al-Faraid lil-Thawri
- Author died
- 161 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-‘Āṣimah
al-Faraid (The Book of Inheritance Shares) is an early legal and hadith treatise on Islamic inheritance law attributed to the Kufan scholar and traditionist Sufyan al-Thawri (97–161 AH / 715–778 CE) .
Transmission and Structure
The book is recorded among al-Thawri's written works in the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim alongside his major and minor compilations (al-Jami' al-Kabir and al-Jami' al-Saghir) . The surviving recension of the text was compiled and transmitted by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sulayman ibn al-Harith al-Wasiti (d. 278 AH), who gathered al-Thawri's narrations through his own intermediate teachers, including Abu Nu'aym al-Fadl ibn Dukayn, Qabisa ibn Uqba, and Abu Hudhayfa al-Nahdi .
From al-Wasiti, the collection was transmitted by the Baghdadi traditionist Abu Amr Uthman ibn Ahmad ibn al-Sammak (d. 344 AH) . In later bio-bibliographical literature and transmission registers, such as those of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and Taj al-Din al-Subki, the work is cited under titles including al-Faraid al-mustakhraja min hadith Sufyan ibn Sa'id al-Thawri and cataloged as one of the numbered topical parts (ajza') preserved through the line of Ibn al-Sammak . A known manuscript witness was preserved in the endowment of Ibn al-Hajib at the foot of Mount Qasiyun in Damascus .
Content and Method
The work consists of hadiths of the Prophet ﷺ and legal reports (athar) transmitted from early Companions and Successors concerning the apportionment of estates (al-mawarith) . It opens with traditions emphasizing the duty of studying inheritance law and proceeds to document classical juristic rulings on prescribed shares, the rights of female ascendants such as grandmothers, and the shares of the paternal grandfather alongside siblings—reporting authorities such as Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ali ibn Abi Talib, Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud, Zayd ibn Thabit, and Ibrahim al-Nakha'i .
Publication
The work was edited with hadith verification and cross-referencing by Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah al-Hulayyil under the supervision of Mahmud ibn Muhammad al-Haddad, and was published in Riyadh by Dar al-Asimah in 1410 AH (1990 CE) .
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