al-Jami fi Ahkam Sifat al-Salah - al-Dubayyan
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- al-Jami fi Ahkam Sifat al-Salah - al-Dubayyan
al-Jami fi Ahkam Sifat al-Salah (Arabic: الجامع في أحكام صفة الصلاة, lit. 'The Compendium on the Rulings of the Description of Prayer') is an expansive legal and hadith treatise by the contemporary scholar Abu Umar Dabyan ibn Muhammad al-Dabyan, dedicated to the rulings, manners, and integral components of performing Islamic prayer .
Background and Composition
The author composed the work as part of a broader encyclopedic jurisprudence endeavor that spanned nearly twenty-five years . That larger project initially produced his multi-volume work on ritual purity (Mawsu'at Ahkam al-Taharah), followed by a twenty-volume project on classical and contemporary financial transactions (al-Mu'amalat al-Maliyyah Asalah wa-Mu'asarah), after which he returned to complete the acts of worship by addressing the rulings of prayer . He divided the prayer project into obligatory prayers (Ahkam al-Salah al-Maktubah) and supererogatory prayers (Ahkam Salat al-Tatawwu') .
Upon finishing the section on the description of prayer (Sifat al-Salah), the prayer project had reached ten volumes, bringing his total completed output across these projects to forty volumes . At the suggestion of colleagues who emphasized the independent utility of the topic for readers who might not seek the entire multi-volume compendium, al-Dabyan detached this section and published it as a separate treatise entitled al-Jami fi Ahkam Sifat al-Salah . To preserve continuity with the master work (al-Umm), he maintained the original sequential numbering of legal issues (al-masa'il) and the numbering of hadiths and historical reports (al-athar) .
Scope and Methodology
The work opens with the preparatory stages and etiquettes connected to prayer—such as departing for the mosque in a state of ritual purity with exclusive intention—and systematically progresses through the physical and verbal acts of prayer from the opening takbir to the final salutations .
Al-Dabyan employs a methodology integrating comparative legal analysis (fiqh) with detailed hadith criticism (takhrij and dirayah) . For each legal issue, he quotes foundational texts, surveys differing narrations and transmitter paths, discusses legal principles (usul), analyzes textual indications (wajh al-istidlal), and weighs differing juristic opinions against the authenticity of the supporting evidence .
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