Isma'il al-Nabulsi, mufti of Damascus

Badr al-Din Isma'il ibn Ahmad al-Nabulsi al-Shafi'i, mufti of Syria. He was born in 937 AH in Damascus and grew up as an orphan, devoted to knowledge. He heard hadith from Shaykh Nasr al-Hamawi, Muhyi al-Din al-Nahhas and others, read with al-Zakariyya, and took from al-Biqa'i, Qadi Zadeh, Ibn Tulun, al-Safadi, Mulla Abd al-Qadir al-Baghdadi and Shaykh Ibrahim ibn Bint Awn. He began teaching at the age of sixteen at the Ta'ifiyya madrasa. ².

He never ceased to strive in seeking knowledge and occupying himself with it, until he excelled in many fields, such as grammar, language, jurisprudence, the foundations of law, theology, medicine, inheritance and prosody. Shaykh Abu al-Hasan al-Bakri gave him licence to teach. In January he took up the office of mufti of Damascus and discharged it in the best manner. In the last part of his life he held the teaching shaykhate at al-Zahiriyya and combined it with the office of mufti. He was clean of ill-gotten gains and bribery, kept his students in high standing, and lived on the roof of his house. ¹.

His works include a commentary on the Nasafi creed, a commentary on the Alfiyya of al-Iraqi, and al-Mustaqsa on the disagreement of the three imams, with an index he arranged. The servant Murad Bik dismissed him from the office of mufti in 993 AH. He died on Saturday, the thirteenth of Muharram, and was buried beside his teacher Mulla Abd al-Qadir al-Baghdadi. ³.