Fath al-Muin bi Sharh Qurrat al-Ayn bi Muhimmat al-Din
- Author died
- 987 AH
- Editions
- Dār Ibn Ḥazm
Fath al-Muin bi Sharh Qurrat al-Ayn bi Muhimmat al-Din (The Victory of the Helper in Explaining the Joy of the Eye with the Essentials of Religion) is a late Shafi'i legal commentary authored by Zayn al-Din al-Ma'bari (d. 987 AH / 1579 CE) on his own primer, Qurrat al-Ayn bi Muhimmat al-Din .
Composition and Purpose
The author, Zayn al-Din ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Zayn al-Din ibn Ali al-Ma'bari al-Malibari al-Fannani, was a Shafi'i jurist from Malabar . He composed the base primer Qurrat al-Ayn bi Muhimmat al-Din to outline the core practical rulings of the Shafi'i school, and subsequently wrote Fath al-Muin to unpack its concise phrasing, elucidate its legal objectives, and provide essential details and supplementary legal benefits . Al-Ma'bari completed the composition of the commentary in 982 AH (1574 CE) .
Structure and Scope
The work is organized systematically according to the traditional divisions of Islamic substantive law (furu'), spanning the following major areas:
- Acts of Worship (ʿIbadat): Treating fundamental devotional duties, beginning with ritual purity and prayer (salat), followed by congregational prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage .
- Commercial Transactions (Muʿamalat): Commencing with sales (al-buyu'), trade contracts, and related economic exchanges .
- Family Law (Munakahat): Covering marriage (nikah), divorce (talaq), and associated family provisions .
- Penal Law and Litigation (Jinayat wa-Mukhasamat): Covering torts, criminal injuries, penalties, and judicial procedures .
Supercommentaries and Reception
Fath al-Muin became one of the standard intermediate-to-advanced textbooks of Shafi'i jurisprudence, widely studied across the Indian Ocean rim, the Hijaz, and Southeast Asia. Its prominence led scholars to write extensive marginal commentaries (hawashi) and supercommentaries on it:
- I'anat al-Talibin ala Hall Alfaz Fath al-Muin, an extensive four-volume supercommentary composed by Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad Shatta al-Dimyati (al-Bakri) and completed in 1300 AH . Al-Dimyati wrote his glosses after teaching Fath al-Muin to students facing the Kaaba at the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, drawing extensively on late Shafi'i reference works such as Tuhfat al-Muhtaj, Fath al-Jawad, and Nihayat al-Muhtaj .
- Tarshih al-Mustafidin, a supercommentary on Fath al-Muin written by the nineteenth-century scholar Alawi ibn Ahmad al-Saqqaf .
- Early annotations (taqyidat) by Shaykh Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sa'id Ibn Basibrin, which were frequently printed in the margins of nineteenth-century editions .
The original base primer, Qurrat al-Ayn, also received a separate independent commentary titled Nihayat al-Zayn fi Irshad al-Mubtadi'in by the Indonesian scholar Muhammad Nawawi al-Jawi .
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscripts of Fath al-Muin are preserved in several international repositories, including collections in Rampur, Calcutta, Cairo, Mecca, Doha, Sanaa, and Manama .
The work has been printed in numerous editions in the Middle East and South Asia, including editions issued at Bulaq (1287, 1304, and 1309 AH), the Wadi al-Nil Press (1297 AH), al-Matba'a al-Khayriyya (1306 AH), and al-Matba'a al-Maymaniyya (1304 and 1306 AH), as well as multi-volume modern editions accompanied by its major commentaries .
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