al-Mughni li-Ibn Qudama
- Author died
- 620 AH
- Editions
- t al-Turki · t Maktabat al-Qahira
al-Mughni is a multi-volume encyclopedia of comparative Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh muqaran) and Hanbali law authored by Ibn Qudama (541–620 AH / 1147–1223 CE) as an expansive commentary on Mukhtasar al-Khiraqi by Abu al-Qasim al-Khiraqi (d. 334 AH) .
Composition and Scope
Ibn Qudama composed the work around Mukhtasar al-Khiraqi, the foremost early legal manual of the Hanbali school . In his preface, he explained that he chose al-Khiraqi's text because it was a concise, comprehensive work whose author combined knowledge with piety, using its structure and legal cases as thematic rubrics for an encyclopedic treatment of Islamic law .
The work occupied the highest tier of Ibn Qudama's graded pedagogical curriculum in jurisprudence: he authored al-'Umda for beginners, al-Muqni' for intermediate students to learn multiple narrations within the school without proofs, al-Kafi for advanced students to engage directly with legal evidences, and al-Mughni for scholars to examine diverse narrations, inter-school disagreements, and arguments in order to cultivate the capacity for independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) . The original manuscript spanned nine large volumes in Ibn Qudama's own handwriting, and other accounts describe it as ten volumes .
Structure and Method
The book follows the arrangement of Mukhtasar al-Khiraqi, dividing Islamic law into broad books (kutub, such as purification and prayer), chapters (abwab), and individual legal issues (masa'il) . Ibn Qudama takes each case from al-Khiraqi as a heading, analyzes its literal and implied meanings (mantuq and mafhum), and appends related branch issues not mentioned in the base text under unheaded sections (fasl) .
In each topic, Ibn Qudama systematically clarifies matters of consensus (ijma') and juristic disagreement (khilaf), either verifying consensus independently or citing earlier authorities such as Ibn al-Mundhir . He presents the positions of the Hanbali school alongside the rulings of the Companions, the Successors, regional jurists (‘ulama al-amsar), and the four Sunni schools of law . He attributes prophetic traditions and narrations to authoritative hadith collections to distinguish authentic reports from defective ones, providing textual evidence and legal rationales (ta'lil) for each position before evaluating and preferring (tarjih) the strongest view through legal dialectic .
Reception and Influence
al-Mughni achieved widespread acclaim across legal schools as a reference for comparative jurisprudence . Ibn Qudama's contemporary Nasih al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali (d. 634 AH) described it as an eloquent work that "beautified the school" . The Shafi'i jurist al-'Izz ibn 'Abd al-Salam (d. 660 AH) ranked it alongside Ibn Hazm's al-Muhalla as unmatched in Islamic scholarship for quality and critical verification, adding that he was not comfortable issuing fatwas until he had acquired a copy of al-Mughni . Regarding Ibn Qudama's mastery in the book, Ibn Ghaniyya stated that he knew no one in their era who had reached the rank of ijtihad other than him . In modern times, Muhammad Rashid Rida remarked in his preface to its publication that if God facilitated the printing of al-Mughni, he would die confident that Islamic jurisprudence would not perish .
The book generated several derivative works and commentaries:
- Ibn Razin (d. 656 AH) abridged it into a two-volume work titled al-Tahdhib .
- Ibn Abi 'Umar (d. 682 AH) relied on it as the primary source for his major commentary al-Sharh al-Kabir on Ibn Qudama's al-Muqni', incorporating its legal branches, narrations, and hadith citations .
- The Iraqi jurist al-Zurayrani (d. 729 AH) read through the entire text twenty-three times and composed marginal glosses (hawashi) upon it .
A widely circulated critical edition of the text was prepared in multiple volumes by Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muhsin al-Turki and Abd al-Fattah Muhammad al-Hulw .
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