al-Qaida al-Dhahabiya La Darar wa la Dirar
- Author died
- 795 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kitāb al-‘Arabī
al-Qaida al-Dhahabiya La Darar wa la Dirar (The Golden Maxim: No Harm and No Reciprocation of Harm) is a legal treatise by the Hanbali jurist and traditionist Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali (736–795 AH / 1335–1393 CE) dedicated to the comprehensive explanation of the prophetic tradition and overarching legal maxim لا ضرر ولا ضرار ("There shall be no harm and no reciprocating of harm") .
Background and Context
The text forms the detailed exposition of the thirty-second tradition commented upon in Ibn Rajab's larger hadith collection Jami' al-'Ulum wa-l-Hikam (The Compendium of Knowledge and Wisdom) . It has also been printed and circulated as an independent monograph under titles including al-Qa'ida al-Dhahabiya fi al-Mu'amalat al-Islamiyya: La Darar wa-la Dirar fi al-Islam, such as its Cairo publication in 1410 AH / 1990 CE .
Hadith Transmission and Authentication
Ibn Rajab opens the treatise by grading the hadith as hasan (fair) and evaluating its various routes of transmission (turuq) :
- Abu Sa'id al-Khudri: Transmitted by al-Daraqutni, al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, and al-Bayhaqi via al-Darawardi from Amr ibn Yahya from his father . Ibn Rajab notes that Ibn Abd al-Barr and Khalid ibn Sa'd al-Andalusi considered its connected (musnad) chains unpreserved, preferring the mursal transmission found in Malik ibn Anas's al-Muwatta .
- Ubada ibn al-Samit: Transmitted by Ibn Majah, which Ibn Rajab analyzes as coming from a written sheet (sahifa) with broken transmission (munqati'), as held by Ali ibn al-Madini and Abu Zur'a al-Razi .
- Ibn Abbas and Amr ibn Awf al-Muzani: Recorded in several works with individual weaknesses in their transmitters (such as Jabir al-Ju'fi and Kathir ibn Abd Allah) .
Ibn Rajab cites the methodology of scholars such as al-Shafi'i, al-Juzajani, al-Bayhaqi, and Ibn al-Salah to argue that these multiple distinct lines strengthen one another, bringing the hadith to the level of acceptability, and points to Abu Dawud's classification of the hadith as one of the pivotal foundations around which Islamic jurisprudence revolves .
Linguistic and Conceptual Analysis
The work explores the linguistic distinction between the terms darar (harm) and dirar (harming/reciprocating harm) :
- They are synonymous, repeated solely for emphasis .
- Darar is the noun (negating the existence of harm in the law) and dirar is the verb (prohibiting the act of causing wrongful harm) .
- Darar refers to inflicting harm on another while deriving a personal benefit, whereas dirar is causing harm without gaining any benefit (such as preventing someone from something that does not harm the owner), a view preferred by Ibn Abd al-Barr and Ibn al-Salah .
- Darar is harming someone who has not harmed you, whereas dirar is retaliating against someone who harmed you in an unlawful manner .
Ibn Rajab clarifies that the prohibition strictly concerns unlawful harm (bi-ghayr haqq), excluding legitimate penal punishments for transgressions or judicial remedies sought by aggrieved parties .
Juridical Applications and Substantive Issues
Ibn Rajab divides the unlawful infliction of harm into two broad categories: acts done purely out of malicious intent without valid purpose, and acts done for a valid interest that result in harm to others . He illustrates these through various legal domains:
- Bequests (wasiyya): Prohibiting bequests designed to prejudice legitimate heirs, such as allocating extra shares to an heir or bequeathing more than one-third of the estate to a third party .
- Family Law: Forbidding the revocation of divorce (raj'a) intended solely to prolong the waiting period ('idda) of the wife, prolonged cessation of marital relations (ila' or abandonment without valid excuse), and causing harm in matters of infant nursing (rida') .
- Commercial Transactions: Rulings on sales made under duress or distress (bay' al-mudtarr), gross overcharging (ghabn), separating a mother from her young child in sales, and practices such as tawarruq and 'ina .
- Neighboring Rights and Property Use: Restrictions on property owners when customary or uncustomary use harms neighbors, such as lighting fires on windy days, building high structures that overlook neighbors' privacy or block air and sunlight, digging wells close to existing wells, creating excessive noise and vibrations, emitting foul odors, or abusing easements, referencing the hadith of Samura ibn Jundab's palm tree .
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