Fatawa al-Ramli
- Author died
- 957 AH
- Editions
- al-Maktabah al-Islāmiyyah
Fatawa al-Ramli (The Legal Rulings of al-Ramli) is a major compendium of legal responsa issued by the Egyptian Shafi'i jurist Shihab al-Din al-Ramli (d. 957 AH / 1550 CE) .
Compilation and Structure
Shihab al-Din al-Ramli served as a primary legal authority in Egypt, receiving legal queries from various regions . The rulings were assembled into a structured work by his son, the prominent jurist Shams al-Din al-Ramli (919–1004 AH / 1513–1596 CE) . Another report noted by Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi states that his student al-Khatib al-Shirbini also collected his fatwas into a single volume .
In the introduction to his compilation, Shams al-Din al-Ramli explains that he gathered the dispersed legal rulings of his father to preserve rare legal principles and obscure subsidiary issues not easily located in extensive treatises . He organized the jurisprudence according to standard topical headings, dividing them successively into:
- Acts of worship (al-‘ibādāt)
- Financial transactions (al-mu‘āmalāt)
- Marriage and family law (al-munākaḥāt)
- Penalties and injuries (al-jināyāt)
Queries that did not pertain directly to specific legal chapters—including questions on the interpretation of Qur'anic verses, hadith, sayings of scholars, legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalām), and Arabic grammar (‘ilm al-naḥw)—were placed together at the end of the work to facilitate reference .
Publication
The work was published in Egypt in 1308 AH (1890–1891 CE), printed in the margins of al-Fatawa al-Kubra al-Fiqhiyyah by Ibn Hajar al-Haytami .
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