Adab al-Dunya wa al-Din
- Author died
- 450 AH
- Editions
- Dār Maktabat al-Ḥayāh
Adab al-Dunya wa al-Din (The Conduct of Worldly Life and Religion) is a classical Islamic treatise on ethics, pedagogy, and social and religious conduct composed by the Shafi'i jurist and scholar al-Mawardi (d. 450 AH / 1058 CE) . It is also referred to in historical sources as Adab al-Din wa al-Dunya and al-Bughyah al-Ulya fi Adab al-Din wa al-Dunya .
Structure and Content
The book is organized into five main chapters :
- The Intellect (Fi al-Aql): Addresses the nature of reason, discernment, and its role as the foundation of human conduct .
- Knowledge (Fi al-Ilm): Discusses the pursuit of learning, educational ethics, and the gradual stages of acquiring various sciences .
- Religious Conduct (Fi Adab al-Din): Covers religious obligations, piety, and the spiritual duties governing a believer's relationship with God .
- Worldly Conduct (Fi Adab al-Dunya): Examines human social organization—introducing the principle that "man is social by nature" (al-insan madaniyyun bi-tab'ih)—the requirements for societal stability, mutual assistance, and the detrimental impact of oppression and injustice on material prosperity and the human conscience .
- The Discipline of the Self (Fi Adab al-Nafs): Details psychological self-refinement, the cultivation of personal virtues, and the eradication of vice .
Throughout these divisions, the work elaborates on praiseworthy virtues such as modesty (haya'), truthfulness (sidq), the etiquette of speech (adab al-kalam), patience (sabr), mutual consultation (shura), confidentiality (kitman al-sirr), and chivalric civility (muru'ah) . It likewise treats blameworthy character traits, including falsehood, backbiting, and slander .
Method and Sources
Al-Mawardi combines religious textual proofs with rational philosophy and literary arts. He grounds his moral arguments in the Quran, prophetic traditions, wisdom sayings of sages and ancient philosophers, and selections of Arabic poetry and prose .
The work posits that human nature cannot rely on intellect alone without deliberate discipline and moral upbringing (ta'dib), citing the prophetic saying: إنما بعثت لأتمم صالح الأخلاق ("I was sent only to perfect noble character traits") . Al-Mawardi notes that while individual norms and customs shift across eras and cannot be fully enumerated, the role of later scholars is to preserve inherited wisdom, adapt it to the conventions of their contemporary society, and express it in clear language accessible to their contemporaries .
Reception and Editions
Modern commentators, including Mustafa al-Saqqa and educational researchers, have highlighted early sociological and pedagogical parallels between al-Mawardi's formulations in Adab al-Dunya wa al-Din—such as his analyses of social cohesion, pedagogy, and the destructiveness of injustice—and the writings of al-Raghib al-Isfahani and Ibn Khaldun .
The book has been printed in multiple editions in Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus, including editions edited by Mustafa al-Saqqa and by Yasin Muhammad al-Sawwas, and has also been translated into English .
Answer updated