The Anonymity of a Commentator: Zakariyya al-An?ari and the Rhetoric of Muslim Commentaries

A close study of one of the most prolific commentary writers in Islamic history.

The Anonymity of a Commentator examines the life and writings of the Egyptian Sufi-scholar Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), the longest-serving chief Shāfi'ī justice to the Mamlūk sultanate during its final years. It analyzes al-Anṣārī's commentaries in the disciplines of Sufism and Islamic law as a case study to illustrate how and why Muslims produced commentaries in the later Islamic Middle Period and how th...