Ibn Juzayy

Who was Ibn Juzayy?

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi was a scholar, writer of poetry, history, and law from Al-Andalus. He is also known as the writer who dictated the travels of Ibn Battuta. He was the son of Abú-l-Qásim Muhammad Ibn Juzayy who died in the Battle of Rio Salado in 1340.

Ibn Juzayy wrote the Rihla of Ibn Battuta in 1352-55. It is clear that Ibn Juzayy outright copied some long passages and used information from books from his own library.

He wrote many religious works such as his Qawanin al-Fiqhiyyah or "The Laws of Jurisprudence" a comparative manual of the jurisprudence of the five Sunni madhhabs with emphasis on the Maliki school. He is also famous for his tafsir of the Qur'an, his book on legal theory "Aqrab al-Wusool `ala `Ilm al-Usool" or "The Nearest of Paths to the Knowledge of the Fundamentals of Islamic Jurisprudence," as well as his treatise on Sufism based on the Qur'an, "The Refinement of the Hearts." One of his teachers was Ibn Rushd al-Saghir, the grandson of Averroes and author of Bidiyat al-Mujtahid.