


Al-minah al-shaafiyah bi sharh nazm al-mufradat al-waafiyah (The healing gifts: commentary on a poem explaining the terminology of the Hanbali mathhab) is an exposition on the mathhab (school of religious and juridical doctrine) of Imam Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Ḥanbal (780–855). The title refers to the gifts that cure the thirst for knowledge, and the commentary expounds on the 1,000-line poem by Shams ad-Din Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Ahmed ibn Abdul Hadi al-Maqdisi (died circa 1343). The work presented here is by Mansoor ibn Yousuf ibn Salahuddeen ibn Hassan ibn Idrees al-Hanbali (better known as al-Buhuti, died circa 1641), an Egyptian scholar and teacher. Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal lived most of his life in Baghdad and was a revered and influential Sunni theologian and authority on fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). The Hanbali school of fiqh is the most strictly conservative of the four schools of religious law in Islam, and Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal came to personify orthodox doctrine. A note on the manuscript indicates that “the completion of this blessed copy fell on Sunday, the end of the Almighty’s holy month of Muharram at the beginning of the year 1319 of the hijra of the Best of all mankind,” meaning 1901–2.

Last updated: August 28, 2012