Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i

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Sheikh, Allama, Shamsuddin
Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i
ابن أبي جمهور الأحسائي
Born
Muhammad bin Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Shaybani Al-Ahsai

1435
Arabic
Main interests
fiqh, theology, Shia hadith interpretation

Mohammed bin Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Shaybani Al-Bakri Al-Ahsa’i (

Ja'fari school of Islamic jurisprudence
.

He was born in the village of

Persia and Iraq (both governed then by the Timurid Empire as well as his native land, mostly staying in Mashhad, Najaf, and Al-Ahsa respectively. All the while he extensively taught and wrote treatises and critiques on fiqh (jurisprudence), rhetoric, philosophy, ethics, theology, and hadith. He is best-known for his theory of Shi’ite hadith, essentially summed up as endorsing “adding, whenever possible, over subtraction” in interpretation. It is not clear when or where he died.[1][2][3][4]

Ancestors

His full name is Shams al-Din Abu Jaafar Muhammad bin Zain al-Din Abi al-Hasan Ali bin Husam al-Din Ibrahim bin Hassan bin Ibrahim bin Abi Jamhur al-Shaybani al-Bakri al-Hasa’i. His father, Zain al-Din Ali, and his grandfather, Husam al-Din, were both scholars and belonged to the prominent Abi Jumhur family. This clan was a branch in Al-Ahsa of the Banu Shayban, itself a scion of the Banu Bakr; the Abi Jumhur are considered ancestors of the Al-Aithan family by scholar Jawad al-Ramadan. In his time, Ibn Abi Jumhur was also known as Al-Hasawi.[5][6]

Biography

Ibn Abi Jumhur was born in the village of Taymiyyah in what is now the Al-Ahsa Governorate during the reign of the first Jabrid Emir, probably around 1434 to 1435. He grew up during the region’s golden age under the auspices of his jurist father.[6]

Teaching

He studied in Al-Ahsa with his father and a number of scholars, including Muhammad bin Musa al-Musawi al-Ahsa’i (his fiqh teacher), Ali bin Muhammad bin Mani, and others. He then went on to finish his studies in Najaf, where he studied with teachers including most notably Hassan bin Abdulkarim al-Fattal al-Najafi. Among the scholars who gave him permission to transmit hadiths were Hazr al-Din al-Awali al-Bahrani, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Musawi al-Ahsa’i, and Abdullah bin Fathallah al-Qummi.[7]

After nearly twenty years in Najaf, he left on Hajj to the

Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay, where he stayed for a month to study under Bahraini Sheikh Ali bin Hilal al-Jazaery.[6]

Travels

After finishing his Hajj, Ibn Abi Jumhur returned to his native Al-Ahsa and stayed there awhile until he traveled to Iraq and Khorasan in 1473, along the way writing the letters زاد المسافرين (“Greater Journeys”) and أصول الدين (“Basics of Faith”). When he reached Mashhad, he began training with Muhsin bin Muhammad Al-Radawi Al-Qummi, who commissioned from his student a treatise known as البراهين في شرح زاد المسافرين (“Proofs for Explaining Ibn al-Jazzar’s Zād al-Musāfir”, a medical work known by medieval Latins as Viaticum).[6]

Debates with al-Harawi

In 1473, during the reign of Timurid Emperor

caliph, the second on “the issue of children of adulterers,” and the third on “deception and defamation with regards to the succession.”[8]

The debates were attended by a number of Shi’ite and Sunni scholars, the former holding Ibn Ani Jumhur to be the victor. Some sources believe the other debater, labeled al-Fadhel al-Harawi, was in fact the Shafi’i jurist Ahmad bin Yahya al-Taftazani, the chief

Suleiman of Persia, as did Ibn Zain Al-Din Al-Alam Al-Asfahani in his book الزهرات الزوية في الروضة البهية (“zawiya in the Basalar School”) during Ramadan on July 14, 1687.[6][9]

1478 to 1501

Ibn Abi Jumhur continued living in Mashhad near the Imaa Reza Shrine as he studied, taught, and wrote for several years, then returned to Hillah, Iraq, where he wrote an exegesis of Shi’ite advocacy tradition of Zainabia, entitled منية اللبيب في شرح التهذيب (“Intellectual Endeavour to Explain Refinement”), which he finished in May 1478. In 1481, he returned to Al-Ahsa, finishing his book قبس الاقتداء في شرائط الإفتاء والاستفتاء (“A Model for Implementing Fatwas and Referenda”) there and soon moving to Qatif to finish مسلك الإفهام في علم الكلام (“Guide to Rhetoric”). Afterward, he moved to Bahrain (then called Awal), where he dictated his book البوارق المحسنية لتجلي الدرة الجمهورية (“Improved Insights into the Principles of Fiqh”) over four majlis (seminars) ending on March 2, 1483.

After a brief return to Al-Ahsa, he traveled to Mashhad once more, where he completed كاشفة الحال عن أحوال الاستدلال (“Revealing the Case for Conditions of Inference”) on December 2, 1483. He stayed there until early 1484, when he wrote the letter أقل ما يجب على المكلفين من العلم بأصول الدين (“The Least Muslims Should Know about the Fundamentals of Religion”).

Among the towns he visited during his travels from 1485 to 1490 was Diriyah in Najd. In 1487, on a brief return to Taymiyyah, he completed his book, النور المنجي من الظلام في حاشية مسلك الأفهام في علم الكلام (“Enlightening Footnotes on [Al-Sayyid Hasan al-Husayni al-Lawasani’s] Guide to Theology”). That same year, he once again went on Hajj, returning a third time through Iraq and arriving in Najaf in early 1488. After a brief return to Mashhad where he wrote a critique of كتاب بحر الأنساب (“On the Sea of Genealogy”), but it was on a prolonged stay in Najaf that he wrote several books, including المسالك الجماعية في شرح الألفية الشهيدية (“Collected Tracts on Explaining the Millennial Message”) and مجلي مرآة المنجي (“The Majestic Mirror of Mangroves”).

In 1489, he left for Mashhad once more, where he finished the books تبييض (“Absolution”) and a commentary on the local monuments. Then he traveled to Gorgan (then called Astarabad) to authorize his student Muhammad bin Saleh al-Gharawi al-Hilli in the nearby village of Qalqan, along with another named Jalaluddin Bahram. Ibn Abi Jumhur stayed in Astarabad for two or three years and seemed to have divided his time between there and Mashhad until 1497. That year, he traveled to Medina to complete his work معين الفكر في شرح الباب الحادي عشر (“Some Thoughts on Explaining the Eleventh Surah”). Afterwards, he returned to Iraq and lived in Hillah, where he authorized Ali bin Qasim bin Athaqa Al-Hilli on January 28, 1501, the last date clearly mentioned in the sources as connected to Ibn Abi Jumhur.[6]

Death

Sources differ as to the time of his death, but according to scholar Hashim Muhammad al-Shakhs, he likely died around 1505 in his native Al-Ahsa, possibly at the age of 72. Some Persian sources differ and claim that he died in Mashhad and was buried in the Imam Reza Shrine.[5]

Work

Ibn Abi Jumhur was considered a leading Shi’ite Muslim scholar of his time and was well-versed in fiqh, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, and hadith interpretation. According to Kamil Mustafa Shaybi, Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa’i was the next iteration of the thought of

Maitham Al Bahrani and Haydar Amuli and a model for that of Shaykh Ahmad.[7] He was a writer and poet as well as a judge, and a few verses remain in his book, مجموعة المواعظ والنصائح والحكم (“A Collection of Sermons, Advice, and Judgments”).[6] He interpreted many Sunni hadiths that conformed to Shi’ite tradition.[10]

Philosophy

Ibn Abi Jumhur is perhaps best remembered for promulgating a key doctrine of Shi’ite scholarship, the maxim that “synthesis, however possible, is more appropriate than removal from canon.”[11] This theory holds that wherever multiple narratives on the word of the Twelve Imams conflict but are clearly transmitted and can be reconciled, they should be combined rather than favoring one tradition over another so as not to give undue weight to fame, friends’ work, contravention, or personal preference. If this process is not followed and a scholar chooses a favorite interpretation, important truths may be overlooked or indecision may block them from acting on it. As he put it in his book, عوالي اللَّئالي (“Awali al-Allali”):

For every two events that appear to be contradictory, you must first search for their meaning and the qualities of the connotations of their terms.

Then he adds a point from the hadith of the Maqbula of Umar ibn Hanzala (from a disciple of Ja’far al-Sadiq):

If you are not able to do [that reconciliation] or if neither stands out to you, then return to the hadith so you work with the renowned if opposed by the obscure. If the figures are equal in renown, work from them both as narrators and follow your own judgment. If they are equal in that, then see what common doctrine would hold and put that first.

Theology

Twelver Shi’a theology, Avicenna’s philosophy, Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi’s Illuminationism, and Ibn Arabi’s Sufi school.[12] Ibn Abi Jumhur wrote books on rhetoric, including زاد المسافرين (“Zad Al-Musafir”), but المُجلي took him a long time. He started it as زاد المسافرين (“Understanding the Way”), a theological guide he wrote in his youth in Najaf, to which his students lobbied him to write a footnote in 1488 called النور المنجي من الظلام حاشية مسلك الأفهام (“Enlightenment Lining the Path of Understanding”). On his return to Najaf in 1489, he revised it and re-published it in 1490 as مجلي مرآة المنجي, including “the divine wisdom, precious secrets of secular sciences, the essence of annunciation, and the end of levels of hoped-for perfection.” Considered a theological treatise that was his life’s work, المُجلي is considered an encyclopedia of most well-known topics of the age that primarily focuses on philosophy in Al-Bahrani’s image with Amuli’s style. The book is in two volumes, the first expounding on the Tawhid
and the second on studies of verbs on the grounds that theology is “in fact divided into them.”

Ibn Abi Jumhur revered al-Bahrani as “the greatest scholar and the deepest intellect,” though he relied on

Al-Shaykh Al-Mufid
.

Ibn Abi Jumhur’s goal was to integrate Sufi and Shi’ite thought, and he cited the arguments and research of Amuli. He considered “Sharia, the method, and the truth, [to be] synonymous names true to the one truth of the Muslim law.” He cited to this end Amuli’s البحر الخضم (“The Great Ocean”), hoping to combine the Ash’ari and the Mu’tazila theological schools with philosophy and mysticism to create a single monotheistic belief framework based on Sufi and ascetic precepts.

For Ibn Abi Jumhur, monotheism was first and foremost about the unity that is:

Proof that this world has but one maker…and the theologians’ terminology for singling out the Almighty Truth from the entire multitude of attributes and actions within it and the Sufi insistence on the pure singularity both prove the principles and organization embedded in His all-encompassing greatness.

Ibn Abi Jumhur’s theological intention was to form a new sect or at least to reform Shia Islam to become an all-inclusive ecumenical doctrine. The Shi’a sect alone was not a large enough platform for his opinions, and he pointed out areas where Shi’ites lacked curiosity and educated ulama, so he wanted to bring it up to date with the spirit of the time without disturbing its key principles.[7]

Teaching

Ibn Abi Jumhur was a very influential teacher and authorized several students to narrate hadith, including Jamal al-Din Hassan bin Ibrahim Ibn Abi Shabana al-Bahrani and Muhsin bin Muhammad al-Razawi al-Qummi, the latter his closest student and an associate from his last years at Imam Reza Shrine. Other notable disciples include Sharaf al-Din Mahmoud bin Alaa al-Din al-Talqani, who studied fiqh, hadith, biographical evaluation, and rhetoric for many years. Among other graduates were Rabi` bin Juma al-Ghazi al-Huwaizi, Jalal al-Din Bahram al-Astarabadi, Ata Allah bin Mu`in al-Din al-Sarw al-Asturabadi, Ali bin Qasim (known as Ibn Azaqa al-Hilli), Hussein al-Tuni, and Abdul Wahhab ibn Ali al-Husayni Alastabadi.[5][6]

Criticism

Ibn Abi Jumhur was criticized for his Shi’ite sympathies and accused of exaggeration by such scholars as Yedikuleli Seyyid 'Abdullah Efendi in his رياض العلماء (“Scholars of Riyadh”). Other scholars defended him, including Nematollah Jazayeri, Mirza Husain Noori Tabarsi, and Shahab ud-Din Mar’ashi Najafi. His textual magnanimity in عوالي اللَّئالي was also said by some sources to “mix the wheat with the chaff.”[6] Al-Mar’ashi wrote a letter on September 19, 1982, which he included in a forward to his edition of عوالي اللَّئالي, therein rebutting these criticisms.[13]

Legacy

A mosque in Taymiyyah is attributed to Ibn Abi Jumhur’s time and includes an engraving in the mihrab dated to 1407, when his father Ali and grandfather Ibrahim would have prayed there. The text on the engraving is preserved and was inlaid up top, stating the shahada (the credo that “there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet”).[6][14]

In 2013, the Ibn Abi Jumhur Heritage Society was founded in Qom as a non-profit dedicated to historic preservation.[15][16]

Publications

Ibn Abi Jumhur left a large body of work in many fields, most of which are in Iranian libraries and many of which were printed or at least survive in manuscripts. A bibliography was published in 2013 by Abdullah Ghafrani. Among the most important works are:

Bibliography

References

  1. ISBN 9781592391530
    .
  2. ISBN 9781792158605
    .
  3. ISBN 9646243258
    .
  4. ^ Al-Bahrani, Yahya bin Hussein (2017). Al-Jubouri, Hussein Judi Kazem (ed.). حسين جودي كاظم الجبوري ("Souvenir of the Mujtahids, a Message on the Knowledge of the Shi'ite Sheikhs") (1st ed.). Karbala: Karbala Center for Studies and Research. pp. 104–05.
  5. ^ a b c al-Amin, Al-Sayyed Mohsen (1997). Mustadrakāt A'yān al-Shī'ah, vol. 2 (2nd ed.). Beirut: Dār al-Ta‘āruf lil-Maṭbū‘āt. p. 282. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Al-Shakhs, Hashim Muhammad (1996). أعلام هجر من الماضين والمعاصرين ("Forgotten Greats Past and Present") (5th ed.). Qom: Umm al-Qura Institute for Research and Publishing. pp. 250–71.
  7. ^ a b c d Al-Shaibi, Kamel Mustafa (1966). الفكر الشيعي والنّزعات الصوّفية حتى مطلع القرن الثاني عشر العجري ("Shiite Thought and Sufi Trends Since the Beginning of the Twelfth Century A.D." (1st ed.). Baghdad: Al-Nahda Library. pp. 350–360.
  8. ^ Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʼī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī (2015). Pūrʹfārmad, Riḍā Yaḥyá (ed.). al-Mujādalāt fī al-madhāhib : munāẓarāt waqaʻat bayna Ibn Abī Jumhūr wa-al-Harawī sanat 878 H fī Khurasān. Beirut: Jamʻīyat Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʼī li-Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  9. ^ al-Hassan, Sheikh Abdullah (2007). مناظرات في العقائد والاحكام. شركة دار المصطفى لإحياء التراث. pp. 12–11.
  10. ^ al-Saif, Sheikh Fawzy. "ابن ابي جمهور الاحسائي". al-Saif.net. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  11. ^ Ardebili, Sheikh Ali Al-Mishkini (2019). إصطلاحات الأصول ومعظم أبحاثها. p. 193. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  12. ISBN 9786144259306. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help
    )
  13. ^ Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʼī, Muhammad bin Ali (1982). al-Marashi, Mahmoud (ed.). Principles of Fiqh. p. 14. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  14. ^ Al-Mousa, Ali Baqir (December 9, 2020). "Taymiyaah is the country of forty mosques and the birthplace of the great scholar Ibn Abi Jamhuour". Al-Turath Foundation. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  15. ^ Al-Jabbar, Nizar al-Abed (August 27, 2013). "أربعة إصدارات باكورة جمعية ابن أبي جمهور لإحياء التراث". Juhaina.in. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  16. ^ "Home Page". Official website of Ibn Abi Jumhur Society. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  17. ^ Çelebi, Kâtip (1652). Yaltqaa, Muhammad Sharaf al-Din (ed.). Kaşf az-Zunūn, vol. VII, part 2. Beirut: Arab Heritage Revival House. p. 186.
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