SScholar
Shams al-A'imma al-Sarakhsi
The great Hanafi jurist known in the Islamic world as “Šams al-Aʾemma al-Saraḵsī”; by commenting, together with their proofs, on the “ẓāher al-rewāya” works that form the backbone of Hanafi law, he contributed to the understanding and spread of that law. Among Hanafi scholars he draws attention as much for his life as for his works. As he himself states in the prefaces of his works, his full name was Abū Bakr Moḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Sahl . He was born in or near Saraḵs , an old town of Khorasan on today's border between Turkmenistan and Iran, and went to Bukhara to study. In Bukhara he studied with Šams al-Aʾemma ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥalwānī (d. 452/1060) and became one of the leading figures of his time; from his teacher he inherited not only the carpet on which he taught but also the title Šams al-Aʾemma , “sun of the imams”. Besides Ḥalwānī, as he reports in the preface to the Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr , he also studied with Šayḵ al-Eslām Abu'l-Ḥasan al-Soḡdī (461/1069) and Abū Ḥafṣ ʿOmar b. Manṣūr al-Bazzār; he says that the al-Siyar al-kabīr reached him from three teachers through three separate chains of transmission. He lived in the Karakhanid period and, after the state split in two, resided in the territory of the Western Karakhanids. In this period there were at times serious conflicts between the rulers and the scholars, and some jurists were executed. Al-Saraḵsī was imprisoned in 466/1073 at the latest and released in 480/1087 ; during this time three khans came to the throne: Šams al-Molk Naṣr II b. Ebrāhīm, Abū Šojāʿ Ḵeżr Khan and Aḥmad Khan. He himself does not explain the reason for his imprisonment: in twenty-three passages, nineteen of them in al-Mabsūṭ and one each in Oṣūl al-feqh , Šarḥ Zeyādāt al-zeyādāt and Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr , he speaks of his prison life, the hardships of those days and the cause that brought him to prison only in veiled terms; he states that he was imprisoned for speaking the truth, because of an accusation and because of a “word” he had uttered. His imprisonment took place in Özkent (Uzjand). He was barred from attending the Friday prayer and from contact with the people, and deprived of his family, his son and his books; it appears that in the first years he was held under harsh conditions and was later moved to a more comfortable room (zāwiya) in the fortress. In Oṣūl al-feqh he says that he was “in a room in the fortress of Uzjand”. For a while he began dictating the Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr in the house of a man called Amīr Gūn who had taken him under his protection, and was then ordered to return to the fortress. According to his own record he was freed on a Friday, ten days before the end of the month of Rabīʿ I of the year 480; on the last day of the month he set out from Uzjand for Margīnān and stayed as a guest in the house of Imam Sayf-al-Dīn Abū Ebrāhīm Esḥāq b. Esmāʿīl. There, at the request of Sayf-al-Dīn and the jurists, he continued dictating the Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr , which he had begun in prison, from the chapter “Šorūṭ” onwards, and completed the work on the third day of Jumādā I of 480/1087. He is said to have left prison at about eighty years of age. The sources give no information about what followed his stay in Margīnān. There are differing figures for the date of his death: the biographical works generally give 483/1090-91 , and expressions such as “around the year 490” and “around the year 500” are also found; the records that he went to Margīnān after prison support the date 483. His Circle of Influence — Among his well-known students named in the sources are Borhān al-Aʾemma ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz b. ʿOmar b. Māza (d. 536/1141), Maḥmūd b. ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz al-Uzjandī, the grandfather of Qāżīḵān (d. 592/1196), Abū Ḥafṣ ʿOmar b. ʿAlī al-Zandarāmīsī, the maternal grandfather of Borhān-al-Dīn al-Margīnānī, Rokn-al-Dīn Masʿūd b. Ḥosayn al-Kušānī (or Kāšānī), ʿOṯmān b. ʿAlī b. Moḥammad al-Bīkandī and Abū Bakr Moḥammad b. Ebrāhīm al-Ḥaṣīrī. Ibn Qoṭlūboḡā and Laknawī relate that when he left prison and went to Margīnān his students also arrived there and completed the dictation of the Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr that they had begun in prison. His Poetry and Sufi Line — He is known for his strong memory and outstanding ability; his works show that apart from law he was also accomplished in mathematics and algebra and took an interest in poetry. In the first volume of al-Mabsūṭ the names of twenty works appear together with al-Aṣl , all of them by Hanafi jurists. Al-Saraḵsī worked on two copies of al-Aṣl , transmitted by Imam Moḥammad's two students Abū Solaymān al-Jowzjānī and Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kabīr, and drew attention to the differences between them. His Works — In the number of his works he is one of the greatest Muslim jurists. Most of his works were written in prison and consist of commentaries on the works of Imam Moḥammad collected under the name “ẓāher al-rewāya”, which form the fundamental doctrines of Hanafi law: al-Aṣl / al-Mabsūṭ , Zeyādāt , al-Jāmeʿ al-ṣaḡīr , al-Jāmeʿ al-kabīr , al-Siyar al-ṣaḡīr and al-Siyar al-kabīr . The thirty-volume al-Mabsūṭ was dictated to his students under the hard conditions of imprisonment and was the first work he dictated in prison; he wrote Oṣūl al-feqh immediately after it; the Šarḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr was begun in Özkent and completed in Margīnān. His Tomb and Complex — In the town of Özkent (Özgön) in Kyrgyzstan there is a grave attributed to al-Saraḵsī. In 2004 Nusret Çam saw there that, of two black stones standing side by side in a newly built or newly repaired brick niche, the inscribed one was attributed to al-Saraḵsī; it is also related that his gravestone was taken to St Petersburg in the Soviet period. The six-line ṯoloṯ inscription that Çam read, however, belongs to a man named Moḥammad son of ʿAlī, evidently a great scholar judging by his titles, and bears the date 2 Šawwāl 607 (19 March 1211); by name and date the stone cannot belong to al-Saraḵsī. Most of the people continue to believe that the grave is al-Saraḵsī's; Çam explains this belief by the affection felt for the scholar who courageously defended the people against heavy taxes, and notes that if al-Saraḵsī died outside Özkent a memorial (maqām) may have been built for him there.
MargilanDied 483 AHView → 