EBN ṬĀWŪS, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN ABU’L- FAŻĀʾEL AḤMAD

 

EBN ṬĀWŪS, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN ABU’L- FAŻĀʾEL AḤMAD b. Mūsā b. Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad Ḥasanī, Imami scholar. The Banū Ṭāwūs, named after their ancestor Moḥammad Ṭāwūs, were a family of Hasanid šarīfs well established in Ḥella in the 6th/12th century. Aḥmad’s mother was a daughter of the Imami scholar Warrām b. Abu’l-Ferās (d. 605/1208-09); through his father, he was descended from a daughter of the Shaikh Abū Jaʿfar Moḥammad b. Ḥasan Ṭūsī. His more prominent brother Rażī-al-Dīn ʿAlī was born in 589/1193 and died in 664/1266. Aḥmad was probably younger than ʿAlī and may have been born around the turn of the 6th/12th century. He appears to have lived most of his life in Ḥella, although he probably also studied in Baghdad. It is unknown who his chief teachers were. Among those from whom he transmitted were Faḵḵār b. Maʿadd Mūsawī (d. 630/1233), his brother Moḥammad b. Maʿadd, Ḥosayn b. Ḵašram, and Moḥammad b. Nomā (d. 645/1247). The contemporary author of al-Ḥawādeṯ al-jāmeʿa (p. 382) refers to him as naqīb (syndic) of the ʿAlids; but it is unknown when and where he held this position. Among his students were ʿAllāma Ḥellī and Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Dāwūd Ḥellī (b. 647/1249), who states in his Ketāb al-rejāl that Ebn Ṭāwūs raised and educated him and treated him charitably. Ebn Ṭāwūs died in 673/1274-75 in Ḥella and was buried, according to al-Ḥawādeṯ al-jāmeʿa, near the shrine of Imam ʿAlī in Najaf. However, a grave claimed to be his was later shown in Ḥella and was visited by the pious.

According to Ebn Dāwūd Ḥellī, the works of Ebn Ṭāwūs amounted to eighty-two volumes. His two comprehensive works on feqh, Bošra’l-moḥaqqeqīn in six volumes and Malāḏ in four, are lost, though his views are quoted in some later works. He was the first to introduce two new categories for the traditions used in Imami feqh in addition to those of sound (ṣaḥīhá) and weak (żaʿīf) previously applied. This new classification of traditions was then adopted and made popular by ʿAllāma Ḥellī but was later repudiated by the Aḵbārī school as an arbitrary innovation. He composed books on oṣūl al-feqh and theology, collections of sermons and prayers, a commentary on the Lāmīya poem of Mahyār Deylamī in support of the rights of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb, and a refutation of Ebn Abi’l-Ḥadīd, most likely of his views about ʿAlī and the first caliphs expressed in his Šarḥ Nahj al-balāḡa. His poetry was collected in a dīvān. In his Ḥall al-eškāl fī maʿrefat al-rejāl, completed on 20 Rabīʿ II 644/October 4, 1246 in Ḥella, he relied, in addition to the basic four early Imami rejāl works, on a copy of Ebn al-Ḡażāʾerī’s Ketāb al-żoʿafāʾ that he had found. His autograph of the book was still available to Ḥasan b. Zayn-al-Dīn ʿĀmelī, who in 991/1583 extracted from it the quotations from Abū ʿAmr Moḥammad Kaššī’s Ketāb al-rejāl and gathered them in a book he entitled al-Taḥrīr al-ṭāwūsī, and to ʿAbd-Allāh b. Ḥosayn Tostarī (d. 1021/1612), who extracted from it the quotations from Ebn al-Ḡażāʾerī’s work (al-Ḏarīʿa VII, pp. 64 f.). His only works known to be extant are the following: ʿAyn al-ʿebra fī ḡabn al-ʿetra (Najaf, 1369/1950), written under the pseudonym ʿAbd-Allāh b. Esmāʿīl Kāteb, deals with the verses of the Koran about the virtues of the family of the Prophet and the vices of their opponents. Benāʾ al-maqāla al-fāṭemīya fī naqż al-Resāla al-ʿoṯmānīya, a refutation of al-Resāla al-ʿoṯmānīya of Jāḥeẓ completed before Šawwāl 665/July 1267, the date of a copy thereof (Dānešpažūh, pp. 241-79).

 

Bibliography: (For cited works not given in detail, see “Short References.”)

Aʿyān al-šīʿa X, pp. 275-85.

Y. Baḥrānī, Loʾloʾat al-Baḥrayn, ed. M.-Ṣ Baḥr-al-ʿolūm, Najaf, 1386/1966, pp. 241-44.

M.-T. Danešpažūh, Fehrest-e nosḵahā-ye ḳaṭṭī-e ketāb-ḵāna-ye Dāneškada-ye Ḥoqūq …, Tehran, 1339 Š./1960.

(Pseud.) Ebn al-Fowaṭī, al-Ḥawādeṯò al-jāmeʿa, ed. M. Jawād, Baghdad, 1351/1932, p. 382.

(Pseud.) Ebn Dāwūd Ḥellī, Ketāb al-rejāl, ed. J. Ḥosaynī, Tehran, 1383/1963, pp. 45-47.

Ḥorr ʿĀmelī, Amal al-āmel fī ʿolamāʾ Jabal ʿĀmel, ed. A. Ḥosaynī, Baghdad, 1385/1965, II, pp. 29 f.

M.-B. Ḵᵛānsārī, Rawżāt al-jannāt, ed. A. Esmāʿīliān, Qom, 1390-92/1970-72, I, pp. 66-68.

E. Kohlberg, A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work. Ibn Tāwūs and His Library, Leiden, 1992, index, s.v.

Ibn Tāwūs. A. R. Strothmann, Die Zwölfer-Schīʿa, Leipzig, 1926, pp. 90-91.

(Wilferd Madelung)

Originally Published: December 15, 1997

Last Updated: December 6, 2011

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