Imam al-Tahawi أبو جعفر أحمد بن محمد بن سلامة الطحاوي

Imam Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tahawi rahimahullah (c. 239-321 AH / c. 853-933 CE) was born in the village of Taha in upper Egypt into an affluent family. He commenced his Islamic education under his maternal uncle, Isma'il ibn Yahya al-Muzani, one of the foremost disciples of Imam al-Shafi'i. Around the age of twenty, he transferred from the Shafi'i school to the Hanafi school, a move his biographers ascribe to the greater appeal Abu Hanifa's legal reasoning held for his critical insight. He studied under Ahmed ibn Abi Ibrahim, head of the Hanafis in Egypt, who had himself studied under Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani - the two primary students of Abu Hanifa. In 268 AH/882 CE he traveled to Syria for further studies in Hanafi law and became a student of the chief judge of Damascus. He went on to gain an extraordinary mastery of hadith. He is best known for al-'Aqida al-Tahawiyya, a concise creedal statement of Sunni doctrine that has been taught and commentated upon across the centuries, and for his encyclopedic Sharh Ma'ani al-Athar, an authoritative work in hadith and Hanafi jurisprudence.