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Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Wazīr (d. 840/1436) was a Zaydi Hadith scholar. He wrote a rebuttal of the Shi'ite Jafari school and then penned a massive defense of the Prophet's Sunna as understood through Prophetic hadith. His creed has been a matter of historical and scholarly debate. According to Yāsir Qadhi, Ibn al-Wazīr was originally a Zaydi but later converted to Sunni Islam—a claim that reflects the specific perspective of the cited author rather than an uncontested fact.

According to Damaris Wilmers, the question of Ibn al-Wazīr’s affiliation has been widely debated. She writes: "What many studies on Ibn al-Wazīr have in common is the attempt to discern whether or not he is a Zaydi scholar in either a theological or a legal sense or both, or to associate Ibn al-Wazīr’s individual positions with one of the existent schools of thought. This was already done by Ibn al-Wazīr’s contemporaries, followed by generations of Zaydi scholars as well as recent Muslim and Western scholarship in general. Al-Ḥarbī’s thesis is a good example of this attempt. Whereas some, like ʿIzzān or al-Akwaʿ, claim that Ibn al-Wazīr embodies central features of the Zaydiyya, others, like Haykel, conclude that Ibn al-Wazīr has left the school altogether and fallen in with another, namely the traditionist school that received the attribute of being Sunni. Some, however, like al-Ṣubḥī, have recognized Ibn al-Wazīr’s unique position outside of the school system, a view I agree with entirely; to my mind, that unique position featured a syncretistic version of a universalist Islam. Whether or not he thereby fell in with or even founded the school of Yemenī traditionists is a subject for further comparative research."

Amongst his works is a commentary on Ibn al-Salah's Muqaddima, titled Tanqih al-anzar.

Works

Ibn al-Wazir authored many works, including:

• Tanqih al-anzar.
• al-ʿAwasim wa al-Qawassim fi al-Dhab ʿan Sunnat ʾAbi Qasim.
• al-Burhan al-Qatiʿ fi ʾItbat al-Saniʿ wa Jamiʿ ma Jaʾat bihi al-Charaʾiʿ.
• Īthār al-Ḥaqq ʿala al-Khalq.
• al-Rawd al-Bassim fi al-Dhab ʿan Sunnat ʾAbi Qasim.

See also

• List of Islamic scholars

References

1. Qadhī, Yāsir (November 12, 2005). مقالات الجهم بن صفوان و اثرها في الفرق الإسلامية [Maqālāt al-Jahm ibn Ṣafwān wa-atharuhā fī al-firaq al-Islāmīyah]. Dār Adwā al-Salaf. p. 913 – via Google Books.
2. Wilmers, Damaris (2018). Beyond Schools: Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr’s (d. 840/1436) Epistemology of Ambiguity. Leiden: Brill. p. 9. ISBN 978-90-04-37835-3.
3. A.C. Brown, Jonathan (2007). The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon. Brill Publishers. p. 314. ISBN 978-9004158399.

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• Hadith scholars
• 15th-century Muslim scholars of Islam
• Critics of Shia Islam
• 1436 deaths
• 1373 births
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