Biographical Notes on Taqi al-Din Subki

(Imam) Taqi al-Din Subki [...] is 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-Kafi ibn 'Ali ibn Tamam, Abu al-Hasan Taqi al-Din al-Subki, born in Subk, Egypt, in 683/1284. The Shafi'i scholar and Imam of his time, he was a brilliant intellectual, hadith master (hafiz), Koranic exegete, and Islamic judge who was described by Ibn Hajar Haytami as "the mujtahid Imam whose imamate, greatness, and having reached the level of ijtihad are agreed upon," and by Dhahabi as "the most learned, eloquent, and wisest in judgement of all the sheikhs of the age." Educated in Cairo by such scholars as Ibn Rif'a in Sacred Law, 'Alam al-Din Iraqi in Koranic exegesis, and Sharaf al-Din al-Dimyati in hadith, he also travelled to acquire knowledge of hadith from the sheikhs of Syria, Alexandria, and the Hijaz after which, as Suyuti records, "he devoted himself to writing and giving legal opinion, authoring more than 150 works, his writings displaying his profound knowledge of hadith and other fields and his magisterial command of the Islamic sciences. He educated the foremost scholars of his time, was a painstaking, accurate, and penetrating researcher, and a brilliant debater in the disciplines. No previous scholar attained to his achievements in Sacred Law, of masterful inferences, subtleties in detail, and carefully worked-out methodological principles."

Salah al-Din Safadi said of him, "People say that no one like him had appeared since Ghazali, though in my opinion they thereby do him an injustice, for to my mind he does not resemble anyone less than Sufyan al-Thawri." With his vast erudition, he was at the same time a godfearing ascetic in his personal life who was devoted to worship and mysticism, though vigilant and uncompromising in matters of religion and ready to assail any innovation (bid'a) or departure from the tenets of faith of Ahl al-Sunna. In addition to al-Takmila [The completion], his eleven-volume supplement to Nawawi's Sharh al-Muhadhdhab [The exegesis of "The rarefaction"], he also authored the widely quoted Fatawa al-Subki [The legal opinions of Sukbi] in two volumes, as well as a number of other works on tenets of faith, Koranic exegesis, and fundamentals of Islamic law, in the latter of which his three-volume al-Ibhaj fi sharh al-Minhaj [The gladdening: an exegesis of "The road"], an exposition of Baydawi's Al-Minhaj on the methodological bases of legal ijtihad, has won lasting recognition among scholars. In A.H. 739 he moved from Cairo to Damascus, where he was appointed to the judiciary and presided for seventeen years, at the end of which he became ill, was replaced by his son Taj al-Din, and returned to Cairo, where he died twenty days later in 756/1355 (ibid., 4.302; al-Fatawa al-hadithiyya (y48), 114; al-Rasa'il al-Subkiyya (y52), 9-13; Sheikh Hasan Saqqad; and n).

-Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat Al-Salik, x345, pg. 1102