al-Mawsili

Abu al-Fadl Majd ad-Din Abdullah ibn Mahmud ibn Mawdud al-Mawsili (599-683 AH / 1203-1284 CE) was a prominent Hanafi jurist from Mosul, Iraq. He authored several works in Hanafi jurisprudence that became standard texts in the Hanafi legal curriculum for centuries.

Al-Mawsili's most important work is al-Ikhtiyar li-Ta'lil al-Mukhtar (The Choice: Explaining the Selected), a two-part work where he first presents al-Mukhtar (his own selection of Hanafi legal positions) and then provides explanations and justifications for those positions in the commentary. This methodology made the work valuable as both a legal reference and a teaching text.

He also authored al-Mukhtar lil-Fatwa, a concise statement of Hanafi legal positions on the topics of fiqh organized for practical reference, which became one of the standard Hanafi legal texts. His works represent the mature Hanafi legal tradition of the 7th century AH in Iraq, a tradition that had by then accumulated centuries of juristic elaboration since the time of Abu Hanifa.

Al-Mawsili's al-Ikhtiyar became a particularly widely used teaching text in Ottoman madrasas and continued to be used in traditional Hanafi institutions for centuries. Commentaries were written on it by later scholars. He passed away in Mosul in 683 AH. His contribution to the Hanafi legal literature through his clearly organized and explained works is his lasting legacy in the tradition.