Ibn al-Humam

Kamal al-Din Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahid, known as Ibn al-Humam (or al-Kamal ibn al-Humam), was a leading Hanafi jurist of Mamluk Egypt. The Hanafi school is one of the four main Sunni schools of law (madhhab). His family is traditionally said to have originated in Sivas, in Anatolia; his father served as a judge (qadi), reportedly in Sivas and later in Alexandria, where Ibn al-Humam was born in 790 AH (1388 CE).

He grew up and studied chiefly in Cairo, the Mamluk capital, where he absorbed both the "transmitted" sciences (Qur'an, hadith, law) and the "rational" ones (theology, logic, language). Reports describe him as exceptionally wide-ranging, and later writers list achievements in many fields; such praise comes from admiring biographers and should be read as tradition, not neutral fact. According to the biographer al-Sakhawi, he spent roughly 813-815 AH in Aleppo accompanying his teacher Ibn al-Shihna. He also performed the Hajj pilgrimage.

His enduring fame rests on his writings: Fath al-Qadir, an influential commentary on al-Marghinani's Hanafi manual al-Hidaya (left unfinished at his death), and al-Tahrir, a work on legal theory (usul al-fiqh) that became a standard text. He taught in Cairo, including at the Mansuriyya college, and is reported to have headed the Shaykhuniyya Sufi lodge. He died in Cairo in 861 AH (1457 CE).