Qutb al-Din al-Razi as a Shafi‘i Scholar and the Edition, Translation and Analysis of His Commentary on the Introduction of al-Hawi al-Saghir

Abstract

Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī, one of the eminent scholars of eighteenth/fourteenth century, occupies a special place in the history of Islamic thought thanks to his contributions in philosophy and logic. His serious interest in the Islamic sciences can be seen in his writings in the fields of Islamic law and Quranic exegesis. Regarded as one of their own by the scholars of the Shāfi‘ī school due to his expertise in the sciences of uṣūl and furū‘ al-fiqh, al-Rāzī wrote a commentary on ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Qazwīnī’s al-Ḥāwī al-Ṣaghīr, one of the school’s significant doctrinal texts. This study will first present a portrait of al-Rāzī as a Shāfi‘ī scholar and then deal with how he was perceived by the school’s scholars and ṭabaqāt (biographical dictionaries) writers. It also examines the place of al-Ḥāwī al-Ṣaghīr in Shāfi‘ī literature. After touching upon how he became interested in this book, the study discusses his scholarly affiliation and the intellectual line he followed based on the personal, conceptual, and affiliation maps deduced from the text. The study concludes with the edition and translation of the surviving part of his Sharḥ al-Ḥāwī al-Ṣaghīr.

Keywords

• shā ‘ī
• al-qazwīnī
• al-ḥāwī al-ṣaghīr
• uṣūl
• furū‘
• ṭabaqāt