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Abstract

ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565) was an Egyptian Sufi and legal scholar who is best remembered for his hagiographical works, his writings in Sufism, and his original thought in the field of comparative law (ikhtilāf al-madhāhib). Though al-Shaʿrānī was still young when Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī died, the lives of the two scholars intersected briefly in Cairo, while al-Suyūṭī would have both a direct and indirect influence in shaping the trajectory of al-Shaʿrānī’s thought. This presentation examines al-Shaʿrānī’s intellectual connections to al-Suyūṭī through a study of the two scholars’ biographies and writings. At the biographical level, it examines the role that al-Suyūṭī played in attracting al-Shaʿrānī to the Shādhilī Sufi order. At the intellectual level, it shows how al-Suyūṭī’s fatwas on Sufism would establish a new precedent in the fifteenth century for the integration of Sufism into the Islamic legal discourse. This precedent would then set the stage for al-Shaʿrānī to blend the disciplines of Islamic law and Sufism even further in his sixteenth-century writings, particularly in his text al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Great Balance). To demonstrate parallels between the thought of al-Suyūṭī and al-Shaʿrānī, the presentation references a small selection of primary-source passages by the two authors, which audience members who understand Arabic can read along with the presenter.

Bio

Matthew Ingalls is Chair of the Department of International and Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Dubai. His research examines pre-modern Muslim commentary works and their role in intellectual change. His academic monograph The Anonymity of a Commentator was published by the State University of New York Press in 2021, while he has also published articles on the study of Sufism and Islamic law in Mamlūk Egypt. He is currently writing a university textbook on Islamic civilization for Bloomsbury Press that is scheduled for publication in 2026.

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