240 – Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī, Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad *

The eminent imām, leading teacher of the Shāfiʿī school and jurist of Baghdad: Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad al-Marwazī, the companion of Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Surayj and the eldest of his students.

He spent many years in Baghdad, authoring numerous works. Great imāms trained under him, among them Abū Zayd al-Marwazī and the judge Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad ibn Bishr al-Marwarūdhī (1), the mufti of Basra, and several others.

He elucidated the school, produced concise summaries of it, and the leadership of the Shāfiʿī madhhab ultimately devolved upon him.

Toward the end of his life he moved to Egypt, where he died in the month of Rajab on the ninth day. Another report says it was on the eleventh day in the year 340 AH, and he was buried beside the mausoleum of Imām al-Shāfiʿī (2). He was probably close to seventy years old.

In Baghdad the alley known as Darb al-Marwazī in the Rabiʿ Quarter (3) is named after him.

Ibn Khallikān relates that Abū Bakr ibn al-Ḥaddād, author of al-Furūʿ, was one of Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī’s pupils (4). It seems likely that he met and debated with him, even though Ibn al-Ḥaddād was the elder of the two; he survived al-Marwazī by only a short while (5).

Al-Marwazī composed a book on the Sunnah, read it aloud in the congregational mosque of Egypt, and thousands attended.