طبقات الفقهاء الشافعية لابن الصلاح

Tabaqat al-Fuqaha' al-Shafi'iyyah li-Ibn al-Salah

A major biographical work devoted to the scholars and jurists of the Shāfiʿī school, originally compiled by the celebrated scholar Imām Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī (d. 643 AH) and subsequently revised, expanded and completed by Imām Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676 AH). This edition has been critically edited and annotated by Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAlī Najīb and published by Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyyah.

The work has an interesting textual history. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ began collecting biographies of Shāfiʿī scholars, particularly unusual or lesser-known notices that he encountered in books and scholarly collections during his travels. His intention appears to have been eventually to arrange and complete this material into a comprehensive biographical dictionary, but he passed away before doing so. Al-Nawawī subsequently took up these materials, edited and arranged them, added further biographies, and supplemented existing entries from works of ḥadīth, fiqh, uṣūl and other sources.

Al-Nawawī's recension contains more than four hundred individual biographies, together with additional supplementary notices. The entries provide information on the scholars' names and lineages, teachers and students, scholarly standing, writings and other biographical details, while frequently preserving valuable information drawn from earlier sources.

The book subsequently became an important source for the Shāfiʿī biographical tradition, being utilized by later authors of ṭabaqāt works such as al-Subkī, al-Isnawī, Ibn Kathīr and Ibn Qāḍī Shuhbah. The editor's introduction also carefully examines the complicated history of the text and the respective contributions of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and al-Nawawī, making this edition particularly useful for researchers in Shāfiʿī scholarship, Islamic biography and the history of the madhhab.