al-Faraid wa Sharh Ayat al-Wasiyya
- Author died
- 581 AH
- Editions
- al-Maktabah al-Fayṣaliyyah
al-Faraid wa Sharh Ayat al-Wasiyya (The Law of Inheritances and Explanation of the Verses of Bequest) is a legal and exegetical treatise on Islamic inheritance law (ʿilm al-farāʾiḍ) authored by the Andalusian scholar Abu al-Qasim Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd Allah al-Suhayli (508–581 AH / 1114–1185 CE) . The book combines Qur'anic exegesis, Arabic linguistics, legal theory, and jurisprudential computation to elucidate the rulings and underlying wisdom of inheritance in Islam .
Subject and Methodology
In the opening of the work, al-Suhayli highlights the nobility of inheritance law, emphasizing its Quranic foundations and citing traditions praising the expertise of the Companion Zayd ibn Thabit in this discipline . The work focuses on analyzing the legal, linguistic, and theological dimensions of the inheritance verses in Surah al-Nisa' . Al-Suhayli examines the divine wisdom, justice, and mercy in the Quranic allocation of estates, contrasting it with pre-Islamic practices that deprived women and young children of shares .
Al-Suhayli applies grammatical and semantic analysis to derive legal rulings from specific Quranic phrasing :
- Verbal Aspect and Divine Names: He explains why the verse opens with the imperfect form يُوصِيكُمُ اللَّهُ (Allah commands you), noting that it marks an ongoing, fresh legal enactment that abrogated earlier general bequests, while mentioning the explicit name Allah to emphasize reverence and deter neglect .
- Lexical Choices: He contrasts the Qur'anic use of awlād (offspring) with abnāʾ (sons/descendants), demonstrating that awlād denotes direct biological descent, thereby clarifying the exclusion of foster children and adopted sons from inheritance, as well as confirming the inheritance rights of fetuses and newborns .
- Gender Portions: He discusses the rationale behind allocating male heirs twice the portion of females ( لِلذَّكَرِ مِثْلُ حَظِّ الْأُنْثَيَيْنِ ), linking it to the male's legal obligations to provide financial maintenance (nafaqa), pay dowries (ṣadāq), and undertake military defense, alongside general legal principles .
- Exclusion Principles: Through lexical and ownership analysis (such as the possessive particle lām denoting true ownership), he deduces that enslaved individuals and non-Muslims are precluded from inheriting from free Muslim relatives .
Legal and Computational Structure
Beyond verse-by-verse linguistic exposition, the book addresses complex legal problems and estate calculations (al-farāʾiḍ). Al-Suhayli resolves intricate syntactic and legal ambiguities in foundational hadiths, such as the narration of Abd Allah ibn Abbas: ألحقوا الفرائض بأهلها فما بقي فهو لأولى رجل ذكر (Give the fixed shares to those entitled to them, and whatever remains goes to the closest male relative), clarifying the grammatical status of the descriptor dhakar and its legal implications for agnatic inheritance .
He also organizes practical distribution problems according to their base divisors (aṣl al-farīḍa) :
- Cases originating from base 2 (such as a single sister, single daughter, or husband inheriting half) .
- Cases originating from base 3 (such as a mother receiving a third, two daughters, multiple maternal siblings, or a grandfather with siblings) .
- Cases originating from base 4 (such as a husband with children or a wife without children receiving one-quarter) .
- Cases originating from base 6 (such as a father with a son, or a mother with children, receiving one-sixth) .
Reception and Editions
The treatise is cited by classical Maliki and general legal bibliographies under titles including al-Faraid wa Sharh Ayat al-Wasiyya and Sharh Ayat al-Wasiyya . It was utilized as a reference on inheritance by subsequent commentators and jurists, including Taj al-Din al-Fakihani and Badr al-Din al-Damamini .
The text was edited by Muhammad Ibrahim al-Banna and published by al-Maktaba al-Faysaliyya in Mecca (2nd edition, 1405 AH / 1985 CE) .
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