al-Fawaid al-Jaliya fi al-Mabahith al-Fardiya
- Author died
- 1420 AH
- Editions
- Wizarat al-Shu'un al-Islamiyyah wa-al-Awqaf wa-al-Da'wah wa-al-Irshad
al-Fawaid al-Jaliya fi al-Mabahith al-Fardiya (The Evident Benefits Concerning Inquiries of Inheritance) is a concise treatise on the Islamic law of inheritance (ilm al-faraid) according to the Hanbali school, authored by Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah ibn Baz (d. 1420 AH / 1999 CE) .
Composition and Sources
Ibn Baz composed the work during his tenure as a judge and teacher to provide an accessible summary of inheritance jurisprudence . He primarily drew its contents from the instructional lectures and determinations (taqrirat) of his teacher, the grand mufti Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh .
Method and Content
The treatise is structured around the principles of estate division according to the doctrine of Ahmad ibn Hanbal . In his methodology, Ibn Baz deliberately stripped the text of formal scriptural proofs (adillah) and legal rationales (ta'lil) across most sections to maintain brevity and ease memorization for beginners and students of knowledge . However, when addressing matters of significant scholarly dispute, he noted strong dissenting positions and weighed (tarjih) the opinions he deemed best supported by evidence, presenting these conclusions either in the main text or in marginal annotations . The manual covers core topics of succession law, including inheritance rules, the mathematical calculation of shares (hisab), and practical methods for distributing estates (qismat al-tarikat) .
Reception and Editions
The treatise circulated widely as a foundational primer for studying inheritance law among contemporary Hanbali jurists and students . It went through multiple printings during the author's lifetime; in his introduction to the fifth edition, Ibn Baz noted that he reissued the text in response to sustained student demand after the exhaustion of the fourth edition, introducing minor textual corrections .
Answer updated