Muhammad Ali as-Sayis and his work "Tafsir Ayat al-Ahkam"

Muhammad Ali As-Sayis (1899-1976) who becomes distinct with his scientific and intellectual works, was one of the most important Al-Azhar University scholars in the 20th century. Especially become prominent with his profession in Islamic jurisprudence (Al-Fiqh). He published different works in this domain, particularly his work "Tafsir Ayat Al-Ahkam" (The Qoran exegesis of the legal verses). Considering the environment where Sayis absolved his education, he exploited generally from persons who come fore with modernist thoughts. How Sayis was influenced by these persons is an important point. Thus, it will be understood from which intellectual traditions his thoughts were influenced. For researching Sayis from this point of view, we chosen Tafsir Ayat al-Ahkam named work as example because it includes commentaries of the verses about the daily issues of life. At first, this thesis will discourse the environment that formed the intellectual character of Sayis, then it will handle the methodology of Tafsir Ayat Al-Ahkam. Thus, will show how deep was his relationship to the tradition from the view of methodology. At last, it will dwell how he practiced his methodology on individual matters. Thus, the accord between methodology and practice matters. Sayis comments about methodology and practice matters will be shown by examples with high authority. In this phase it will be analyzed how different is his comments from tradition and why he chose this opinion or had this comment. Thus, author's personally comment's or choices will show his intellectual tendency and methodology background. This will help to locate his position in the Exegesis (Al-Tafsir) and Islamic Thought literature. Also, this thesis has an interdisciplinary property (Islamic Jurisprudence-Exegesis) that will be profitable for the academic literature of both disciplines.