BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD AL-QUDUQI, WRITTEN BY KUDIYAV SAID AL-QUDUQI (1842-1919): TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARIES

Abstract

The personality of an outstanding medieval Daghestan scholar Muhammad al-Quduqi, ar-Rugzhi ad-Dagistani (1652-1717), evokes the interest of historians since the very XIX century. Despite this, there are a lot of blank spaces in his biography. In the XIX - early XX centuries, Daghestan ulama and biographical researchers highly appreciated the contribution of this scientist to the formation of Islamic culture in Daghestan. The life and work of Alim al-Quduqi is remarkable, mainly due to the fact that they give us examples of the life of the Daghestan society of the second half of the XVII - early XVIII century. Among those are an internal political struggle in Daghestan (moving from Khindalal to Andalal); the ratio of adat and sharia laws within the legal framework (moving from Daghestan to Sham); educational practice (getting education from different ulama of Daghestan and the Arab world; teaching foreigners), academic life (correspondence with scholars, answers to legal issues, development of the system of signs, writing academic papers), etc. The article provides commentaries on the translation of a new source of the biography of al-Quduqi. This is a brief biography of the scholar, written in Arabic in the early XX century. The author of this biography is Kudiyav Said al-Quduqi (1842-1919). Later on, it came into possession of his disciple Mas'ud al-Muguhi (1893-1941), who edited it and sent it to his son Abdulatip al-Hutsuvi (1851-1891). The biography contains a number of new facts about Muhammad al-Quduqi, which have not been previously introduced to scientific circulation and which, in our opinion, allow us to understand the scale of the scholar's personality and reveal a number of previously unknown names of Daghestan scholars of the XVII - XVIII centuries.