Ibn Nujaym

Zayn ad-Din Abu al-Barakaat Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Nujaym al-Misri al-Hanafi (926-970 AH / 1520-1563 CE) was an influential Hanafi jurist from Cairo who made lasting contributions to Islamic legal theory despite his relatively short life of approximately forty-three years. He is often accorded the title the Abu Hanifah of his time for the depth, originality, and systematic quality of his juristic thinking, and his works became essential references in the Hanafi tradition throughout the Muslim world.

Ibn Nujaym was born and educated in Cairo, studying under the prominent Hanafi scholars of Egypt during the Ottoman period. He mastered the Hanafi legal tradition and its principles of jurisprudence, and taught extensively in Cairo before his early death. His scholarly productivity in such a compressed lifetime was remarkable.

His most celebrated work is al-Ashbah wan-Nazair fi Qawaid wa-Furui Fiqh al-Hanafiyyah (Similarities and Parallels: On the Maxims and Branches of Hanafi Jurisprudence), a groundbreaking treatise on Islamic legal maxims (al-qawaid al-fiqhiyyah) from a Hanafi perspective. This work systematically compiled and explained the fundamental principles underlying Hanafi jurisprudence — maxims such as al-umur bi-maqasidiha (matters are judged by their purposes), al-yaqin la yazul bish-shakk (certainty is not removed by doubt), and al-darar yuzal (harm must be removed) — providing extensive applied examples illustrating each maxim. The work became the definitive Hanafi model for the genre and influenced all subsequent treatments of legal maxims.

He also authored al-Bahr ar-Raiq Sharh Kanz ad-Daqaiq, an extensive multi-volume commentary on Hafiz ad-Din an-Nasafi's Kanz ad-Daqaiq addressing legal questions in meticulous detail and preserving the positions of earlier Hanafi masters across all chapters of jurisprudence.

Ibn Nujaym's approach to legal maxims profoundly influenced the later codification of Islamic law, including the Majallat al-Ahkam al-Adliyyah — the Ottoman civil code promulgated in the nineteenth century — which drew heavily on his formulations. His al-Bahr ar-Raiq and al-Ashbah wan-Nazair remain widely studied wherever the Hanafi school is taught.