By Hussam Bteibet
Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. al-ʿAbbās b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿIyāḍ al-ʿIyāḍī is a descendant of Saʿd b. ʿUbādah (d. 15/636-7), the khazrajī (belonging to the Khazraj tribe) anṣārī (belonging to the Companions who originally lived in Medina) Companion of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī was a jurist from Samarkand. He studied Islamic jurisprudence alongside the famous Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944-5) with his teacher Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Isḥāq al-Jūzajānī. Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī’s students include his own son, Abū Aḥmad Naṣr b. Aḥmad al-ʿIyāḍī, as well as Abū Bakr Muḥammad al-ʿIyāḍī, and many others.
Abū Naṣr al-ʿIyāḍī was martyred when he and his son, a teen at that time, set out to the borderlands to fight in the path of Allah, Most High, when Abū Naṣr was captured and martyred by the disbelievers (1). He left behind forty companions of his that were contemporaries of al-Imam Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (2).
Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. Ṣabīj al-Jūzajānī was a scholar who combined the mastery of the sciences of furūʿ (Islamic legal minutia) and usūl (principles of Islamic legal theory). His chain to the illustrious figurehead of the Ḥanafī school, Abu Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767-8), goes through Abū Sulaymān Mūsā al-Jūzajānī to Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (d. 189/804-5). He wrote two books: Kitāb al-Farq wal-tamyīz and Kitāb al-Tawba. Jūzajān is a city near Balkh in modern-day Afghanistan (3). (4)
References
- Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī (d. 1304/1886-1887), al-Fawāʾid al-bahiyyah fī tarājim al-Ḥanafiyyah (Cairo: Dār al-kutub al-Islamiyy), 23.
- Ḥājī Khalīfa (d. 1068/1657), Salm al-wuṣūl ilā ṭabaqāt al-fuḥūl.
- al-Laknawī, al-Fawāʾid, 14.
- ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad (d. 775) al-Jawāhir al-muḍiyya fī ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyyah. (Cairo: Hajr), 144.
