Aswhab al-Wujuh: Imam Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi (r.a.) in Brief

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is adapted and extracted from “Biographies of Some of the Aswhab al-Wujuh in the Shafi’i Madzhab.”  The Aswhab al-Wujuh are the scholars who developed and transmitted the Shafi’i madzhab from the time of the immediate students of Imam Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi’i (r.a.), circa 200 AH, to the time of Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (r.a.), circa 500 AH.  Thereafter there was a pressing need for recension of all this development into a single body of work.  This task was met by Imam Abu al-Qasim ‘Abd al-Karim ibn Muhammad ar-Rafi’i (r.a.) and Imam Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf an-Nawawi (r.a.), who became known as the Shaykhayn in the madzhab. 

Imam Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Ahmad ibn Ishaq al-Marwazi (r.a.) is frequently mentioned in our books, including al-Majmu’ Sharh al-Muhadzdzab, al-Wasith, and Rawdah ath-Thalibin, and other famous books of the school.  He studied under Imam Abu al-‘Abbas Ahmad ibn ‘Umar ibn Surayj al-Baghdadi (r.a.), and later became a teacher to numerous renowned scholars.  Imam an-Nawawi (r.a.) said of him, “He is the leader of the majority of our colleagues and a shaykh of the madzhab.  From him emerged the two schools: the Iraqis and the Khurasanis.” 

The school spread from him throughout Iraq, Khurasan, Egypt, and other regions.  He became the head of the madzhab after Imam ibn Surayj (r.a.) passed away.  He wrote a number of important works.  Chief among them is his Sharh Mukhtaswar al-Muzani, which was the first sharh on the Mukhtaswar.  This trend was later followed by many of the Aswhab.