Ibn Abidin

Muhammad Amin ibn 'Umar, known as Ibn 'Abidin al-Shami, was a jurist (faqih) of the Hanafi madhhab — one of the four main schools of Sunni Islamic law — in Ottoman Damascus. Sources place his birth in 1198 AH (1784 CE) in the al-Qunawat quarter of Damascus and his death there on 21 Rabi' al-Thani 1252 AH (1836 CE). He was buried near the tomb of al-Haskafi, the author whose work he later annotated.

According to biographers, he began his studies in the Shafi'i school (another of the four Sunni schools) before adopting the Hanafi school. He studied under several Damascene scholars; those most often named are Muhammad al-Kuzbari, Shakir al-'Aqqad, and Sa'id al-Halabi, the last of whom is reported to have led his funeral prayer. He served the Ottoman provincial administration in a fatwa-issuing capacity (the post is described by the title amin al-fatwa, roughly "trustee of legal responsa").

His best-known work is Radd al-Muhtar 'ala al-Durr al-Mukhtar — a hashiya, or marginal commentary, on al-Haskafi's al-Durr al-Mukhtar, itself a commentary on an earlier Hanafi text. Widely called Hashiyat Ibn 'Abidin, it became the late Hanafi school's standard reference for determining the preferred ruling, and remains so in Hanafi circles. Some studies also note his attention to local custom ('urf) in legal reasoning, though the weight of that theme is debated among scholars.