al-Ashbah wa al-Nazair - al-Suyuti
- Author died
- 911 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya
al-Ashbah wa al-Nazair (The Resemblances and Parallels) is a comprehensive treatise on Islamic legal maxims (qawa'id fiqhiyya) and substantive legal cases in the Shafi'i school by the Egyptian polymath Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH / 1505 CE) .
Background and Sources
In his survey of the genre, al-Suyuti noted that writing on legal maxims was inaugurated by Izz al-Din ibn Abd al-Salam in his Qawa'id al-ahkam fi masalih al-anam (The Greater Maxims), followed by Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi in al-Manthur fi al-qawa'id and Ibn al-Wakil (d. 716 AH) in his al-Ashbah wa al-nazair . Taj al-Din al-Subki (d. 771 AH) then composed his own al-Ashbah wa al-nazair to edit and refine Ibn al-Wakil's material upon the recommendation of his father, whereas Siraj al-Din Ibn al-Mulaqqin structured his treatise according to standard fiqh chapters .
In compiling his work, al-Suyuti drew heavily on earlier jurists, particularly Taj al-Din al-Subki, al-Zarkashi, and Salah al-Din al-Ala'i—explicitly citing al-Subki and al-Zarkashi while omitting references to al-Ala'i—and augmented their material with his own legal, jurisprudential, and linguistic synthesis .
Structure and Contents
The work is organized into seven books (kutub), incorporating a total of 130 overarching and subsidiary legal maxims scattered across its sections :
- Book One: Explains the five major legal maxims (al-qawa'id al-khams al-kubra), illustrating them with practical examples, the substantive legal branches falling under each maxim across different chapters, and their derived subsidiary principles .
- Book Two: Examines forty universal maxims from which countless specific legal scenarios derive, which are narrower in scope than the five major maxims .
- Book Three: Outlines twenty contested or debated legal maxims over which jurists held differing opinions .
- Book Four: Covers recurring legal rulings of which a jurist ought not to be ignorant .
- Book Five: Details legal parallels and analogous cases arranged according to standard chapters of fiqh .
- Book Six: Treats legal distinctions and points of divergence between seemingly similar chapters and scenarios .
- Book Seven: Gathers various miscellaneous legal parallels, interspersed with diverse maxims and technical guidelines .
Reception and Influence
al-Ashbah wa al-Nazair is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive and well-arranged collections of legal maxims in the Shafi'i tradition . It significantly influenced later jurisprudence in other legal schools; the Hanafi scholar Ibn Nujaym (d. 970 AH) adopted a similar seven-part structure for his own al-Ashbah wa al-nazair and explicitly cited al-Suyuti's work .
Abu Bakr al-Ahdal al-Yamani (d. 1035 AH) versified and summarized the treatise in his didactic poem al-Fawa'id al-bahiyya, which was subsequently commented upon by Abd Allah ibn Sulayman al-Jarhazi in al-Mawahib al-saniyya; both the versification and commentary have frequently been printed in the margins of al-Suyuti's text . In the modern era, the general legal principles articulated in the work were among the sources used by scholars of al-Zaytuna Mosque when drafting the Tunisian Civil Code (al-Majalla al-Madaniyya) in 1314 AH (1896 CE) .
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