, ,August 2026 ,Pages 634-651
Prof. Dr. Awad Jadou Ahmed ; Dr. Salman Aboud Yahya
Sheikh Ahmad Faiz al-Barzanji is one of the prominent Kurdish figures who influenced the intellectual and scholarly movement in and around Baghdad, contributing to the preservation of theological heritage. He was a brilliant theologian and scholar in the fields of science, literature, and knowledge. He lived in the late first and early second half of the 19th century, during the final years of the Baban dynasty and the Ottoman Caliphate. His book, "Abha al-Qala'id fi Talkhis Anfas al-Fawa'id" (The Most Beautiful Necklaces in Summarizing the Most Precious Benefits), is a methodological document reflecting the efforts of Kurdish scholars in facilitating and preserving theology. This research aims to explore the nature of the theological methodology adopted by al-Barzanji and the effectiveness of his pedagogical approach in addressing contemporary theological issues of his time.
This research aims to achieve three main objectives that complement each other to document his intellectual contributions:
1. To document aspects of his personal and scholarly life, and to define his academic path and his connections with scholarly centers in Baghdad. 2. To extract the features of his theological methodology, identify his mechanisms for dealing with textual and rational evidence, and understand his contributions to addressing emerging doctrinal issues in his era.
3. To conduct an analytical study of his book, *Abha al-Qala'id*, to clarify his methodology and demonstrate its impact on the field of Islamic theology.
The research employs a descriptive-analytical approach to documenting the biography of Sheikh al-Barzanji and an inductive approach to extract his theological efforts and the features of his methodology through an inductive analysis of the texts of his book, *Abha al-Qala'id*. These features are then analyzed to demonstrate his intellectual contribution.
The study concludes that al-Barzanji's pedagogical approach represented an intellectual project for simplifying and grounding Islamic beliefs in a pedagogical manner, thus demonstrating his active role in the intellectual renaissance through the consolidation of Islamic doctrine and the treatment of contemporary theological issues in a sound and systematic way.