Imam Abd al-Wahhab al-Sharani عبد الوهاب بن أحمد الشعراني

Abd al-Wahhab al-Sharani (898-973 AH / 1493-1565 CE) was an Egyptian jurist, traditionist, historian, and Sufi master, Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed. Orphaned in childhood, he traveled to Cairo as a young man, where he studied and taught for many years, gathering knowledge from some fifty teachers and reading widely across the religious sciences. He became one of the most prolific scholars of the early Egyptian-Ottoman period and the founder of the Sufi order known after him as the Shaʿrawiyya. His landmark work, al-Mizan al-Kubra (The Great Scale), presents the rulings of the four Sunni schools of law as facets of one balanced tradition, arguing that their differences reflect breadth rather than contradiction. In al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, also titled Lawaqih al-Anwar fi Tabaqat al-Akhyar, he assembled a celebrated biographical dictionary of saints and Sufi masters. His Lataif al-Minan, known as al-Minan al-Kubra, is a candid spiritual autobiography, while Lawaqih al-Anwar al-Qudsiyya fi Bayan al-Uhud al-Muhammadiyya gathers the prophetic covenants on conduct and character. Shorter treatises such as Adab al-Suhba address companionship and giving counsel without shaming. Across his writings, al-Sharani wove together fiqh, hadith, and tasawwuf, defending sober Sufism while exposing impostors who claimed it. He remains a widely read voice on Islamic spirituality and ethics, and his tomb in Cairo is still visited today.