Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi

Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Musa ibn Muhammad al-Lakhmi of Granada, known as al-Shatibi, was a legal theorist and hadith memoriser of Granada and one of the Maliki imams; he died in 790 AH. ^{1 2} He is distinct from al-Qasim ibn Firruh al-Shatibi, author of the poem on the Qur'an readings.

The publisher of the Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya edition lists, after al-Zirikli's al-A'lam: al-Muwafaqat fi Usul al-Fiqh in four volumes; al-Majalis, a commentary on the book of sales of Sahih al-Bukhari; al-Ifadat wa-l-Inshadat, a literary treatise of which a part was published in the journal al-Muqtabas; al-Ittifaq fi Ilm al-Ishtiqaq; Usul al-Nahw; al-I'tisam on legal theory in three volumes; and al-Maqasid al-Shafiya fi Sharh Khulasat al-Kafiya in five volumes, quoting al-Tunbukti that no commentary on the Alfiyya equals it in research and precision; and a manuscript in the Rabat library attributed to him, al-Juman fi Mukhtasar Akhbar al-Zaman. ²

In the preface to al-Muwafaqat al-Shatibi says he spent a long time struggling in perplexity in pursuit of his aim, then, in recording the book's questions, relied on comprehensive inductions rather than isolated particulars, explaining their transmitted bases with rational considerations, to set out the objectives of the Book and the sunna. ^{3 4} He mentions putting the work before teachers whose sessions he attended, one of whom saw a dream that led to the title al-Muwafaqat. ^{5 6}

Abd Allah Draz holds that God raised up Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi in the eighth century to make good the deficiency of legal theory regarding the objectives of the law, and that he wrote after mastering the sunna, the exegetes, kalam, the legal theory of the early authorities, the substantive law of the mujtahids and the way of the Sufis. ^{7 8}

No detailed biography giving his birth, teachers and students was read in this batch; only his death date appears on the title page.