نظم الجمان في طبقات أصحاب إمامنا النعمان

Nazm al-Juman fi Tabaqat Ashab Imamina al-Numan

A major biographical work devoted to the scholars and notable figures of the Ḥanafī madhhab, by the historian Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aydamur Ibn Duqmāq al-Ḥanafī (d. 809 AH). Ibn Duqmāq composed the work after observing that, despite the long tradition of ṭabaqāt and biographical writing, the personalities of the Ḥanafī school had not been gathered in a sufficiently extensive and comprehensive work.

The author arranged his material into eight ṭabaqāt, covering successive generations of the school from the second century AH until his own era. The first volume is devoted to the biography of Imām Abū Ḥanīfah, discussing his name and lineage, origins, teachers, virtues and scholarly rank, the praise of the scholars for him, his merits and his death. The subsequent volumes contain the biographies of the scholars of the madhhab, beginning with Abū Ḥanīfah's direct students and proceeding through the generations that followed.

The biographies are rich in scholarly detail, recording, where available, a person's name, lineage, kunyah, titles and place of origin; teachers and scholarly journeys; auditions and narrations; scholarly standing, students, writings and juristic views; chains of transmission in ḥadīth, fiqh and poetry; judicial, administrative and scholarly appointments; teaching activity in mosques and madrasahs; and details of birth and death. Ibn Duqmāq arranges the deaths by century and the entries alphabetically within their respective sections.

An important and extensive source for the biographical history of the Ḥanafī madhhab, documenting its scholars, intellectual networks and transmission across many centuries and regions of the Muslim world.

Edited using 7 manuscripts, including the author's own copy, it is filled with fawaid not found elsewhere. Most ulama only heard of it and never had access to it in the past.