ḤALABI, ABU'L-ṢĀLEḤ

 

ḤALABI, ABU’L-ṢĀLEḤ Taqi-al-Din b. Najm-al-Din b. ʿObayd-Allāh b. ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moḥammad (b. Aleppo, 374/984-85, d. Moḥarram 447/April 1055), Imami jurist and theologian. He traveled three times to Iraq and studied with ʿAlam-al-Hodā Šarif Mortażā (q.v.) and Abu Jaʿfar Moḥammad Ṭusi. He is referred to as Mortażā’s successor (ḵalifa) in scholarship (Šahid I, p. 198) and as his deputy (ḵalifa) in Aleppo (Šahid-e Ṯāni, p. 158). While adopting many of Mortażā’s theological positions, he disagreed with him on some legal issues (cf. al-Ḏariʿa XVI, p. 9, no. 36, referring to the lost Ketāb ḡāyat al-enṣāf fi; masāʾel al-ḵelāf of Abu’l-Fatḥ Karā-jaki, d. 449/1057). Ḥalabi led a life of asceticism, and refused to accept gifts and payments from his students (Ebn Abi Ṭayyeʿ, in Ḏahabi, p. 144; cf. Ḥalabi, p. 283), the best known of whom was the judge ʿAbd-al-ʿAziz b. Barrāj (d. 481/1088-89; ʿAbd-Allāh, V, p. 464). He died either in his hometown (Ebn Ḥajar, II, p. 88), or (according to the Shiʿi judge Ebn Abi Ruḥ Ṭarābolosi, d. before 520/1126) in Ramla, while returning from the Hajj (Ḏahabi, p. 143).

The titles of some fifteen works by Ḥalabi have been transmitted (most are cited in Aʿyān al-šiʿa XIV, pp. 283-84). They include [Dafʿ ] šobah al-malāḥeda (presumably an anti-Ismaʿili polemic), a commentary on Mortażā’s Ḏaḵira, and Tadbir al-ṣeḥḥa, a medical text written for the Merdasid ruler of Aleppo Naṣr b. Ṣāleḥ (r. 420-29/ 1029-38). Only the following three works are known to have survived.

(a) Ketāb al-kāfi fi;’l-feqh, one of the oldest systematic codifications of Twelver Shiʿite law (for editions and manuscripts, see Modarressi, p. 63.) Like the earlier Kāfi of Moḥammad Kolayni, Ḥalabi’s work, though largely devoted to foruʿ, also deals with issues of theology and legal methodology (oṣul al-feqh; Ḥalabi, pp. 34-106, 456-512); in contrast to Kolayni, however, Ḥalabi did not base his work on Hadith. The Kāfi was transmitted by Montajab-al-Din ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad Naysāburi and was widely used by later Imami authors, including Ebn Edris, Moḥaqqeq Ḥelli, and, in particular, Ebn Moṭahhar Ḥelli, who cites from it mostly with approval, only occasionally expressing a difference of opinion (e.g., Ebn Moṭahhar, 1991-, I, p. 366; II, p. 194; III, pp. 23, 60-61, 391; IV, p. 145; VI, p. 294).

(b) Ketāb taqrib al-maʿāref; a (complete?) manuscript is said to be preserved in the Ḥosayniya library in Najaf (Aʿyān al-šiʿa XIV, p. 284). Another manuscript (Marʿaši, ms. 2263) is incomplete, comprising the sections on (i) God’s unity, Moḥammad’s prophecy and the imamate, (ii) the defects of the first three caliphs, and (iii) the Twelfth Imam; it breaks off at the beginning of the section on religious obligations (al-taklif al-šarʿi). Section (ii) takes up roughly one half of the manuscript and includes details not found in other extant sources; it was used by Majlesi for the Ketāb al-fetan of his Beḥār al-anwār. There are two printed editions, both based on the Marʿaši manuscript. The first (ed. Reżā Ostāḏi, Qom, 1404/1984) omits the section on the caliphs; the second (ed. Fāres Tabriziān Ḥassun, Qom, 1417/1996-97) reproduces the manuscript in its entirety.

(c) Ketāb al-borhān ʿalā ṯobut al-imān, preserved in the Aʿlām al-din fi ṣefāt al-moʾmenin of Abu Moḥammad Deylami (q.v.; ed. Beirut, 1409/1988, pp. 44-58). The theological views expressed here (on such issues as the proofs of God’s existence, Moḥammad and the imams, belief and unbelief) closely follow those of Mortażā.

 

Bibliography:

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Šahid-e Awwal Šams-al-Din Moḥammad b. Makki, Ejāza, in Majlesi, Beḥār al-anwār CVII, p. 198.

Šahid-e Ṯāni Zayn-al-Din b. ʿAli, Ejāza, in Majlesi, Beḥār al-anwār CVIII, pp. 158-59.

Al-Ṭabbāḵ, Eʿlām al-nobalāʾ be-taʾriḵ Ḥalab al-šahbāʾ, Aleppo, 1342-5/1923-26, IV, pp. 76-77.

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(Etan Kohlberg)

Originally Published: December 15, 2003

Last Updated: March 1, 2012

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