al-Qarafi

Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Idris al-Qarafi was one of the most important Maliki jurists and legal theorists of the medieval Muslim world. (The Maliki school, or madhhab, is one of the four main Sunni schools of Islamic law.) He was of Sanhaja Berber descent and, according to the biographical tradition, was born around 1228 CE (the AH year is given variously, commonly 626) in Bahfashim, a village in the Bahnasa region of Upper Egypt. As a young man he moved to Cairo, then under Ayyubid and later Mamluk rule, where he spent his career.

His sobriquet "al-Qarafi" comes from al-Qarafa, the great cemetery district of Old Cairo where he is said to have grown up. He studied with leading scholars of the age, most notably the Damascene Shafi'i master al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam, as well as the Maliki authority Ibn al-Hajib and the hadith scholar al-Mundhiri. He later held teaching posts at Cairo madrasas (colleges) and at the mosque of Amr ibn al-As.

Al-Qarafi is best known for two influential works: al-Furuq, which examines fine distinctions between superficially similar legal rules, and al-Dhakhira, a large compendium of Maliki law. His reflections on custom, the common good (maslaha), and the limits of legal reasoning are still widely discussed. He is reported to have died on 30 Jumada II 684 AH (2 September 1285 CE) at Dayr al-Tin near Cairo and was buried in the Qarafa.