila al-naḥwiyya, which is probably the same as the book referred to by Aḥmad Bābā and al-Maqqarī as al-N...
