al-Faraid
- Author died
- 1438 AH
- Editions
- Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da‘wah, and Guidance - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
al-Faraid (The Science of Inheritance Shares) is a textbook on Islamic inheritance law by the Saudi jurist and professor Abd al-Karim al-Lahim (d. 1438 AH / 2017 CE) . The work provides a systematic exposition of the principles, statutory shares, computational rules, and complex cases of Islamic estate distribution .
Structure and Content
The book is arranged into an introduction and two comprehensive sections :
- Introduction: Covers the linguistic and technical definitions of fara'id and irth (inheritance), the textual virtues and legal rulings associated with studying the discipline, the rationale underlying the differential shares of male and female heirs, and refutations of polemical objections regarding women's inheritance rights in Islam .
- Section One: Focuses on foundational principles and regular distribution rules across nineteen topics :
- Rights attached to the estate (al-huquq al-muta'alliqah bi-l-tarikah), ordered sequentially: funeral preparations, rights tied to specific property (such as pledged debts), unattached debts owed to people or to God, valid testamentary bequests up to one-third, and inheritance .
- The essential pillars of inheritance: the deceased testator (al-mowarrith), the surviving heir (al-warith), and the inherited estate (al-haqq al-mawruth) .
- The legal conditions of inheritance (shurut al-irth): confirmed death of the testator, confirmed life of the heir at the time of death, and knowledge of the legal grounds establishing entitlement .
- The legal causes of inheritance (asbab al-irth): valid marriage contract (nikah), clientage by manumission (wala'), and biological lineage (nasab) .
- The disqualifying impediments to inheritance (mawāni' al-irth) .
- Eligible male heirs .
- Eligible female heirs .
- Categories of inheritance .
- The fixed shares prescribed in the Quran .
- Heirs entitled to the half share (ashab al-nisf) .
- Heirs entitled to the quarter share (ashab al-rub') .
- Heirs entitled to the one-eighth share (ashab al-thumun) .
- Heirs entitled to the two-thirds share (ashab al-thuluthayn) .
- Heirs entitled to the one-third share (ashab al-thuluth) .
- Heirs entitled to the one-sixth share (ashab al-sudus) .
- Legal rulings pertaining to grandmothers (ahkam al-jaddat) .
- Agnatic heirship (ta'sib) .
- Exclusion and reduction of shares (hajb) .
- Calculation and mathematical base numbers of inheritance cases (hisab al-fara'id) .
- Section Two: Addresses eight specialized and complex scenarios :
- Successive deaths occurring before the division of an estate (al-munasakhat), detailing its three operational cases and methods of calculation .
- Simultaneous deaths where the order of decease is uncertain, such as victims of drowning or collapse (al-gharqa) .
- Redistribution of surplus estate portions when no agnates remain (al-radd) .
- Estate shares reserved for an unborn fetus (mirath al-haml) .
- Rights and shares concerning a missing person (mirath al-mafqud) .
- Inheritance of individuals of indeterminate sex (mirath al-khuntha) .
- Inheritance of non-prescribed uterine relatives (mirath dhawi al-arham) .
- Practical division and final apportionment of estates (qismat al-tarikat) .
Method and Reception
The book employs a pedagogical methodology tailored for students of Islamic jurisprudence. al-Lahim structures each topic with concise definitions, textual evidence from the Quran and hadith literature, practical numerical examples demonstrating step-by-step arithmetic solutions, and a set of review questions at the conclusion of each unit .
The first edition of the book was published in Riyadh by Maktabat al-Ma'arif in 1406 AH (1986 CE) . It is cited and utilized as a standard contemporary reference in Saudi and Hanbali inheritance literature alongside treatises by Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin, and Salih al-Fawzan .
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