al-Amr bil-Maruf wa al-Nahy an al-Munkar - min al-Jami lil-Khallal
- Author died
- 311 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah
Kitab al-Amr bi-al-Ma‘ruf wa-al-Nahy ‘an al-Munkar (Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil) is a specialized treatise on the legal rulings and ethics of moral correction, excerpted from the comprehensive legal compendium al-Jami‘ by the Hanbali scholar Abu Bakr al-Khallal (234–311 AH / 848–923 CE) .
Context and Authorship
Abu Bakr al-Khallal devoted much of his scholarly career to collecting, organizing, and transmitting the legal responsa, transmitted rulings, and narrations (masa’il) of Ahmad ibn Hanbal . To gather these reports, al-Khallal traveled extensively across regions including Sham, Egypt, Fars, Kerman, Tarsus, Aleppo, al-Jazirah, al-Massisah, and Antioch, compiling the material from Ahmad's direct disciples into his monumental legal work, al-Jami‘ al-Kabir . Al-Amr bi-al-Ma‘ruf wa-al-Nahy ‘an al-Munkar represents the surviving thematic portion of al-Jami‘ dedicated to the obligation, boundaries, and practical application of enjoining good and forbidding evil .
Structure and Content
The treatise is organized around chains of transmission (isnad) tracing legal questions and situational inquiries posed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal by his companions, including Abu Bakr al-Marrudhi, Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, Ismail ibn Sa‘id, Muhammad ibn Abi Harun, and Mansur ibn al-Walid, along with earlier reports from figures such as Sufyan al-Thawri and al-Hasan al-Basri .
The work addresses several central legal and ethical questions regarding moral correction:
- Levels of Intervention: The text outlines the traditional stages of changing a wrong—by hand, tongue, or heart—clarifying what falls within an individual’s capacity and the situations where intervention is restricted to verbal remonstrance or internal disapproval .
- Fear of Harm and Legal Excuses: It specifies that direct physical or verbal intervention ceases to be obligatory when an individual fears physical harm, such as a sword or whip, in which case repudiation in the heart suffices .
- Relations with Political Authority: It addresses interactions with rulers (al-sultan), reporting counsel against provoking rulers or exposing oneself to violent retaliation, as well as cautioning against relying routinely on state authorities to resolve local disputes where excessive punishment or extortion might ensue .
- Neighborhood and Social Etiquette: The work details specific scenarios, such as dealing with neighbors committing infractions (such as playing musical instruments or consuming intoxicants), advising persistent private admonition up to several times, while discouraging invasive spying and emphasizing the virtue of concealing others' private sins (satr) rather than reporting them directly to authorities .
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscript copies of the treatise are preserved in collections such as the al-Qadiriyyah Library in Baghdad (MS 650) and the Zahiriyyah Library in Damascus (MS 245) . The book has been published in printed editions, including releases in Riyadh (1389 AH / 1969 CE), Cairo (1975 CE), and Beirut (1406 AH / 1986 CE) .
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