ABŪ BAKR MOḤAMMAD B. EBRĀHĪM B. MONḎER NAYSĀBŪRĪ, a jurist loosely belonging to the Shafeʿite school. The date of his birth is unknown. He studied in Egypt under two immediate disciples of Šāfeʿī (Moḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd-al-Ḥakam and Rabīʿ b. Solaymān Jīzī) and then lived in Mecca, where he died in 318/930 (Ḏahabī, Ḥoffāẓ [Hyderabad] III, p. 4; Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī be’l-wafayāt, Istanbul, 1931, I, p. 336). Other sources give less probable death dates—309, 310, or 324. Refusing to be limited to the doctrine of a school, he claimed to be an independent moǰtahed, a title which Sobkī (Ṭabaqāt1 II, p. 126) grants him, even while numbering him in the Shafeʿite school on the grounds that he agreed with Šāfeʿī on more points than not. Sobkī lists some points of disagreement, which are not very important. Opponents as well as friends respected him for his expertise in the differences between various jurists and legal systems, as set forth in Ketāb al-ešrāf fī eḵtelāf al-ʿolamāʾ, his larger treatise on the same subject called al-Mabsūṭ, and his Ketāb al-eǰmāʿ. Nawawī (Tahḏīb al-asmāʾ, Göttingen, 1841-47, p. 675) considers him eminently reliable as a transmitter of tradition, for his care and exactitude in weighing his conclusions according to the worth of supporting traditions, and for the lack of fanaticism.
Bibliography:
Fehrest, p. 215.
ʿAbbādī, Ketāb ṭabaqāt al-foqahāʾ al-šāfeʿīya, Leiden, 1964, p. 67.
Šīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt al-foqahāʾ, Baghdad, 1356/1937, p. 89.
Ebn Ḵallekān, I, Cairo, 1948, p. 583.
Soyūṭī, Ṭabaqāt al-mofasserīn, Leiden, 1839, p. 28.
Yāfeʿī, Merʾāt al-ǰenān, Hyderabad, 1337-39/1918-21, II, pp. 261-62.
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F. Wüstenfeld, Der Imam el-Schāfiʿī, seine Schüler und Anhänger, Göttingen, 1882, no. 90.
Brockelmann, GAL I, p. 180; S. I, p. 306. Sezgin, GAS I, p. 495.
(M. J. McDermott)
Originally Published: December 15, 1983
Last Updated: July 19, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 3, p. 264
M. J. McDermott, “ABŪ BAKR NAYSĀBŪRĪ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/3, p. 264; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abu-bakr-mohammad-b-1 (accessed on 30 January 2014).
