Hanafi Fiqh

Hanafi fiqh: how this section is organised

• What you will find here: the primers of the Hanafi school and their commentaries, in Arabic, in their original editions and all new.
• Four genres: primer, abridgement, commentary, gloss. The genre appears on every listing, since it determines use and level.
• Three levels: beginner, intermediate, advanced, indicated by the length of the text, its density and its vocalisation.
• Classical texts and contemporary manuals: from medieval matn to manuals written for modern teaching.
• What you will not find: translations or bilingual editions. The catalogue is entirely in Arabic.

Where the Hanafi school comes from and where it is followed

The school goes back to Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man ibn Thabit, who died in 150 AH in Kufa. He left no treatise of law in his own hand: the school was set down by his students, foremost Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, and that collective work forms the body of the madhhab.

Having become the official school of the Ottoman state, it spread with it and by other routes. It is followed today in Turkey, the Balkans, Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent, partly in Egypt, and in the Levant and Iraq. By number of adherents it is the most widespread school in the Muslim world.

One trait of method marks everything in this section: the school gives considerable place to analogy and to juristic preference, which yields works arranged around the rule and its cases rather than around the listing of proofs. Its primers are particularly spare, and its commentaries particularly developed.

The Hanafi curriculum, text by text

The order of study is stable, and the same titles recur from the madrasas of Istanbul to those of the Deccan.

To begin

Nur al-Idah by al-Shurunbulali, brief and clear, limited to worship. It is read with its own commentary, Maraqi al-Falah, written by the author himself, which makes it a particularly coherent pairing for a beginner.

The reference text at intermediate level

The Mukhtasar of al-Quduri, which covers the whole of the law while staying manageable. It is the basis of most Hanafi curricula and the most commented text of the school after al-Hidaya. Kanz al-Daqaiq by al-Nasafi plays a neighbouring role, more condensed still.

For the advanced level

Al-Hidaya by al-Marghinani, a commentary on his own abridgement, which became the reference work of the school and has itself received dozens of commentaries. Multaqa al-Abhur serves as a late synthesis, much used in the Ottoman world.

At the summit, Radd al-Muhtar by Ibn Abidin, a nineteenth-century gloss, carries authority on questions settled in the last resort. It is a multi-volume work of consultation, not a manual.

Three buying tips particular to this section

First: on al-Quduri as on al-Hidaya, take an annotated edition. These texts assume technical terms that bare editions do not explain.

Second: check where the edition comes from. Editions of the same title from the Indian subcontinent and from the Levant differ in pagination, typography and sometimes in the apparatus of notes.

Third: Radd al-Muhtar is not a first purchase. Before going to it, an abridgement must have been worked through in full, otherwise its internal cross-references make the work unusable.

The other schools

The catalogue covers the four madhhab: Maliki Fiqh, Shafii Fiqh and Hanbali Fiqh complete this section, and the general Fiqh section gathers works of comparative fiqh and manuals that belong to no single school.

Buy Hanafi fiqh books in Arabic from My Maktaba

Every work in this section is in Arabic, in its original edition, and every one is new. For each title, the listing states the publisher, year, number of volumes, format, binding, vocalisation, genre and level. If you do not know where to start, write to us stating your level of Arabic and the texts you have read: we will suggest two or three titles in the order in which to approach them.