Al-Qaffal al-Shashi

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Ismail al-Shashi was born in Shaban of the year 291 AH (July 904) in the oasis of Shash, the site of present-day Tashkent. His nickname al-Qaffal comes from the locksmith's trade. To tell him apart from the Merv scholar Abdallah ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi, who bore the same nickname, the sources call him al-Qaffal al-Kabir (the Elder) or al-Qaffal al-Shashi.

In 309 AH (921) the young Qaffal set out to study hadith in Khurasan, Iraq, the Hijaz and Syria. His teachers included Ibn Khuzayma, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Abu'l-Qasim al-Baghawi and Ibn Durayd; he is also said to have studied theology under Abu'l-Hasan al-Ash'ari. In his youth he leaned toward Mu'tazilite ideas and later turned to the Ash'ari school, which is why some of his works, above all his large commentary on the Qur'an, retain Mu'tazilite views.

After completing his studies Qaffal returned to Shash and taught there, and the spread of the Shafi'i school of law in Transoxiana is linked to his name. Hadith were transmitted from him by pupils such as Abu Abdallah al-Halimi, Ibn Manda, Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami and al-Hakim al-Nisaburi; the last described him as the best-informed of the Transoxianan jurists of his day in the principles of law and the one who travelled most in search of hadith. He was regarded as an authority of his time in Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence and its principles, theology, Arabic and poetry, and is considered the first jurist to write a work on jadal, the art of disputation.

His works include a commentary on al-Shafi'i's al-Risala, Mahasin al-shari'a, Dala'il al-nubuwwa, Adab al-qadi, Kitab al-usul and a large tafsir. The sources also mention a qasida of his that attested to his poetic gift.

In 354 AH (965) Qaffal went to Rayy with the army of Khurasan and Transoxiana assembled against Byzantium. After the capture of Tarsus and Mopsuestia, the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas had sent the Abbasid caliph al-Muti' a qasida that mocked the Muslims. Many poets of Khurasan, Syria and Iraq wrote replies, and Qaffal's satirical poem was the one selected and sent to the emperor. Both poems survive in a manuscript in the Vienna library.

Qaffal died in Shash in Dhu'l-Hijja 365 AH (August 976), though some sources give 366. His son Abu'l-Hasan Qasim (died around 1010) was also a Shafi'i jurist and wrote the six-volume at-Taqrib. Qaffal was buried in Tashkent: the mausoleum over his grave was built in 1541–1542 by the architect Ghulam Husayn and later became the core of the Hazrati Imam complex, after which he is popularly known as Hazrati Imam.