Introduction1

The text presented in this chapter is a commentary upon Sarim al-Din Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Wazir’s (d. 914/1508) al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya. Sarim al-Din al-Wazir was a prominent Yemeni Zaydi scholar of his time.² His birth has, in most cases, been dated as 834/1431, although Tab- aqdt al-Zaydiyya al-kubrd, an important bio-bibliographical source for Zaydi scholars, dates al-Wazir’s birth in 806/1403-4.³ Al-Wazir’s family descended from the founder of the Zaydi imamate in Yemen, al-Hadi ila l-Haqq (d.

Al-Wazir studied theology and legal theory with numerous teachers. He studied not only Zay- di works, but also - with an Egyptian Shafi'i scholar - al-Subki’s Jam‘ al-jawamF, Arabic lan­guage, applied law (furu^c), Prophetic traditions as well as traditions of the Prophet’s family (Ahl al-bayt), biographies of the Imams (siyar), exegesis and other disciplines.⁵ He is described as an outstanding scholar in the field of ijtihdd⁶ and as a firm adherent of the doctrines of the Zaydi Imams.⁷ Another indication of his scholarly prominence is the number of students mentioned by biographical sources, which include the Imam Sharaf al-Din Yahya b. Shams al-Din (d. 965/1558) and the Imam’s son Ahmad. Al-Wazir died in Jumada II 914/1508 in San'a³.

Al-Wazir was renowned for his contributions to the field of legal methodology,⁸ and al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya - a commentary upon which is presented in this chapter - was his most important book in this field.⁹ He was also prolific in the field of Zaydi and Prophetic hadith, as well as re­lated areas.

37) Kitab al-azhar, entitled Hiddyat al-afkar ild ma^cdni l-Azhar fl fiqh al-a’imma al-athdr.

Al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya has survived in numerous manuscripts, and those we were able to consult (though not the originals, but in digital form) all contain extensive commentaries between the lines and in the margins. In the case of other manuscripts, which we were unable to check, we know from their descriptions in catalogues that they also contain interlinear or marginal com­mentaries. It is very likely that even in cases where catalogues do not mention any commentar­ies, the copies actually contain them: considering the lack of any standards for the description of manuscripts in our field, information offered by catalogue entries is often rudimentary and un­systematic. A list of the manuscripts of al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya we were able to locate is provided below.

When we inspected a selection of copies of al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya, we observed that the same interlinear or marginal notes were found in more than one manuscript. This means that they are not the individual comments, remarks, or explanations of the scribes or the readers of the specif­ic manuscripts, but rather that these commentaries consist of textual material transmitted along with the basic work by al-Wazir. In addition, there are at least three independent commentaries on al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya, that have been attributed to specific authors: Lutfallah b. Muhammad al-Ghiyath’s (d. 1035/1625) Sharh al-Fusul, al-Hasan b. 'Ali b. Muhammad al-Jalal’s (d. 1079/1668-69) Nizam al-fusul and Salah al-Din Salah b. Ahmad b. al-Mahdi al-Mu’ayyadi’s (d. 1044/1635) al-Darari al-mudi’a.¹⁰

Finally, there is a fourth commentary, which to the best of our knowledge has been noticed so far only by Lofgren and Traini in their catalogue of the Arabic manuscript collection of the Am­brosiana Library in Milan: under the number 879 (ar.

1) a MS from a private Yemeni library that was digitised by the Zayd b. 'Ali Cultural Founda­tion¹³ (IZbACF no. 110-02, fols. 82a-137a - the metadata about the digital copy does not specify the original manuscript’s whereabouts, and we were unable to identify the codex with any of the manuscripts described in catalogues of private Yemeni manuscript librar­ies); fol. 82a has a marginal note that allows us to attribute this compilation to Ahmad b. 'Abdallah Ibn al-Wazir, and which reads hadha kalam lil-faqih Ahmad b. 'Abdallah al-jami' li-hadhihi al-hashiya;

2) MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Glaser 180, where the title is given on fol. 1a as Hashiyat al- Fusul li-mawlana Sarim al-Din al-Wazir without indication of its compiler.¹⁴

3) MS Vienna, Austrian National Library, Glaser 61 is a manuscript of al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya which has a copy of the Hashiya in the margins.

Lofgren and Traini describe the Hashiya as consisting of extracts from two commentaries abbre­viated by the sigla i and ^p, the first of which they identify with al-Mu’ayyadi’s al-Darari al- mudi’a. In fact, the Hashiya appears to include extracts from more than these two texts, consider­ing the use of additional abbreviations for sources, including ^, l^, j, 3, and others. The Hashiya does not copy the text of al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya in its entirety. Rather, it quotes only the passages of al-Fusul that are subject to remarks or explanations. These citations are intro­duced by the formula qawluhu and highlighted by the copyists in red ink.

As mentioned by Ahlwardt in his catalogue entry, MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Glaser 180 is incomplete, and the end of the text is missing.¹⁶ The text in IZbACF no. 110-02 ends on fol. 137a with a quotation from the chapter bab al-ijtihad in al-Fusül al-lu’lu’iyya and then marks the end of the commentary by CÄ.¹⁷ This suggests that the Hashiya was never completed: that is, it never covered the entire al-Fusül al-lu’lu’iyya.

In the following, we will present a passage from the beginning of the chapter on analogy (qi­yas) from the Hashiya (IZbACF no. 110-02, fols. 103a-b; MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Glaser 180, fols. 116a-118a; MS Vienna, Austrian National Library, Glaser 61, fol. 133b). Before we turn to the text itself, we provide a list of manuscript copies of al-Wazir’s al-Fusul al-lu’lu’iyya based on a survey of relevant catalogues of Zaydi manuscript collections; we indicate whenever we know that they contain marginal or interlinear notes and, for those manuscripts we were able to con­sult (marked with an asterisk), whether their marginal or interlinear notes partly overlap with the Hashiya.