Salih bin Furayh al-Bahlal
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Salih bin Furayh al-Bahlal is a contemporary Saudi scholar of hadith and Islamic jurisprudence, known for his specialized thematic study al-Ahadith al-Warida fi al-Laib wa al-Riyada (The Hadiths Regarding Play and Sports).
Academic Background and Research
Al-Bahlal prepared his doctoral dissertation within the Department of Islamic Culture at King Saud University in Riyadh. His research focused on addressing the modern widespread engagement with games and sports by comprehensively compiling and evaluating the prophetic traditions concerning physical exercise, games, and recreation, combining hadith authentication with legal derivation.
Methodological and Legal Contributions
In his scholarship, al-Bahlal utilized an inductive, deductive, and comparative method. In his primary work on play and sports, he examined 158 attributed prophetic narrations—136 of which lie outside Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, including 40 narrations concerning hidden defects (ʿilal)—and derived rulings for over one hundred legal issues, including thirty contemporary questions.
Al-Bahlal established that physical games and sports are fundamentally permissible in Islamic law provided they do not involve or lead to unlawful matters. He categorized sports and recreational activities according to their legal status and utility:
- Beneficial sports: Activities that build physical strength or aid in military readiness—such as archery, horsemanship, camel riding, running, wrestling, swimming, spear play, and stone lifting—which vary between obligatory, recommended, or permissible depending on intention and necessity.
- Neutral pastimes: Practices that entail neither inherent harm nor direct martial benefit—exemplified by traditional children's games and modern team sports like football, volleyball, and basketball—which remain fundamentally permissible.
- Prohibited practices: Activities involving physical harm, religious contraventions, gambling, or animal cruelty (such as inciting animals to fight).
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List of Works
al-Ahadith al-Warida fi al-Laib wa al-Riyada (The Hadiths Regarding Play and Sports) is a hadith and juristic study examining prophetic traditions and Islamic legal rulings concerning games, recreation, and athletic practices. It provides a thematic compilation of prophetic hadiths related to recreational games and sports, evaluating their authenticity and deriving legal rulings for numerous juristic issues.