Egyptian Shāfiʿī jurist and exegete, co-author of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, who began a commentary on the Shamsiyya that he did not finish.
Life
Al-Maḥallī was born in Cairo on 1 Shawwāl 791/23 September 1389 and lived there all his life; his family came from al-Maḥalla al-Kubrā in the Nile delta. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he studied with his father and grandfather and then in the circles of Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī and Mālikī scholars of Cairo, among them al-Bulqīnī, al-Birmāwī, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī and Badr al-Dīn al-Aqṣarāʾī, from whom he learned exegesis, law and legal theory, theology, Arabic and logic. He earned his living as a cloth merchant, leaving the shop to an agent so as to teach and write. From 844/1440 he taught law at the Barqūqiyya and later, probably after 852/1448, at the Muʾayyadiyya in place of Ibn Ḥajar; he refused the post of chief judge offered under Sultan Jaqmaq. His students included al-Sakhāwī and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī. He died on 1 Muḥarram 864/28 October 1459.
His books were valued for being short, clear and reliable. The best known is the commentary on the Qurʾān that he began and al-Suyūṭī completed, hence its name Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, ‘of the two Jalāls’. His commentaries on Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ and al-Juwaynī’s Waraqāt in legal theory and on al-Nawawī’s Minhāj in Shāfiʿī law became textbooks with glosses of their own.
For logic his significance is small but telling. Ḥājjī Khalīfa, in his list of commentaries on al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, records one by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Maḥallī, d. 864, ‘and he did not complete it’, and the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ includes it among the commentaries on the book. It shows the Shamsiyya being studied and commented on by the leading Shāfiʿī scholars of fifteenth-century Cairo, where, according to the Dār al-Iftāʾ, al-Sakhāwī’s biographical dictionary mentions more than forty scholars who read it or its commentaries. The TDV article does not list the commentary among his works, and no manuscript of it is named in the sources consulted.
Uncertain or disputed
- Nothing is known of the extent or form of his Shamsiyya commentary; it is known only from Kashf al-ẓunūn and the Dār al-Iftāʾ list, which may depend on it.
Works
- Sharḥ al-Shamsiyya (unfinished) — atas al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaRecorded by Ḥājjī Khalīfa as left incomplete, and by the Dār al-Iftāʾ; no manuscript is named in the sources consulted.syarah
- Tafsīr al-Jalālayn تَفْسِيرُ الجَلَالَيْنِQurʾān commentary completed by al-Suyūṭī; first printed Delhi 1211/1796 (TDV).karya
- al-Badr al-ṭāliʿ fī ḥall Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ البَدْرُ الطَّالِعُ فِي حَلِّ جَمْعِ الجَوَامِعِCommentary on Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s handbook of legal theory, printed with many glosses.karya
- Sharḥ al-Waraqāt شَرْحُ الوَرَقَاتِCommentary on al-Juwaynī’s short text on legal theory.karya
- Kanz al-rāghibīn fī sharḥ Minhāj al-ṭālibīn كَنْزُ الرَّاغِبِينَ فِي شَرْحِ مِنْهَاجِ الطَّالِبِينَCommentary on al-Nawawī’s Minhāj, glossed by al-Qalyūbī and ʿAmīra.karya
Reception
His unfinished Shamsiyya commentary is evidence that the book was read in Cairo within two centuries of its writing; see ‘The Shamsiyya in teaching’.
Sources (3)