Hanbali Fiqh

Hanbali fiqh: how this section is organised

• What you will find here: the primers of the Hanbali 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 commentaries: this is the madhhab whose recent major commentaries are the most numerous in the catalogue.
• What you will not find: translations or bilingual editions. The catalogue is entirely in Arabic.

Where the Hanbali school comes from and where it is followed

The school goes back to Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who died in 241 AH in Baghdad, and whose Musnad is one of the great collections of hadith. His legal positions were gathered by his students from his answers, and set in order by the generations that followed.

It is today the majority school in Saudi Arabia and in part of the Gulf states, and the one whose contemporary teaching has been the most widely circulated, through lessons, editions and recordings.

The trait of method most often noted is its attachment to the transmitted text: the school will readily retain a weak hadith rather than an analogy on a question of worship, and its works cite proofs abundantly. The result is commentaries in which law and hadith are closely interwoven.

The Hanbali curriculum, text by text

The path is short in number of texts, but each is worked through at length.

To begin

Umdat al-Fiqh by Ibn Qudama, brief and clear, limited to questions on which the school knows no internal disagreement. It is the first text in most curricula. Dalil al-Talib by Mar'i al-Karmi plays a neighbouring role, fuller, with its commentary Manar al-Sabil.

The central text

Zad al-Mustaqni by al-Hajjawi, an abridgement of al-Muqni, the most studied text of the school in the Peninsula. It is worked through with al-Rawd al-Murbi by al-Buhuti, its classical commentary, or with the commentary of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin, in some fifteen volumes, which is the most read today.

For the advanced level

Al-Mughni by Ibn Qudama, a commentary on al-Khiraqi that became a work of comparative fiqh in its own right: it sets out the positions of the other schools with their proofs before deciding. It is one of the great works of law in the Islamic library, and it is consulted more than read.

Three buying tips particular to this section

First: on Zad al-Mustaqni, the choice of commentary is the real decision. Al-Rawd al-Murbi is classical and compact; al-Uthaymin's commentary is long but pedagogical and follows the order of the text.

Second: Umdat al-Fiqh exists in vocalised pocket editions, to prefer if you are memorising.

Third: al-Mughni is not a manual. Fifteen volumes bought before working through an abridgement stay closed; once the curriculum is under way, however, it is the work one returns to longest.

The other schools

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

Buy Hanbali 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.