al-Alusi

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.