Abū Isḥāq said in al-Ṭabaqāt (1): “Among them is the Chief of Judges al-Māwardī. He studied jurisprudence under Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṣaymarī in Basra, then travelled to the shaykh Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāyīnī. He taught for many years in both Basra and Baghdad. He produced numerous works on jurisprudence, Qur’anic exegesis, legal theory, and literature, and he was a meticulous guardian of the school. He died in Baghdad.
Judge Shams al-Dīn said in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (2): “Whoever consults his book al-Ḥāwī (3) will testify to his vast erudition and deep grasp of the Shāfiʿī madhhab. He held judicial posts in many regions, and he wrote a Qur’an commentary entitled al-Nukat (4), Adab al-Dunyā wa-l-Dīn (5), al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya (6), and Qānūn al-Wizāra wa Siyāsa”}
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(1) p. 131.
(2) vol. 3, p. 382.
(3) Better known as al-Hawi al-kabir (The Major Compendium). Ibn al-Jawzi records in al-Muntazam 8/199 that al-Mawardi said: “I spread out the fiqh in four thousand pages and compressed it into forty,” referring by “the extended version” to al-Hawi and by “the abridgement” to al-Iqna. The latter is a commentary on al-Muzani’s Mukhtasar, and its manuscript volumes are dispersed in libraries around the world. Four isolated parts—those on Adab al-qadi—were edited by Yahya Hilal al-Sarhan, Baghdad, Diwan al-Awqaf, 1971-1978. Al-Subki, in his Tabaqat, quotes several issues from it when treating the author’s biography.
(4) Commonly titled al-Nukat wa-l-uyun; only a few manuscript sections are extant (see the introduction to Adab al-dunya wa-l-din by Mustafa al-Saqqa).
(5) Also called al-Bughyah al-ulya fi adab al-din wa-l-dunya. The work deals with ethics and religious virtues in a strictly scholarly manner, with a section on social etiquette that the author labels Adab al-muwadaʿa. Divided into five parts, it was first printed at the Jawāʾib Press in 1299/1882 and reissued several times, notably in the Babi al-Halabi edition revised by Mustafa al-Saqqa.
(6) Entitled al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya fi al-siyasa al-madaniyya al-sharʿiyya, and also al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya wa-l-wilayat al-diniyya. Together with Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni’s Ghiyath al-umam, it is regarded as a leading specimen of Islamic political jurisprudence. The author arranged it in twenty chapters; it is similar —