The following treatise is a wonderfully brief but expansive work on the terminology of the Hanafi school of law. It began as an introduction to Shaykh ‘Abd al-Ilah’s (amongst the scholars of Ahsa’) doctorate on the first volume of ‘Allamah Siraj al-Din Ibn al-Nujaym’s al-Nahr al-Fa’iq and was later expanded upon to include more terms from those used by later scholars of the madhhab, including Ibn ‘Abidin and ‘Abd al-Hayy al-Laknawi.
The work draws heavily from two more recent excellent resources on the Hanafi school, Ahmad al-Naqib’s al-Madhhab al-Hanafi and Maryam Zafiri’s Mustalahat al-Madhahib al-Fiqhiyyah, both of which devote chapters to the topic of Hanafi terminology but are not separate works. One of the more obvious benefits of this work, al-Kawashif, is that it is short and concise (approximately 56 pages), and therefore an excellent resource for students. Additionally, it is easy to print from pdf.
The author, may Allah reward him, divides the terminology covered in the book into the following chapters:
1.Terms for the categories of ahkam taklifiyyah
2. Terms used for the imams and scholars of the madhhabs
3. Terms used for the books of the imams and scholars of the madhhabs
4. Terms used for the legal issues of the imams and scholars of the madhhabs
5. Terms used as ‘alamat in ifta’
6. Terms used for the status of certain opinions
We have provided the pdf of the book here.
Bilal Ali is a teacher of Islamic studies by profession and a researcher in the Islamic sciences. He currently serves as a full-time instructor of the Arabic language, Islamic law, Hadith, and Islamic Doctrine at the Institute of Islamic Education in Elgin, IL and teaches Islamic law and history part-time for Darul Hikmah. His fields of specialization include Islamic law, hadith, and education.
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