al-Kafiyaji

Muhyi al-Din al-Kafiyaji, a Hanafi scholar and teacher of teachers. He got the name from his close study of the grammar treatise "al-Kafiya." He was born in 788 AH. He travelled to the lands of the Persians and the Tatars, studying with al-Shams al-Fanari, al-Burhan Haydara and Ibn Farishta, the commentator on al-Majmaʿ. He then came to Cairo in the days of al-Ashraf Barsbay, was appointed shaykh of the tomb of al-Ashraf, and after Ibn al-Humam he became shaykh of al-Shaykhuniyya. He was a great authority in all the rational sciences, in theology, the principles of jurisprudence, grammar, logic, philosophy and astronomy, to the point that no one could match him in any of them. His works include a commentary on the "Rules of Inflection," which is the best of them, a commentary on the two testimonies of faith, and abridgements on hadith and exegesis.

al-Suyuti said, "I attended his lessons for fourteen years, and whenever I went to him I heard from him verifications and wonders that I had never heard before. I did not regard the shaykh as anything but a second father after my own." He died of diarrhoea, which is considered martyrdom, on the night of Friday, the fourth of Jumada I, 879 AH ¹.