Murtaḍá' was born in 1732 (1145AH) in Bilgram, Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, India. His family originated from Wasit in Iraq, from where his parents had emigrated to the Hadramawt region in the east of Yemen – where the Husaynī tribe is situated. Murtaḍá earned his nisba 'al-Zabīdī' from Zabīd in the south western coastal plains of Yemen, which was a centre of academic learning where he had spent time studying. He travelled to Hejaz (Jeddah, Mecca and Madinah) and then settled in Egypt. He was renowned in the Islamic world. Rulers from Hejaz, India, Yemen, Levant, Iraq, Morocco, Turkey, Sudan and Algiers corresponded with him; people sent him presents and gifts from everywhere. He was revered and admired so much that some people in Western Africa believed that their Hajj was incomplete if they did not plan to see Murtađa Zabīdī. He died in Cairo during an epidemic plague in the year 1205AH/1790CE.[10]
Reception
Al-Kattānī states in his book, Fahris al-Fahāris: "Zabīdī was peerless in his time and age. None after Ibn al-Ĥajar al-Ásqalāni and his students can match Az-Zabīdī in terms of his encyclopaedic knowledge of traditions and its associated sciences; nor in fame or list of students."[10]
Zabidi's immense proficiency of diverse sciences and his thriving trade with books as well as with his own writings was described with commendation by one of his Maghribi visitors, Ibn 'Abdal al-Salam al-Nasiri:[11]
"He was master of [Collections of] hadith, tafsir, Arabic Lexigraphy and other diverse sciences, unequalled by any of those scholars whom we met in the East or West [...] You find him continuously buying and copying against payment, borrowing books from remote regions, other books being sent to him as presents. Apart from that he makes gifts and donations. [...] He is a highly prolific author. By Allah (God), he is indeed the Suyuti of his time, like Suyuti himself or Ibn Sahin and Ibn Hajar far beyond ordinary men. (Even) if those came together with him, they would surely admit that superiority is not with the first ones (al-Fadila lam tankin li'l-uwal)."
Works
Taj al-Arus min Jawahir al-Qamus (تاج العروس) 'The Bride's Crown from the Pearls of the Qamus (Dictionary)'; an expansion of Fairuzabadi's Al-Qamoos,[12] the most frequently cited dictionary of Classical Arabic after Lisān al-ʿArab by Ibn Manẓūr.
Itḥāf al-sadāh al-muttaqīn bi sharḥ iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn: A commentary on al-Ghazali's monumental Ihya' Ulum al-Din.
Al-Rauḍ al-ǧalī fī ansāb Āl Bā ʻAlawī (الروض الجلي في أنساب آل با علوي) (Damascus, Dār Kinān li-ṭ-Ṭibāʻa wa an-Našr wa-t-Tauzī, 2010)
Al-Ūqyānūs al-basīṭ fī tarjamat al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ (الأوقيانوس البسيط في ترجمة القاموس المحيط); (al-Qāhirah, Maṭbaʻat Būlāq, 1834)
References
^Brown, Jonathan (30 September 2007). The Canonization of Al-Bukhārī and Muslim The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon. Brill. p. 237. ISBN978-90-04-15839-9. The great Indian Hanafi hadith scholar of Cairo, Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1205/ 1791)
^Jens Hanssen, Max Weiss (22 December 2016). Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda. Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN978-1-107-13633-5. In Gran's account, the Maturidi polymath and hadith scholar, Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi (1732–91), who arrived in Cairo from South Asia in 1767
^Jens Hanssen, Amal N. Ghazal (11 November 2020). The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History. Oxford University Press. p. 47. ISBN978-0-19-967253-0.
^Reichmuth, Stefan (2011). "The World of Murtada Al-Zabidi (1732-91) Life, Networks and Writings". The Arab Studies Journal. 19 (1): 142–146. JSTOR23265818.