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al-Alusi

al-Alusi

1802 CE–1854 CE · Baghdad

Abu al-Thana' Shihab al-Din Mahmud ibn Abd Allah al-Alusi (1217-1270 AH / 1802-1854 CE) was a scholar of Ottoman Baghdad, best known as a Qur'an commentator and as the city's official Hanafi mufti (jurisconsult of the Hanafi legal school). Born and raised in Baghdad, he trained in the traditional Islamic sciences; sources report he first followed the Shafi'i legal school before adopting the Hanafi school. The exact start of his tenure as mufti of Baghdad is not securely dated in the sources consulted; he was dismissed from the post in 1847.

His major work is Ruh al-Ma'ani ("The Spirit of Meanings"), a vast Qur'an commentary (tafsir) in which he combines hadith and earlier exegesis with discussions of Arabic grammar and rhetoric, theology (kalam), and Sufi (mystical) allusion. The printed edition appeared posthumously; his son Nu'man al-Alusi saw it into print (Bulaq, 1301 AH / 1883 CE), and the work's completion and editing are sometimes debated.

His career was marked by controversy. In 1847 he was dismissed as mufti amid accusations of Wahhabi sympathies. To clear his name and affirm his loyalty to the Ottoman state, he traveled to the imperial capital, Istanbul, around 1267 AH (c. 1850-1851 CE), a journey he later described in a travel account. Sources differ on his subsequent appointment (some report a post tied to the Mirjan madrasa in Baghdad, another the mufti post of Erzurum). He returned to Baghdad and died there in 1854, and is reported buried in the Shaykh Ma'ruf cemetery. Modern scholars debate whether to read him as a Sufi-leaning traditionalist or a forerunner of later reformist (Salafi) currents; the question is contested rather than settled.

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Stop 1 of 31802–1847Born

BaghdadIraq

What they did here

Al-Alusi was born in Baghdad (14 Sha'ban 1217 AH / 10 December 1802 CE) and trained there in the Islamic sciences. He served as the official Hanafi mufti of Baghdad until his dismissal in 1847, and authored most of his Qur'an commentary Ruh al-Ma'ani in the city. (The exact start of his tenure as mufti is not securely dated in the sources consulted.)

About Baghdad

Baghdad, on the Tigris, is the capital of modern Iraq. The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded it in 762 as his capital, and for five centuries it was a leading centre of Islamic learning, with the House of Wisdom, the Nizamiyya madrasa and many jurists, Sufis and scientists; Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, eponym of the Qadiriyya order, is buried there. The Mongol sack of 1258 ended the caliphate, and the city later passed to Ottoman rule. It was also a seat of the patriarchs of the Church of the East and of the exilarch who headed Babylonian Jewry. Its Jewish community, whose foremost nineteenth-century rabbi was Yosef Hayyim (Ben Ish Chai), almost entirely emigrated to Israel in 1950-52.

Across the traditions, in Baghdad at the same time

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In the same place & time

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Across the traditions

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Works(4)