Introduction to the Author and the Work

Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Hamzah ar-Ramli al-Ansari al-Misri (d. 1004 AH / 1596 CE) stands as one of the foremost authorities of the late Shafi'i school. Born in Ramla, a town in the Egyptian Delta, he spent his formative years under the tutelage of Zakariyya al-Ansari, the great Shafi'i jurist of his era, and later under his own father Ahmad ar-Ramli. His mastery of fiqh was so complete that he earned the honorific 'al-Shafi'i al-Saghir' — the minor Shafi'i — a title that captures the reverence his contemporaries and students held for him.

Nihayat al-Muhtaj ila Sharh al-Minhaj is ar-Ramli's monumental commentary on Imam Al-Nawawi's Minhaj at-Talibin, itself an abridgment of ar-Rafi'i's al-Muharrar. The Minhaj at-Talibin had become the central reference text of the Shafi'i school by the ninth century AH, and the tradition of producing commentaries (shuruh) on it gave rise to some of the greatest works in Islamic jurisprudence. Ar-Ramli's Nihayat al-Muhtaj occupies a position of singular importance among these commentaries, offering both depth of analysis and breadth of coverage.

The work was composed over many decades and reflects ar-Ramli's lifelong engagement with Shafi'i jurisprudence. He drew extensively on the major works of the school — the Rawdah of Al-Nawawi, the Sharh al-Kabir of ar-Rafi'i, and the Tuhfah of Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, with whom ar-Ramli occasionally differed. These disagreements between ar-Ramli and al-Haytami are of great importance to later Shafi'i jurists, and students of the school are trained to identify the positions of each and know when one is preferred over the other in different regions of the Muslim world.

Ar-Ramli's methodology in Nihayat al-Muhtaj combines textual precision with rational analysis. He does not merely transmit opinions but evaluates chains of reasoning, weighs competing positions within the school, and at times issues his own tarjih (preponderant judgment). His famously careful attention to language — both Arabic and the technical vocabulary of fiqh — makes the work a reliable source not only for legal rulings but for understanding how those rulings were derived and justified.

The Nihayat al-Muhtaj became the primary reference in the Shafi'i-dominant regions of the Arab world, particularly in Egypt and the Levant, while the Tuhfat al-Muhtaj of al-Haytami held greater sway in the Hijaz and among Indian and Southeast Asian Shafi'is. Together, they represent the twin peaks of late classical Shafi'i jurisprudence. Students who master both works, along with their marginalia (hawashi) — most notably those of ash-Sharwani and al-Irbili on the Tuhfah, and those of ar-Rashidi and al-Maghribi on the Nihayah — are considered fully equipped for issuing fatwas according to the Shafi'i school.