al-Mawsua al-Fiqhiyya
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- Dorar al-Saniyyah Website (dorar.net)
al-Mawsu'ah al-Fiqhiyyah (الموسوعة الفقهية, The Jurisprudential Encyclopedia), commonly known as the Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia, is a 45-volume collective reference work on Islamic jurisprudence published by the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Kuwait . It presents a modern formulation of Islamic legal heritage up to the thirteenth century AH, organized alphabetically around legal terms .
Background and History
Efforts to compile a comprehensive modern encyclopedia of Islamic jurisprudence began in the mid-twentieth century . Early initiatives took shape in Damascus under a committee chaired by Mustafa al-Siba'i and later Mustafa al-Zarqa, before the project shifted to Egypt under the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs .
The Kuwaiti project's first cycle ran for five years and concluded in late 1971 CE . During this phase, organizers established an operational plan, indexed legal terms extracted from Ibn Qudamah's al-Mughni, and authored fifty sample research papers . Preliminary sample booklets—covering topics such as beverages (al-ashribah), foods (al-at'imah), debt assignment (al-hawalah), lineage (al-nasab), inheritance (al-irth), retaliation (al-qisas), and discretionary punishment (al-ta'zir)—were circulated across the Muslim world to gather academic feedback and critiques .
Following a pause in 1972 CE, preparatory work resumed in 1975 CE with coordinated outreach to Islamic academic bodies and jurists . The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs officially published the first volume in Sha'ban 1400 AH / July 1980 CE .
Scope and Methodology
The work aims to make Islamic legal heritage accessible to specialists and general researchers alike by distilling rulings from foundational classical sources in clear, simplified language with rigorous attribution and evidence . It focuses on substantive jurisprudence up to the end of the thirteenth century AH, setting aside specialized sub-genres such as riddles (al-alghaz), legal devices (al-hiyal), legal drafting and documentation (al-shurut), and principles of fatwa issuance (rasm al-mufti) for standalone treatments or appendices .
The editorial methodology relied on an iterative, multi-stage process:
- Extracting technical legal terminology (al-mustalahat al-fiqhiyyah) from classical jurisprudential works across the legal schools and filtering out non-legal terms .
- Categorizing entries into primary terms (mustalahat asliyyah), cross-reference terms (mustalahat ihala), and indicative terms (mustalahat dalalah) .
- Commissioning individual term outlines to internal staff or external scholars across the Islamic world .
- Submitting drafts to expert legal reviewers for academic verification, followed by final standardization and encyclopedic formatting prior to publication .
Structure and Editions
The entries are arranged alphabetically according to their standard technical phrasing rather than their root-word etymology, using a word-by-word ordering system to streamline searching . In the original print edition, each volume concludes with a biographical appendix (tarajim al-fuqaha) documenting the jurists mentioned in the text .
The completed project spans 45 volumes, published between 1404 AH and 1427 AH:
- Volumes 1–23 were published in a second edition by Dar al-Salasil in Kuwait .
- Volumes 24–38 were published in a first edition by Matabi' Dar al-Safwa in Egypt .
- Volumes 39–45 were published in a second edition directly by the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs .
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