Late Ottoman Jurist Ibn ʿĀbidīn's Understanding of Islamic Law (The case of Radd al-Muḥtār)

One of the late Ottoman jurists, Ibn ʿĀbidīn, lived in the period right before the modern era and during a period when the controversy of ijtihād-taqlīd began to intensify. As one of the prominent representatives of the tradition, he mostly wrote his works as a hāshiya and produced his fiqh studies within the boundaries of the Hanafi school as a strict follower of the madhhab. Because of the quality of his works and his deep knowledge, Ibn ʿĀbidīn has such an influence exceeding his environment and the period he lived. This study aims to examine the fiqh activity of Ibn ʿĀbidīn as a follower of the madhhab within the frame of Radd al-Muhtār which is one of his most important works. This study, which focuses on the characteristics of Radd al-Muhtār in terms of Islamic jurisprudence and the method followed by Ibn ʿĀbidīn in this work, consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, the life, works, scholarly personality of Ibn ʿĀbidīn and characteristics of the period he lived are given. In the second chapter, the book called Radd al-Muhtār is examined in terms of a book of fiqh. In this chapter, it is focused on matters such as the general features of the book, the method of use of resources in the book and the method of analyzing issues. Besides it is emphasized his approach to fiqh literature and his way of evaluation of this literature. In the third chapter, it is tried to determine the procedure he followed in the determination of the judgment by taking into consideration the functioning of the madhhab. In this context, some of the opinions of Ibn ʿĀbidīn revealing his fiqh opinion over subjects such as taqlīd-ijtihād and the madhhab-opinion have been evaluated.