Ibn Kamal Pasha

Shams al-Din Ahmad ibn Sulayman al-Hanafi, known as Ibn Kamal Pasha. He was a peerless scholar and a precise researcher. His grandfather had been one of the amirs of the Ottoman state. He studied learning while still young and was then enrolled in the army. He recounted that once, while travelling with Sultan Bayezid, he saw Mawla Lutfi, shabbily dressed, sitting at the head of a great amir. He was told that scholars are honoured for their learning, and his heart became attached to knowledge ².

He rose through the ranks until he became mufti of Constantinople after the death of Mawla Ali al-Jamali. He remained in the office of mufti until his death. He worked night and day, and his pen never rested. He wrote nearly a hundred treatises on important and obscure questions. He also wrote a short commentary on the Qur'an, nearly complete, which death prevented him from finishing; glosses on al-Kashshaf; a commentary on part of al-Hidaya; a textbook of jurisprudence; a book called "Tajrid al-Tajrid" on theology, with a commentary on it; and glosses on the commentary on al-Miftah, on al-Talwih, and on Khwaja-zada's "Tahafut". He died in the year 940 ¹.