Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin was born in 1198 AH/1784 CE in Damascus, into a family of learning and means. He studied Hanafi jurisprudence, hadith, and exegesis under Damascus's leading scholars, and began issuing legal opinions and teaching while still young, becoming the foremost legal authority in Ottoman Damascus of his era.
Ibn Abidin is best known for his extensive gloss «Radd al-Muhtar 'ala al-Durr al-Mukhtar», an expanded commentary on al-Haskafi's gloss upon «Tanwir al-Absar», synthesizing the whole of later Hanafi jurisprudence while carefully discussing contemporary legal opinions and newly emerging issues of his time. It became one of the most important references in Hanafi jurisprudence, so much so that the drafters of the Ottoman «Mecelle» civil code relied heavily on it when codifying Ottoman civil law in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
His Legacy
Ibn Abidin died in Damascus in 1252 AH/1836 CE after contracting cholera during an epidemic that swept the city. His gloss «Radd al-Muhtar», commonly known simply as «Hashiyat Ibn Abidin», remained the last widely authoritative reference for Hanafi legal opinion into the modern era.
