al-Wasit fi al-Madhhab
- Author died
- 505 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Salām
al-Wasit fi al-Madhhab (The Intermediate in the Legal School) is a manual of Shafi'i jurisprudence (fiqh) written by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505 AH / 1111 CE) . It represents the intermediate stage in al-Ghazali's multi-tiered corpus of legal manuals and forms part of the transmission sequence of early Shafi'i legal doctrine .
Composition and Methodology
The text was composed as an abridgment of al-Ghazali's own extensive legal work, al-Basit fi al-Madhhab, which itself was an abridgment of Nihayat al-Matlab fi Dirayat al-Madhhab by his teacher Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni . Al-Ghazali explained in his introduction that he authored al-Wasit after observing a decline in student motivation and resolve to study lengthy works; al-Basit, despite its structured arrangement and research, demanded extraordinary dedication .
To make the material more accessible without sacrificing substance, al-Ghazali condensed al-Basit to approximately half its original volume while retaining almost all of its legal questions, omitting no more than one-thirtieth of them . He achieved this reduction by eliminating weak opinions (al-aqwal al-da'ifah), ungrounded interpretations (al-wujuh al-muzayyafah), and rare anomalous branch-rulings (al-tafri'at al-shadhdhah al-nadirah), alongside refining the layout and phrasing .
While the author explicitly named it al-Wasit fi al-Madhhab, biographers and catalogers have occasionally referred to it by variant titles, such as al-Wasit, al-Wasit fi Furu' al-Fiqh, al-Wasit al-Muhit bi-Aqtar al-Basit, and al-Wasit al-Muhit bi-Athar al-Basit .
Place in Shafi'i Jurisprudence
Al-Wasit is the second work in al-Ghazali's celebrated series of four Shafi'i legal texts, situated between the expansive al-Basit and the concise al-Wajiz, in addition to his summary of al-Muzani's compendium titled Khulasat al-Mukhtasar . This pedagogical progression was celebrated in verse by the scholar Abu Hafs 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Tarabulusi . Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi counted al-Wasit among the five foundational, widely circulated texts in the Shafi'i school upon which later scholarship centered .
Later scholars frequently analyzed al-Ghazali's legal formulations in al-Wasit in comparison with al-Basit and al-Juwayni's Nihayat al-Matlab, often tracing errors or contentious points back to al-Juwayni's underlying positions .
Commentaries and Glosses
Owing to its prominence, al-Wasit became the subject of extensive commentaries, glosses, and specialized monographs:
- Al-Muhit fi Sharh al-Wasit by al-Ghazali's student Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Nisaburi (d. 548 AH), comprising sixteen volumes (or eight volumes in an alternate account), which was endowed at the Salahiyya school near al-Shafi'i's tomb .
- Sharh al-Wasit by Yahya ibn Abi al-Khayr al-Yamani (d. 558 AH) .
- Sharh al-Wasit by Abu Hamid al-Jajarmi (d. 613 AH) .
- Iydah al-Aghalit al-Waridah fi al-Wasit and a concise gloss (ta'liqah mujazah) by Ibrahim ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Abi al-Dam (d. 642 AH) .
- Sharh Mushkil al-Wasit by Ibn al-Salah (d. 643 AH), dedicated to resolving obscure and difficult passages in the work .
- Muntaha al-Ghayat (also known as Hall Mushkilat al-Wasit) by Muwaffaq al-Din Hamzah ibn Yusuf al-Hamawi (d. 670 AH), addressing objections raised against al-Wasit .
- Al-Tanqih fi Sharh al-Wasit by al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH), which remained incomplete, reaching only the prerequisites of prayer (shara'it al-salah) .
- Al-Matlab al-'Ali fi Sharh Wasit al-Ghazali by Ibn al-Rif'ah (d. 710 AH), an expansive work that he left unfinished at his death and which was completed by al-Hamawi, spanning twenty-six volumes (or sixty volumes according to another report) .
- Al-Bahr al-Muhit fi Sharh al-Wasit by Najm al-Din al-Qamuli (d. 727 AH; alternatively reported as 777 AH), who later condensed it as Jawahir al-Bahr, which was in turn abridged by Siraj al-Din 'Umar ibn Muhammad al-Yamani (d. 887 AH) as Jawahir al-Jawahir .
Commentaries were also written specifically on its section on inheritance law (fara'id), including works by Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Urmawi (d. 650 AH) and Sharaf al-Din Ibrahim ibn Ishaq al-Munnawi (d. 757 AH) . Ibn al-Mulaqqin (d. 804 AH) compiled a dedicated hadith extraction of the narrations found in the book, titled Tadhkirat al-Akhyar bi-ma fi al-Wasit min al-Akhbar .
Abridgments and Editions
In addition to al-Ghazali's own summary in al-Wajiz, al-Wasit was abridged by several subsequent scholars . Among them were Nasir al-Din al-Baydawi (d. 685 AH) in his al-Ghaya al-Quswa fi Dirayat al-Fatwa, Nur al-Din Ibrahim ibn Hibat Allah al-Isna'i (d. 721 AH), Burhan al-Din Ibrahim ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-'Umayri, Badr al-Din Muhammad al-Yamani, and Muhammad ibn Mas'ud al-Mas'udi in al-Muntakhab al-Asghar min al-Wasit .
Al-Wasit fi al-Madhhab has been edited by Ahmad Mahmud Ibrahim and Muhammad Muhammad Tamir and published by Dar al-Salam in Cairo (1417 AH / 1997 CE), with Ibn Abi al-Dam's gloss printed in its margins .
Answer updated