Al-Maziri

Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Omar ibn Muhammad al-Tamimi al-Maziri () (1061 – 1141 CE) (453 AH – 536 AH ), simply known as Al-Maziri or as Imam al-Maziri and Imam al-Mazari, was an important Arab Muslim jurist in the Maliki school of Sunni Islamic Law. He was one of the most important figures in the school and his opinions are well known and respected to this day. Al-Maziri was one of four jurists whose positions were held as authoritative by Khalil ibn Ishaq in his Mukhtassar, which is the most important of the later texts in the relied upon positions of the school. It is for this reason that he is referred to simply as al-Imam (the Imam) within the Maliki school.

== Early life == Al-Maziri was described as a member of the tribe of Banu Tamim. There is a difference of opinion as to where Muhammad al-Maziri was born. Many sources state his place of birth as Mazara (modern day Mazara del Vallo) on the Western Sicilian coast. Others state that he was born in Mahdia, the Tunisian city where he lived for most of his life and also died, among the most famous jurists and historians to place al-Maziri's place of birth as Sicily was the Medinan Maliki scholar Ibn Farhun. He was born in 1061 CE (453 AH), the year in which Roger I of Sicily crossed from the Italian mainland and began his thirty-year conquest of Sicily from the Muslims. Muhammad spent his early life studying as a young boy in Mazara, in the South of the island, before he and his family crossed to Mahdia in modern-day Tunisia and settled there. Historians state the impending Christian invasion as the reason for their emigration.