BAYHAQĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN MOḤAMMAD

 

BAYHAQĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN MOḤAMMAD B. ŠOʿAYB ʿEJLĪ NAYSĀBŪRĪ (d. 324/936), a jurist who helped promote the spread of the Shafeʿite school of Islamic law in Khorasan. After initial training at Nīšāpūr under traditionists such as Abū Bakr b. Ḵozayma and Būšanjī, he went to Baghdad and studied law under Moḥammad b. Jarīr Ṭabarī (d. 310/923; q.v.) and Aḥmad b. ʿOmar b. Sorayj (d. 306/918-19), who was the principal exponent of Shafeʿite jurisprudence in Iraq at that time. After returning to Khorasan, Bayhaqī joined the circle of Abu’l-Fażl Baḷʿamī (d. 329/940), the learned vizier of the Samanids, who tried in vain to make him accept an appointment to the judiciary as qāżī at Čāč (Tashkent) or Ray. Bayhaqī propagated the Shafeʿite system through his teaching and his rulings (fatwās) and disputations, not through any writings of his own. Among his pupils were Abu’l-Walīd Haṣṣān Naysābūrī (d. 349/960), who founded the first Shafeʿite madrasa at Nīšāpūr, and Abū Sahl Moḥammad b. Solaymān Ṣoʿlūkī (d. 369/980), who after Bayhaqī’s death in 324/936 became the chief Shafeʿite jurisconsult at Nīšāpūr. The notion that Abu’l-Ḥasan Moḥammad Bayhaqī was the founder of the Bayhaqīya madrasa at Nīšāpūr, as Ebn Fondoq asserts, arose through a misunderstanding.

 

Bibliography:

Sobkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Šāfeʿīya al-kobrā, ed. M. M. Ṭanāḥī and ʿA. M. Ḥelū, III, Cairo, 1384/1965, p. 173 (cf. pp. 226, 306, 345), based on the Taʾrīḵ Naysābūr of Ḥākem Naysābūrī.

Ebn Fondoq (ʿAlī b. Zayd) Bayhaqī, Tārīḵ-eBayhaq, ed. A. Bahmanyār, Tehran, 1317 Š./1938, p. 158.

R. W. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur, Cambridge, Mass., 1972, p. 251.

H. Halm, Die Ausbreitung der šāfiʿitischen Rechtschule von den Anfängen bis zum 8./14. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 1974, pp. 45-47.

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 بیهقی، ابوالحسن محمد bayhaghi abol hassan mohammad  bayhaqi abol hasan mohammad bayhaqi abulhasan mohammad 
baihaghi aboulhasan mohammad      

(H. Halm)

Originally Published: December 15, 1988

Last Updated: December 15, 1988

This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 8, pp. 894-895