al-Ḥalabī

al-Ḥalabī (born c. 1460, Ḥalab, Mamlūk Sultanate [now Aleppo, Syria]—died 1549) was a jurist who maintained the traditions of Islamic jurisprudence in the 16th century.

Personal details of his life are obscure, except that after studying in Ḥalab and Cairo, he spent more than 40 years in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, where he became a preacher in the Mosque of Mehmed II, at that time one of the most important mosques of Istanbul.

Al-Ḥalabī’s writings include a treatise on ritual prayer and polemics against the mystical doctrines of a famous Ṣūfī (mystical) writer, Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240). Al-Ḥalabī’s major work, however, was the Multaqa al-abḥur (1517), a handbook of Ḥanafī jurisprudence based on the works of four earlier jurists. It was immediately successful, and many commentaries on it were written. The work, translated later into Ottoman Turkish, became a major source for Ḥanafī doctrines and their applications in the Ottoman Empire. The Multaqa al-abḥur was partially translated into French by H. Sauvaire (1882).