al-Shirbīnī

Egyptian Shāfiʿī scholar and, for two years, Shaykh al-Azhar, whose notes (taqrīr) on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss form the top layer of the printed commentaries on the Shamsiyya.

Life

Al-Shirbīnī studied at al-Azhar, where the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi names among his teachers Aḥmad al-Marṣafī, Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī and Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā. He then taught there himself and became known for his knowledge of the older sources. Among his students the TDV lists Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī, Muḥammad ʿIlīsh, al-Sharnūbī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī and Yūsuf b. Ismāʿīl al-Nabhānī. The sources consulted give no date or place of birth.

In the debates over the reform of al-Azhar he took the traditional side against the group led by Muḥammad ʿAbduh. When the Khedive ʿAbbās Ḥilmī II removed the reform-minded Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAlī al-Biblāwī, and three days later ʿAbduh from the Azhar administrative council, he appointed al-Shirbīnī Shaykh al-Azhar (13 Muḥarram 1323/20 March 1905). Al-Shirbīnī held that al-Azhar existed to teach the religious sciences, which would be neglected if the modern sciences were given weight, and wanted reform limited to the students’ living conditions. According to the TDV he therefore ended the lessons in philosophy and logic. ʿAbduh attacked him in the newspaper al-Muqaṭṭam. When al-Shirbīnī in turn proved unwilling to do what the Khedive expected, he was dismissed on 16 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1324 (31 January 1907) and Ḥassūna al-Nawāwī was appointed for a second time. Al-Shirbīnī died on 23 Jumādā II 1326 (23 July 1908).

He was a Shāfiʿī and was known above all for his taqrīrs, sets of notes written on the commentaries and glosses that were read in the Azhar classes, most of them on Shāfiʿī law and legal theory. Two concern the rational sciences: notes on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss on al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, and notes on al-Qūshjī’s commentary on al-Ījī’s treatise on semantics (waḍʿ), which survives in manuscript. In rhetoric he wrote Fayḍ al-fattāḥ, notes on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss on al-Taftāzānī’s al-Muṭawwal, printed in four volumes in Cairo.

Works

• Taqrīr ʿalā Ḥāshiyat ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm ʿalā al-Quṭb ʿalā al-Shamsiyya تَقْرِيرٌ عَلَى حَاشِيَةِ عَبْدِ الحَكِيمِ عَلَى القُطْبِ عَلَى الشَّمْسِيَّةِ — к al-SiyālkūtīNotes on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya. Printed in the two-volume Cairo collection Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya; the TDV gives Cairo 1328, Brockelmann (GAL S I 846) lists a ‘Taqrīr’ printed in Cairo in 1323.примечания
• Taqrīr ʿalā Sharḥ al-Qūshjī ʿalā Risālat al-ʿAḍud fī l-waḍʿ تَقْرِيرٌ عَلَى شَرْحِ القُوشْجِيِّ عَلَى رِسَالَةِ العَضُدِ فِي الوَضْعِNotes on ʿAlī al-Qūshjī’s commentary on al-Ījī’s treatise on the semantics of words; manuscript in the Dār al-Kutub, Cairo (TDV).примечания
• Fayḍ al-fattāḥ ʿalā ḥawāshī Sharḥ Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ فَيْضُ الفَتَّاحِ عَلَى حَوَاشِي شَرْحِ تَلْخِيصِ المِفْتَاحِNotes on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss on al-Taftāzānī’s al-Muṭawwal (rhetoric); 4 vols., Cairo 1323–1326 and later printings (TDV).примечания
• Taqrīr ʿalā Ḥāshiyat al-Bannānī ʿalā Sharḥ al-MaḥallīNotes on al-Bannānī’s gloss on al-Maḥallī’s commentary on Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī’s Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ (legal theory); Cairo 1304 and 1318, ed. Beirut 2005 (TDV). He also annotated al-ʿAṭṭār’s gloss on the same commentary.примечания
• Ḥāshiyat al-Ghurar al-bahiyyaGloss on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s commentary on Ibn al-Wardī’s Shāfiʿī law poem al-Bahja, printed with the gloss of Ibn Qāsim al-ʿAbbādī (Cairo 1315, 1318) (TDV).глосса

Reception

His notes were printed in Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya together with the commentaries of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī and al-Taftāzānī and the glosses of al-Jurjānī, al-Siyālkūtī, al-Dawānī and al-Dasūqī. They are the last of the layers that the TDV traces on the Shamsiyya: text, commentary, gloss, gloss on the gloss, and notes.

As Shaykh al-Azhar he stood for the traditional curriculum against Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s reformers; the TDV reports that he stopped the lessons in philosophy and logic, although his own notes on the Shamsiyya were being printed in the same years.