Blind Shāfiʿī scholar of al-Azhar and its Shaykh from 1250/1834, author of a mixed commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam that is still read in Egypt and the Indonesian pesantren.
Life
Ḥasan b. Darwīsh came from Quwaysnā, a village in the Nile Delta, from which he took his nisba. The biography on Tarājim (after al-Ziriklī’s al-Aʿlām and Ashraf Fawzī Ṣāliḥ’s Shuyūkh al-Azhar) says that he was blind, and that his blindness did not hold back his scholarship. He transmitted the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī from ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī, taught at al-Azhar, and in 1250/1834 succeeded Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār as Shaykh al-Azhar. Among his students were Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī, himself later Shaykh al-Azhar and a glossator of the Sullam, and Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī. He died in 1254/1838 and was buried by the gate of the shrine of al-Bayyūmī.
Khaled El-Rouayheb names him, with Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār and al-Bājūrī, among the nineteenth-century rectors of al-Azhar who wrote on , as evidence that al-Azhar went on teaching logic while the Salafī critique of it was growing. His logic work is a on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam of the mixed (mamzūj) kind, which weaves the words of the poem into its own sentences. Some biographical works, al-Ziriklī among them, give it the title of al-Damanhūrī’s commentary, Īḍāḥ al-mubham; the catalogue of this section treats this as a mistake. He also wrote a treatise on inheritance and a record of his chains of transmission (Sanad).
Uncertain or disputed
- Year of death: 1254/1838 (al-Ziriklī, Tarājim); 1255/1839 (El-Rouayheb, after the Khedival library catalogue); Brockelmann dates him ‘c. 1210/1795’ (as cited in the catalogue).
- Title of the commentary: al-Ziriklī calls it Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam, the title of al-Damanhūrī’s work; the printed editions call it simply Sharḥ al-Quwaysinī.
- Year of birth is not given in the sources consulted.
Works
- Sharḥ al-Quwaysinī ʿalā al-Sullam شَرْحُ القُوَيْسِنِيِّ عَلَى السُّلَّمِ — on al-Sullam al-munawraqMixed commentary. Printed in Fez in 1319/1901 with marginal notes by al-Khaṭṭāb b. ʿUmar (al-Darwī), in Cairo by al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī in 1352/1933 and in the modern compilation Majmūʿ al-Sullam al-murawnaq; glossed by Muṣṭafā al-Būlāqī and by al-Bājūrī (as recorded in the catalogue of this section).commentary
- Risāla fī l-mawārīth رِسَالَةٌ فِي المَوَارِيثِOn inheritance law.work
- Sanad al-Quwaysinī سَنَدُ القُوَيْسِنِيِّHis chains of transmission.work
Reception
His belongs to the group of Egyptian works through which the Sullam reached the pesantren of Indonesia; Martin van Bruinessen lists it among the books in use there (see ‘The pesantren and the Malay world’).
Recorded lesson series on it, such as Aḥmad b. ʿUmar al-Ḥāzimī’s, are still produced (see ‘, glosses and translations’ in the Sullam section).
Sources (2)