The Āl-i Burhān, who held the religious leadership (ṣadāra) of Bukhara from the end of the fifth to the middle of the seventh century A.H. (eleventh to thirteenth century CE) and were the religious and secular leaders of the city, are known to us through a number of studies by Bartold, Qazvīnī, and Pritsak.Footnote ¹ However, at least two other pieces of information about this family's background are available in two recently published books that were not available to these scholars. The first book is al-Qand fī ḏikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand (henceforth al-Qand) by ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Nasafī (461‒537 A.H./1069‒1142 CE), and the other is Laṭāʾif al-aḏkār li-l-ḥużżār wa-l-suffār fī al-manāsik wa-l-ādāb (henceforth Laṭāʾif) by Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (511–566 A.H./1117‒1170 CE), the greatest religious leader (ṣadr) of this family in the sixth century A.H. (twelfth century CE).Footnote ² The latter, precisely because it was written by the greatest and most powerful member of the family, contains some firsthand information about the family itself and the scholars of Bukhara that appears to be unique, and the former provides the most detailed extant information about the scholars who lived in Samarqand or visited that city until the mid-sixth century A.H. (twelfth century CE). Al-Qand also incidentally contains some information about the first ṣadr of the Burhān family, which has neither been seen elsewhere nor noticed by scholars since the publication of the text in 1999.

Among the scholars who have the name ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in al-Qand, there is a certain “Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Māza,” who died in 518 A.H./1124 CE. in Bukhara, as strictly mentioned by al-Nasafī: “He died on the ninth day of Ḏī al-qaʿda of 518.”Footnote ³ Although the editor of the Laṭāʾif is neither certain about this person's identity nor about the date of his death,Footnote ⁴ he is none other than ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz the elder, who was the first among the Āl-i Burhān to have reached the position of religious leadership (ṣadāra) of Bukhara. He was appointed to the office by a royal decree after he married a sister of the Seljuk ruler Sanjar (d. 552 A.H./1157 CE).Footnote ⁵ According to earlier studies, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz's son, Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿUmar, was killed in 536 A.H./1141 CE. Therefore, the only notable personage of the Āl-i Burhān who may have died in 518 A.H/1124 CE is ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz the elder. In addition, ʿAli ibn Zayd-i Bayhaqī (490–565 A.H./1097‒1170 CE), the famous author of Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, states that his father, Zayd ibn Muḥammad-i Bayhaqī, who died in 517 A.H./1123 CE, was ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz's classmate.Footnote ⁶ This information also supports the year 518/1124 as the date of the demise of the elder ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, namely, Bukhara's first ṣadr. Footnote ⁷

But we consider the second piece of knowledge, that is, the information in the Laṭāʾif, to be more important. However, the evidence in the Laṭāʾif has been somewhat concealed by an editorial error that has rendered the text fairly obscure. In the section of the book that deals with the “cemeteries” (mazārāt) of Bukhara, the information about a certain Imam Abū Bakr Fażl reads as follows:

The last sentence, “and it would be inappropriate to speak of one's limit more than this,” is meaningless. Since the forms of letters jīm (جـ ) and ḥāʾ (حـ ) are virtually identical in Arabic and Persian scripts, I believe that the word ḥadd (limit) in this sentence is a corruption of jadd (ancestor), and propose to emend the text to read dar jadd-i khwēshtan, “regarding one's own ancestor,” instead of dar ḥadd-i khwēshtan, “regarding one's own limit.”Footnote ⁹ The text would make better sense with this small correction, because it then means “and it would be inappropriate to speak of one's own ancestor more than this.”

Now, let us see who this “Imam Abū Bakr-i Fażl” is, and what his relationship with the author of the Laṭāʾif might be.Footnote ¹⁰ Imam Abū Bakr Muḥammad-i Fażl, whom ʿAwfī (himself a native of Bukhara) mentions as “Bakr-i Fażl” in a charming anecdote in his Jawāmiʿ al-ḥikāyāt, was a Hanafi scholar of the third and early fourth century A.H./tenth century CE, who died in 325 A.H /937 CE.Footnote ¹¹ His descendants were known as the Fażlīs. According to the History of Mullāzāda (written in the first half of the ninth century A.H./mid of the sixteenth century), “he enjoyed the full fortunes of the spiritual and the secular [worlds], and thanks to his efforts no followers of other religions except for the religion of Muḥammad are left in Bukhara.”Footnote ¹²

It is not possible for this Abū Bakr-i Fażl to have been the author's paternal ancestor, because the lineage of the Burhān clan, who claimed descent from the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, is well-known.Footnote ¹³ The ancestry of the Fażl family is also clear and it reaches back to a tribe other than the one to which the Caliph ‘Umar belonged.Footnote ¹⁴ Therefore, Abū Bakr-i Fażl must be the maternal ancestor of the author of the Laṭāʾif, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. This may be easily ascertained from the author's own statements and from references in a number of verses in the Dīvān of the poet Sūzanī.

At the beginning of the Laṭāʾif, the author says that he composed the book at his mother's request, and adds that the lady must have previously learned more information than what this book contains from “those two religious grandees and leaders of Imams, the chief judge (qāżī al-qużāt), Sayf al-Dīn, the imam of the two sanctuaries (imām al-ḥaramayn), and the great ṣadr and blessed martyred father.”Footnote ¹⁵ We already know one of these two persons: “the great ṣadr, and blessed martyred father” is the author's own father who was also his mother's husband, namely, Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. He was this family's second ṣadr, and was killed in 536 A.H./1141 CE. during the war between Sanjar and Qara Khitai Gūrkhan. But the other imam, who was a chief judge bearing the title of Sayf al-Dīn, was probably his maternal grandfather. There are no other clues about this matter in the Laṭāʾif. However, support for this interpretation exists in the verses of the famous poet of Samarqand, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Masʿūd Sūzanī (d. 569 A.H./1173 CE?).Footnote ¹⁶ Here are some of these verses in praise of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz:

It is clear from these verses that Ḥusām al-Dīn is the father of Shams al-Dīn (the author of the Laṭāʾif) and Burhān is his grandfather. It is also clear that both of his grandfathers were called ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. This was partially confirmed in earlier studies, especially in Qazvīnī's annotations on ʿAwfī's Lubāb al-albāb and Niẓāmī-yi ʿArūżī's Chahār Maqāla.Footnote ²⁰ Therefore, the meaning of “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz of the father's side” in the last verse is clear, as is the sense of “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz of the mother's side” indicating that he is none other than “Sayf,” who was mentioned in the first verse. This last point has not been noticed by previous scholars.

In what follows, we will explain that the name of the maternal ancestor of the author of the Laṭāʾif was Sayf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. However, before doing that, we will quote a few more verses from Sūzanī's Dīvān, which help clarify the identity of Shams al-Dīn, the author of the Laṭāʾif, more clearly:

The poet uses the words sayf and gawhar ambiguously; sayf meaning “sword” as well as alluding to the name of the ancestor of the person who is eulogized. The word gawhar means both “house/family” and “the shimmering of a fine blade.” Ambiguities aside, the poet means to say Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿUmar's greatness and lordship are due to the fact that he descends from Sayf-i zamān, and he goes on to mention a number of the notables of his clan in the second verse. The poet has used the same strategy in another verse with greater clarity:

Sūzanī has composed these verses in praise of Shams-al-Dīn Muḥammad, and in them he says that the name of Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad's grandfather is Sayf. But since there is no person named Sayf in Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad's paternal line, it is certain that Sayf was the name of his maternal grandfather, namely, the same “qāżī al-qużāt, Sayf al-Dīn,” who, according to Shams al-Dīn at the beginning of the Laṭāʾif, was also his mother's mentor. Furthermore, it turns out that Shams al-Dīn's maternal family belonged to the house of Fażl (Fażliyān, ‘Āl-i Fażl’), just as his father's family was from the house of Burhān (Burhāniyān, ‘Āl-i Burhān’). In other words, Shams al-Dīn descended from the Sayf family on his mother's side, and because Sayf was his grandfather and Fażl his great-grandfather, Sūzanī calls him “the lord of Fażliyān.”

Let us summarize our arguments: from a comparison of what Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad writes at the beginning of his Laṭāʾif and a number of Sūzani's poems in praise of him, we can deduce that the chief judge, Sayf al-Dīn, was the maternal grandfather of Shams al-Dīn and was also descendant from the Fażl family. Two individuals who belonged to the Fażl family were more famous than the rest. These were a father and his son.Footnote ²³ The father's name and honorifics were: “Al-Shaykh al-Islām Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Shaykh al-Imām al-Ajall Abī Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Fażl,” and his title was “Al-Fażlī al-Bukhārī” (Ramadan 426‒508, or after 508 A.H./1035‒1115, or after 1115 CE). He was the author of Al-Fatāwā al-Fażlī.Footnote ²⁴ His son's name and honorifics are: “Al-Qāżī al-imām Sayf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Al-Shaykh al-Imam Abī Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Fażl.” His title was also “Al-Fażlī al-Bukhārī” and he was also known as “Qāżī Sayf” and “Qāżī-yi Bukhārī.” He died in Rabīʿ al-awwal of 533 A.H./1138 CE, three years before the death of Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿUmar, the father of Shams al-Dīn. This evidence shows why the author of the Laṭāʾif refers to Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Faḍl, the head of the Hanafi family of Āl-i Fażl, as his ancestor. It also shows that the “qāżī al-qużāt, Sayf al-Dīn”, who has been mentioned at the beginning of the Laṭāʾif, is none other than “Qāżī Sayf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Fażlī-yi Bukhārī,” to whom Sūzanī refers as Sayf and sometimes as ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, saying that he is Shams al-Dīn's ancestor. Therefore, Shams al-Dīn's maternal family could be justifiably called both “Āl-i Sayf” and “Āl-i Fażl” (or Fażliyān), which is what Sūzanī has done. Therefore, the author of the Laṭāʾif, who was the greatest and most powerful ṣadr of the Burhān family, was born from the union of two famous Hanafi families of Bukhara, namely the Burhān family and the Fażl family. I would argue that his power and influence, surpassing those of his predecessors and successors, were, at least partially, the result of this union. This perspective may provide a new starting point for further study on his family. We hope this modest contribution aids scholars of Central Asian history in contextualizing these new findings within the historical framework of the Āl-i Burhān and the broader history of Bukhara.