A jurist and legal theorist counted among the greatest classical masters of Hanafi law (d. 483/1090-91; some sources 494/1101). Born in Sarakhs, he became the leading student of Shams al-A'imma al-Halwani in Bukhara and inherited from his teacher the title Shams al-A'imma, "sun of the imams". His uncompromising stance on juristic questions against the Qarakhanid ruler earned him about ten years' imprisonment in the fortress of Uzgen; he is famed for dictating the thirty-volume al-Mabsut — the most voluminous classic of Hanafi law — to his students from memory during those years, without recourse to books. Usul al-Sarakhsi and Sharh al-Siyar al-Kabir, a founding text of the law of nations, are his other principal works. Freed in 480/1087, he moved to the Farghana region (Marghinan/Margilan), completed his works there and died; the site of his grave is not established in the sources (some also mention Uzgen). Though Aflaki's hagiographic chain names him in Baha al-Din Walad's lineage (TDV "Mawlawiyya"), TDV's articles on Sarakhsi and Baha al-Din Walad record no such link, and the chronology rules it out. (Sources: Muhammed Hamîdullah, TDV Encyclopedia of Islam; Atlas of Islamic Thought.)