al-Muzani
791 CE–878 CE · Fustat
Abu Ibrahim Isma'il ibn Yahya al-Muzani was a Muslim jurist (faqih, a specialist in Islamic law) of the Shafi'i school, the legal tradition founded by his teacher Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i. He spent his life in Fustat, the early Islamic garrison-city in Egypt (the area later absorbed into Cairo, which was founded only in 969, long after his death). Tradition holds he was born in 175 AH (c. 791 CE) — said to be the year the great Egyptian scholar al-Layth ibn Sa'd died — though some sources give 174 AH; he died on 24 Ramadan 264 AH (878 CE), reportedly aged about 89.
He attached himself to al-Shafi'i after the master settled in Egypt and became his most devoted student. A widely reported saying attributes to al-Shafi'i the praise that al-Muzani was "the standard-bearer (nasir) of my school." Sources describe him as austere and ascetic in habit.
His lasting fame rests on the Mukhtasar al-Muzani, a concise digest of al-Shafi'i's legal corpus (associated with the work al-Umm). It was studied across the Muslim world and drew many later commentaries. Among those who studied with him were Ibn Khuzayma, Ibn Abi Hatim al-Razi, and his nephew Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi — who, it is reported, later left the Shafi'i school for the Hanafi one. Some biographers also report that al-Muzani briefly held a position on the disputed question of whether the Qur'an was created; this is recounted differently across the tradition.
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Fustat
What they did here
Died on 24 Ramadan 264 AH (878 CE) and was buried in the Qarafa cemetery near the tomb of al-Shafi'i. The cemetery lies in what is today Cairo's City of the Dead, but in his lifetime the locale was Fustat.
About Fustat
Fustat (al-Fustat), in what is now Old Cairo, Egypt, was the first Muslim city in Egypt, founded as a garrison-town around 641 by the conqueror Amr ibn al-As; it served as Egypt's capital until the Fatimids founded Cairo (al-Qahira) just to its north in 969. It was an early centre of Maliki and Shafi'i law; the early biographer Ibn Hisham (d. c. 833) and the jurist al-Qarafi (d. 1285) are connected to it.
The world in their lifetime
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Works
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