Qadi Iyad

Abu al-Fadl Iyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi al-Sabti, known as Qadi Iyad ("Judge Iyad"), was a leading scholar of the Maliki school of Sunni law (one of the four classical Sunni legal traditions) in the western Islamic world. He was born in 1083 (476 AH) in Ceuta, on the North African coast, into a family of Arab descent that traditional accounts say had earlier moved from al-Andalus through Fez. As a young man he made a study journey (rihla) into Muslim Spain, gathering teaching licences (ijazas) from scholars in Cordoba, Murcia, Almeria and Granada; he is reported to have studied hadith with the Murcia traditionist Abu Ali al-Sadafi (d. 1120). He served as qadi (judge) of Ceuta, then briefly as qadi of Granada, and later again in Ceuta, under the Almoravid (Murabitun) dynasty. He is best known for two books: al-Shifa, an influential work on the life, character and dignity of the Prophet Muhammad, still widely read today; and Mashariq al-Anwar, which explains rare and difficult wording in Malik's Muwatta and the two Sahih collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim. When the rival Almohad (Muwahhidun) movement rose, Iyad reportedly refused to accept their leader Ibn Tumart as the awaited Mahdi. He died in 1149 (544 AH) in Marrakesh and was buried there, near the gate later called Bab Ailan. The sources disagree sharply on how he died.