Shams al-Din al-Tunisi 'Maghwash'

Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Tunisi, a Maliki, known as Maghwash. He was a researcher, a meticulous scholar and a master of many fields. He studied with the scholars of the Maghrib and heard the two Sahihs, the Muwatta, al-Tirmidhi and al-Shifa. He read some of these with the great scholar Abu al-Abbas Ahmad al-Andalusi, known as al-Mashawis, and he was appointed judge of the army of Tunis ².

He came by sea to Constantinople in the reign of Sultan Suleiman. The sultan honoured him, gave him a generous residence and a good stipend. His excellence became widely known among the notables there, and a group of their leading men studied with him, including the two judges of the army at the time. He dictated to them his notes on al-Ja'bari's commentary on al-Shatibiyya. He then asked the sultan's permission to travel to Egypt, explaining that he could not endure the winters and the cold of Anatolia ².

He entered Aleppo, where a group of its people, including Ibn al-Hanbali, read with him. He then went to Tripoli and to Damascus, and the people there benefited from him. They testified to his learning, especially in exegesis, grammar, logic, theology, prosody, the readings of the Qur'an, semantics and rhetoric. Al-Shihab al-Tibi read the readings with him and received a very full licence from him. Ibn al-Hanbali said: "He was a learned, precise and accomplished scholar, with a remarkable understanding and an unusual memory. He used to lie on his back while teaching, and when he wanted to study any branch of learning he would read from memory, with no book or paper at all. He knew by heart the commentary on al-Talkhis with its glosses, the commentary on al-Tawali', the commentary on al-Mawaqif and the commentary on al-Matali'." Al-Shaqa'iq said of him: "In short, he was one of the wonders of the world." He died in the last ten days of Sha'ban in Cairo and was buried next to Imam al-Shafii. An epitaph in his honour in verse was inscribed on his grave ¹.