24 Facts About Ibn Abidin

Ibn Abidin was the authority of the fiqh of the Hanafi madhhab.

Ibn Abidin was a state employee with the title of Amin al-fatwa.

Ibn Abidin composed over 50 works consisting of a major fatwa collection, many treatises, poems, and several commentaries on the works of others.

Ibn Abidin's family came from a long line of scholars and was, therefore, well respected.

Ibn Abidin studied the Qur'an starting at a very young age and received his first general degree of authorization from his first teacher, shaykh Muhammad al-Kuzbari al-Kabir, when he was about 12 years old.

Ibn Abidin was said to have memorized the Qur'an before he reached maturity.

Ibn Abidin is an excellent example of how the fatwa system worked in reality.

Ibn Abidin went back and shortened, edited, and added his own opinion to the Damascus mufti before him, Hamid al-Imadi.

Ibn Abidin claimed that many things change with time and that the laws need to be flexible in order to account for the change in urf.

The use of ijtihad was said to have been ended amongst Hanafis long before Ibn Abidin was a mufti.

However, Ibn Abidin uses great amounts of effort in order to determine the correct answer to a problem in his fatwa, using the knowledge of the common urf and his own reasoning.

Ibn Abidin seems to have believed that ijtihad was still acceptable to use in certain circumstances.

Ibn Abidin considered acceptable to use his own reason if times had changed and the law required a change.

When it came to deciding equality of two individuals to determine if two individuals that were to be married were equally matched, Ibn Abidin came to the realization that occupations were not considered of the same status in all locations.

Ibn Abidin classified those in the lowest class to consist of barbers, metal workers, shepherds, and bath-keepers, but added that there was not a clear distinction because it depended on the custom of the location the persons lived in.

When it came to equality, Ibn Abidin stated that a non-Arab was lower than an Arab and that a learned non-Arab was higher than an ignorant non-Arab.

Ibn Abidin came up with fatwas to some of these problems.

Ibn Abidin said that the guardian of an orphan had the responsibility of the wali.

Ibn Abidin said that if the wali disregards a good marriage offer that the court has the right to interfere.

For example, Ibn Abidin adds a note at the end of one of his fatwas about taxes that criticizes the state's collection of taxes.

Ibn Abidin died on 21 Rabi al-thani in the year 1252 AH at the age of 54 years.

Ibn Abidin systematically went through the works and positions of the school with depth and preciseness.

Ibn Abidin wrote numerous books on subjects ranging from prayers to medicine.

Ibn Abidin wrote exegesis of previous juristic books which were far beyond common man's understanding.