Bidayat al-Abid wa Kifayat al-Zahid is a concise manual restricted to the acts of worship based on the jurisprudence of the highly regarded Imam Abu Abdullah Ahmad b. Hanbal. This publication offers the reader what is considered the first rung on the ladder to studying the Hanbali school in a side-by-side dual-language format with both original Arabic text and English translation. Topics include the most common issues pertaining to the rites and rituals of worship i.e. purification, prayer, funeral proceedings, alms-giving, fasting, pilgrimage, and also briefly touches on legal rulings and ethics of military service.

This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars have treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book would appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism, and women’s studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies.

This slim volume presents a practical introduction to acts of worship according to the Hanbali school of Islamic law. The text comes from Shaykh Ibn Balban's Supreme Synopsis (Akhsar al-Mukhtasarat), a favorite introduction covering the full range of topics. The chapters of this volume cover purification, prayer, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage, and jihad. The text includes numerous explanatory notes to equip students for personal practice, and to prepare them for more advanced studies. This edition includes the Arabic text, its translation, and notes drawn from its commentaries-especially Shaykh Abd al-Rahman al-Ba'li's Kashf al-Mukhaddarat. This volume covers the first third of Shaykh Ibn Balban's Supreme Synopsis. Future volumes will cover the rest of the text.

This book continues the work of The Qur’ān in its Historical Context, in which an international group of scholars address an expanded range of topics on the Qur’ān and its origins, looking beyond medieval Islamic traditions to present the Qur’ān’s own conversation with the religions and literatures of its day. Particular attention is paid to recent debates and controversies in the field, and to uncovering the Qur’ān’s relationship with Judaism and Christianity. After a foreword by Abdolkarim Soroush, chapters by renowned experts cover: method in Qur'ānic Studies analysis of material evidence, including inscriptions and ancient manuscripts, for what they show of the Qur'ān’s origins the language of the Qur'ān and proposed ways to emend our reading of the Qur'ān how our knowledge of the religious groups at the time of the Qur'ān’s emergence might contribute to a better understanding of the text the Qur'ān’s conversation with Biblical literature and traditions that challenge the standard understanding of the holy book. This debate of recent controversial proposals for new interpretations of the Qur'ān will shed new light on the Qur’anic passages that have been shrouded in mystery and debate. As such, it will be a valuable reference for scholars of Islam, the Qur’an, Christian-Muslim relations and the Middle East.

What did it mean to be a wife, woman, or slave in a society in which a land-owning woman was forbidden to lay with her male slave but the same slave might be allowed to take concubines? Jurists of the nascent Maliki, Hanafi, and Shafi‘i legal schools frequently compared marriage to purchase and divorce to manumission. Juggling scripture, precedent, and custom on one hand, and the requirements of logical consistency on the other, legal scholars engaged in vigorous debate. The emerging consensus demonstrated a self-perpetuating analogy between a husband’s status as master and a wife’s as slave, even as jurists insisted on the dignity of free women and, increasingly, the masculine rights of enslaved husbands. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam presents the first systematic analysis of how these jurists conceptualized marriage—its rights and obligations—using the same rhetoric of ownership used to describe slavery. Kecia Ali explores parallels between marriage and concubinage that legitimized sex and legitimated offspring using eighth- through tenth-century legal texts. As the jurists discussed claims spouses could make on each other—including dower, sex, obedience, and companionship–they returned repeatedly to issues of legal status: wife and concubine, slave and free, male and female. Complementing the growing body of scholarship on Islamic marital and family law, Ali boldly contributes to the ongoing debates over feminism, sexuality, and reform in Islam.

The summarization of Ibn Ḥamdān's renowned creed by Ibn Balbān has not only received widespread praise but has become the latter generation's golden standard and preferred teaching manual. The great Imām Shaykh ʿAbdullāh b. Ṣūfān al-Qaddūmi said that "the most renowned creed of our latter-day scholars is that of the master and educator, Shaykh Badr al-Dīn, famously known as al-Balbāni, who summarized it from Nihāyat al-Mubtadiʾīn fī Usūl al-Dīn by the Imām, Ibn Ḥamdān". It was also this very book that Imām al-Saffārīni studied and taught to several of his students from Najd as he indicated in the introduction of his book Lawāmiʿ al-Anwār al-Bahiyyah.By and large, Qalaʾid al-ʿIqyān, as it is most famously known, represents the canonized creed of the Ḥanābilah. In this exquisite summarization, Ibn Balbān captures the most important topics without delving into the details of evidence or scholastic debate. This work is intentionally concise to encourage mastery and memorization and should serve the disciple well on their journey to Allāh and the home of the Hereafter.

A world expert's introduction to the controversial subject of Islamic law Providing a comprehensive and accessible examination of Shari’ah Law, this well considered introduction examines the sources, characteristic features, and schools of thought of a system often stereotyped for its severity in the West. In a progressive and graduated fashion, Mohammad Hashim Kamali discusses topics ranging from juristic disagreement to independent reasoning. Also broaching more advanced topics such as the principle of legality and the role and place of Shari’ah-oriented policy, Kamali controversially questions whether Islam is as much of a law-based religion as it has often been made out to be. Complete with a bibliography and glossary, and both a general index and an index of Arabic quotations, this wide-ranging exploration will prove an indispensable resource for Islamic students and scholars, and an informative guide to a complex topic for the general reader.