Muhammad ash-Shawkani

Muhammad ash-Shawkani (1759–1839 ) was a Yemeni scholar of Islam, jurist and reformer.

Name

His full name was Muhammad Ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Shawkani. The surname "ash-Shawkani" is derived from Hijrah ash-Shawkan, which is a town outside San‘a’

Biography

Born into a Zaydi Shi'a Muslim family, ash-Shawkani later on adopted the ideology within Sunni Islam and called for a return to the textual sources of the Quran and hadith. As a result, he opposed much of the Zaydi doctrine. He also opposed Sufism. He is considered as a mujtahid, or authority to whom others in the Muslim community have to defer in details of religious law. Of his work issuing fatwas, ash-Shawkani stated "I acquired knowledge without a price and I wanted to give it thus." Part of the fatwa-issuing work of many noted scholars typically is devoted to the giving of ordinary opinions to private questioners. Ash-Shawkani refers both to his major fatwas, which were collected and preserved as a book, and to his "shorter" fatwas, which he said "could never be counted" and which were not recorded.

He is credited with developing a series of syllabi for attaining various ranks of scholarship and used a strict system of legal analysis based on Sunni thought. He insisted that any jurist who wanted to be a mujtahid fī'l-madhhab (a scholar who is qualified to exercise ijtihad within a school of Islamic law), was required to do ijtihad, which stemmed from his opposition to taqlid for a mujtahid, which he deemed to be a vice with which the Shariah had been inflicted.

Legacy

Salafis in Saada, would later claim ash-Shawkani as an intellectual precursor, and future Yemeni regimes would uphold his Sunnization policies as a unifier of the country and to undermine Zaydi Shi'ism.

Beyond Yemen, his works are widely used in Sunni schools. He also profoundly influenced the Ahl al-Hadith in the Indian subcontinent (such as Siddiq Hasan Khan) and Salafis in Saudi Arabia and across the globe.

Works

• Nayl al-Awtar
• Fath al-Qadir, a well known tafsir (exegesis)
• al-Badr at-tali
• Tuhfatu al-Dhakirin – Sharh Uddatu Hisna al-Haseen: a superb one volume commentary on the collection "Uddatu Hisna al-Haseen", on ahadith of Adhkar, by Ibn Al-Jazari (d. 833H)
• Al-Fawaid al-Majmu'ah Fil Ahadith ul Mau'zoo'ah a collection of fabricated hadith
• Irshad ul Fuhool – a book on Usul al-fiqh
• Ad-Durur ul-Bahiyyah fil-Masaa'il il-Fiqhiyyah - a concise Fiqh manual
• Ad-Daraaree Al-Mudhiyyah Sharh ud-Durur il-Bahiyyah - his detailed explanation of his Fiqh manual, Ad-Durur
• Adab ut-Talab wa Muntaha al-Arab - advice on the etiquette and manners of one who is seeking Islamic knowledge
• Al-Qawl ul-Mufeed fee Hukm it-Taqleed - An explanation of the ruling regarding blind following (Taqleed) of the opinions of Fiqh schools (Madhaahib) and its harms.
• Al-Sayl al-jarrar - includes the denunciation of a text written by the Zaydi Imam Al-Mahdi Ahmad bin Yahya.

• Fatawa of the rightly guided Imams on Mawlid
• Farhad Daftary (2 Dec 2013). A History of Shi'i Islam (revised ed.). I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9780857735249. In his book entitled al-Sayl al-jarrar, al-Shawkani denounced the Kitab al-azhar fi fiqh al-a'immat al-athar of Imam al-Mahdi Ahmad b. Yahya al-Murtada (d. 830/1437), the legal corpus of opinions recognised by the Hadawi Zaydi school, which, according to him, represented opinions not rooted in the revelation.