Ibn Qudama

Muwaffaq al-Din 'Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi was a leading jurist (faqih, specialist in Islamic law) of the Hanbali school, one of the four Sunni schools of law. He was born in 541 AH (1147 CE) in Jamma'il, a village near Nablus in the hills of Palestine, into a scholarly and pious family. While he was a boy the family fled the Crusader-controlled countryside and resettled at Damascus. The refugees from Jamma'il founded a quarter at the foot of Mount Qasiyun that came to be called al-Salihiyya, which grew into a noted center of Hanbali learning.

After early studies in Damascus, Ibn Qudama traveled in 561 AH (1166) with his kinsman, the hadith scholar 'Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi, to Baghdad, then a great center of Hanbali scholarship. He is reported to have briefly studied under the famous ascetic 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani shortly before the latter's death, and with other masters there and in Mecca and Mosul. He later returned to Damascus, where he taught and wrote.

His best-known work, al-Mughni, is a large commentary that lays out Hanbali law while comparing it with the views of other Sunni schools; he also wrote concise legal manuals (al-'Umda, al-Muqni', al-Kafi), a work on legal theory (Rawdat al-Nazir), and a short creed (Lum'at al-I'tiqad). He died in Damascus on the day of 'Id al-Fitr, 1 Shawwal 620 AH (1223 CE).