al-Shatibi (al-Qasim ibn Firruh)
c. 1144 CE–c. 1194 CE · Valencia
Al-Qasim ibn Firruh ibn Khalaf al-Ru'ayni al-Shatibi (538-590 AH / c. 1143/1144-1194 CE) was a scholar of qira'at — the disciplined variant readings in which the Qur'an is recited — whose name is attached to one of the most widely memorized texts in Islamic learning. He was born in Jativa (Arabic Shatiba), in the Valencia region of Muslim Spain; sources convert his birth year of 538 AH variously to 1143 or 1144 CE. Biographical tradition reports that he was blind, in some accounts from birth. He studied hadith (reports of the Prophet's words and deeds) and Arabic in Valencia; sources name the scholar Ibn Hudhayl among his teachers, though one modern study instead names Abd Allah al-Nafzi as his teacher in the readings.
In the 570s AH (1170s CE) he left al-Andalus for the Islamic East, settling first at Alexandria, where he is reported to have studied with the celebrated hadith master Abu Tahir al-Silafi. He then moved to Cairo. There the powerful secretary-statesman al-Qadi al-Fadil, a close associate of Saladin, appointed him to teach Qur'anic recitation, grammar, and philology at the school al-Fadil had founded, the Fadiliyya.
Al-Shatibi's lasting achievement is the poem Hirz al-Amani wa-wajh al-tahani, universally called the Shatibiyya: a versification of about 1,170 verses of al-Dani's prose manual al-Taysir, condensing the seven readings into a memorizable rhyme. It became the foundational text of qira'at study, drawing centuries of commentary. He is reported to have died in Cairo in 590 AH (1194 CE) and to have been buried in the Qarafa cemetery, traditionally said to be near al-Qadi al-Fadil.
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ValenciaולנסיהSpain
What they did here
Born in Jativa (Shatiba) in the Valencia region of al-Andalus in 538 AH (converted variously to 1143 or 1144 CE). He studied hadith and Arabic in the city of Valencia; sources name Ibn Hudhayl among his teachers, though a modern study names Abd Allah al-Nafzi as his teacher in the readings. Pinned at Valencia, where his documented study took place; his home town of Jativa is not mapped. Tradition reports he was blind, in some accounts from birth.
About Valencia
Valencia, a Mediterranean port in eastern Spain, was founded as the Roman colony of Valentia in 138 BCE. Taken by Muslim forces around 714, it became, as Balansiya, part of al-Andalus and later capital of an independent taifa kingdom; El Cid held it from 1094 to 1102, and James I of Aragon took it for good in 1238. The poet-philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol probably died there in the eleventh century, and from 1239 the Jews had a walled quarter until it was destroyed in the pogrom of 1391. Alfons de Borja was bishop of Valencia from 1429 until his election as Pope Callixtus III in 1455. The Qur'an reciter al-Shatibi (d. 1194) was born nearby.
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