Ihkam al-Nazar fi Ahkam al-Nazar bi-Hassat al-Basar
- Author died
- 628 AH
- Editions
- Dar Al-Qalam
Ihkam al-Nazar fi Ahkam al-Nazar bi-Hassat al-Basar (The Precision of Insight into the Legal Rulings on Looking with the Sense of Sight) is a legal and hadith treatise by the Maghrebi scholar and hadith critic Ibn al-Qattan (562–628 AH / 1167–1231 CE), dedicated to the jurisprudence and prophetic traditions governing visual modesty and the sight in Islamic law .
Background and Title
Ibn al-Qattan authored the work in response to questions posed to him concerning the legal rulings on looking through the physical sense of sight . Rather than composing an elaborate rhetorical introduction, he began directly with a brief praise of God and blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ before outlining the book's plan .
According to Ibn Abd al-Malik al-Marrakushi in al-Dhayl wa-l-Takmila, the specific title Kitab al-Nazar fi Ahkam al-Nazar bi-Hassat al-Basar was given to the work by the author's son, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan, and it is recorded under this wording in the Escorial manuscript . Ibn Abd al-Malik described the work physically as a medium-sized volume .
Structure and Contents
The book is structured into eight thematic chapters :
- The legal prescribe of lowering the gaze (fi mashru'iyyat ghad al-basar).
- Clarification of what is permissible to display to an onlooker and what is not (fi bayan ma yajuz ibda'uhu li-l-nazir wa-ma la yajuz).
- Men looking at men (fi nazar al-rijal ila al-rijal).
- Women looking at women (fi nazar al-nisa' ila al-nisa').
- Men looking at women (fi nazar al-rijal ila al-nisa').
- Women looking at men (fi nazar al-nisa' ila al-rijal).
- Necessities that permit looking at what is otherwise prohibited without necessity (fi al-darurat al-mubiha ila ma la yajuz al-nazar ilayhi bi-ghayr darura).
- Clarification of the legitimacy of specific sayings and deeds upon seeing certain visual objects and phenomena (fi bayan mashru'iyyat aqwal wa-af'al 'inda ru'yat ba'd al-mar'iyyat) .
Within these chapters, Ibn al-Qattan categorizes acts of looking into three broader moral and legal statuses: acts of obedience, acts of disobedience, and pardoned occurrences—such as accidental or sudden glances (nazar al-faj'ah)—concluding that illicit glances constitute minor sins expiated through good deeds .
Methodology
Ibn al-Qattan structured the sub-issues (masa'il) in every chapter after the first into three categories: issues where the legal ruling is definitive (maqtu' biha), issues where the ruling is based on preponderance of probability (maznuna), and issues subject to legal hesitation and varying possibilities (mutaraddad fiha) .
In handling hadiths, Ibn al-Qattan cited authentic narrations (al-ahadith al-sihah) without their full chains of transmission; for traditions subject to scholarly disagreement or doubt, he cited their chains and analyzed their condition; and for weak reports within the chapter's main scope, he quoted the text while locating the specific defect in the chain . In total, he evaluated approximately 270 hadiths across the treatise, categorizing them according to their transmission status without sectarian rigidity .
Abridgments and Editions
Due to the length of Ibn al-Qattan's hadith critiques and chain analyses, Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Qasim al-Qabbab (d. 779 AH) abridged the work under the title Ikhtisar Ahkam al-Nazar . Al-Qabbab removed the extended isnad critiques and textual evidence, preserving only the substantive legal rulings to make them easily accessible to non-specialists .
The complete text of Ihkam al-Nazar has been edited by Idris al-Samadi and reviewed by Faruq Hamadah, appearing in print editions published by Dar Ihya' al-Ulum / al-Sharika al-Jadida and Dar al-Qalam .
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