Mawsuat al-Fiqh al-Islami aw Maajim al-Qawanin al-Fiqhiyya
- Author died
- 1419 AH
- Editions
- al-Jāmi‘ah al-Islāmīyah
Mawsuat al-Fiqh al-Islami aw Maajim al-Qawanin al-Fiqhiyya (Encyclopedias of Islamic Jurisprudence or Lexicons of Jurisprudential Laws) is a methodological study on the codification and encyclopedic indexing of Islamic law by the Moroccan scholar Muhammad al-Muntasir al-Kattani (d. 1419 AH / 1998 CE) .
Purpose and Scope
Al-Kattani wrote the treatise as an advisor to the Muslim World League and former instructor at the Islamic University of Madinah, addressing the modern need to codify and organize Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) across all schools of thought from the era of the Companions through the first five Islamic centuries . He argued that legal codification was an indigenous Islamic practice pioneered by Andalusian scholars before being adopted in Europe .
The work advocates structuring Islamic legal material into alphabetical lexicons (ma'ajim) rather than traditional subject-based chapters . Al-Kattani asserted that this format makes classical legal rulings accessible to contemporary jurists, students, and legislators, while counteracting the dominance of imported legal codes, such as the Napoleonic Code, and refuting Orientalist claims that Islamic jurisprudence is primitive or derived from Roman and Persian law .
Historical Precedents
Al-Kattani identifies two early Andalusian scholars as the principal pioneers of comprehensive legal codification:
- Ibn Hazm (384–456 AH), who authored Kitab al-Khisal al-Jami'a and his comprehensive work al-Iysal—the latter recorded by al-Dhahabi as spanning twenty-five thousand folios and preserved in condensed form in the eleven-volume al-Muhalla, comprising 2,308 legal issues .
- Abu al-Qasim Ibn Juzayy (693–741 AH), who codified the comparative rulings of the four Sunni legal schools in his work al-Qawanin al-Fiqhiyya .
Method and Encyclopedic Projects
Drawing upon his personal involvement in modern institutional codification projects, al-Kattani details the initiative launched by the Faculty of Sharia at the University of Damascus, where a presidential decree had established a committee that included scholars such as Mustafa al-Siba'i and Mustafa al-Zarqa . Al-Kattani joined the committee after arriving from Morocco and oversaw the indexing of Ibn Hazm's legal rulings from al-Muhalla .
In this framework, al-Kattani compiled Mu'jam Fiqh Ibn Hazm al-Zahiri, creating alphabetical entries for subjects scattered across traditional volumes, including modern legal concerns such as abortion (ijhad) and autopsy (tashrih) . He also supervised the compilation of three volumes of commercial transactions hadiths (ahadith al-buyu') for the Damascus project before political unrest prompted his relocation to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait .
Reception
The methodology demonstrated in al-Kattani's lexicon of Zahiri jurisprudence was commended by contemporaries; the committee chairman Mustafa al-Zarqa noted its utility as a compact legal encyclopedia, and the legal scholar Jamal al-Din 'Atiyya endorsed it in his book Turath al-Fiqh al-Islami as a model for indexing authoritative works of Islamic law .
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