al-Muamalat al-Maliyya Asala wa Muasara
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- al-Muamalat al-Maliyya Asala wa Muasara
al-Muamalat al-Maliyya Asala wa Muasara (Financial Transactions: Authenticity and Contemporaneity) is an encyclopedic multi-volume reference work on Islamic commercial jurisprudence (fiqh al-mu'amalat) by the Saudi jurist Dubayyan ibn Muhammad al-Dubayyan (Abu Umar). It systematically examines classical contractual rules alongside contemporary commercial and banking transactions.
Scope and Structure
The work is organized into comprehensive legal treatises covering both compensatory contracts (uqud al-mu'awadat) and gratuitous or charitable contracts (uqud al-tabarru'):
- Compensatory Contracts: The first section covers fifteen contracts. The contract of sale (bay'), including its definitions of wealth (mal), offer and acceptance, contractual stipulations, options (khiyar), and rescission, spans seven volumes. Subsequent volumes treat leasing (ijara) and lease-to-own transactions, usury (riba), currency exchange (sarf) and modern banking operations, capital markets and traded securities, partnerships and corporate entities (shirkat), agricultural sharecropping (musaqah and muzara'ah), and debt transfer (hawala).
- Gratuitous and Supportive Contracts: The second major division covers eight contracts, including religious endowments (waqf), testamentary bequests and executorship (wisaya), interest-free loans (qard), and gifts (hiba).
Method and Sources
al-Dubayyan integrates traditional jurisprudence with modern newly arising legal cases (nawazil), maintaining that understanding contemporary contracts requires anchoring them in established legal maxims (qawa'id fiqhiyya) and classical parameters. Under each chapter, he presents the classical rulings and follows them with modern applications; for example, classical forms of taking possession (qabd) are examined alongside the constructive possession of shares, checks, commercial papers, and bank ledger entries.
In evaluating legal opinions, the author relies on comparative jurisprudence across the four Sunni schools of law (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali), citing each school's authorities directly from its primary literature. He also incorporates positions from the Successors (Tabi'un), the traditionists (Ahl al-Hadith), and the Zahiri school, weighting and preferring rulings based on textual evidence from the Quran and Sunnah rather than strict adherence to a single madhhab (taqlid). For contemporary issues, he draws extensively on academic dissertations, resolutions of Islamic jurisprudence academies, and fatwas issued by Sharia supervisory boards of Islamic banks.
Publication and Reception
The first edition of the work, comprising the compensatory contracts, was adopted by the Saudi General Authority of Endowments (al-Hay'ah al-Ammah lil-Awqaf), which printed 2,000 copies as its inaugural publication in 1432 AH. A second expanded edition appeared in 1434 AH containing the additions on gratuitous contracts and extending across at least nineteen volumes.
The encyclopedia received written commendations (taqarid) and prefaces from several prominent Saudi scholars, including Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muhsin al-Turki (Secretary-General of the Muslim World League), Salih ibn Abdullah ibn Humayd (President of the Supreme Judicial Council and Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca), Muhammad ibn Nasir al-Abudi, and Salih ibn Abd al-Aziz Al al-Shaykh. These reviewers commended its exhaustive collection of legal differences, adherence to textual proofs, academic rigor, and presentation of viable Sharia-compliant alternatives to modern interest-based financial mechanisms.
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