Mustalahat fi Kutub al-Aqaid
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- Editions
- Dār Ibn Khuzaymah
Mustalahat fi Kutub al-Aqaid (Terminology in Books of Creed) is a specialized treatise on Islamic theological vocabulary compiled by the Saudi scholar Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Hamad .
Background and Composition
The idea for the work originated from al-Hamad's experience teaching creed courses to seventh- and eighth-level students in the College of Sharia and Usul al-Din at Qassim University (formerly affiliated with Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University) . Students frequently struggled to comprehend technical terms encountered in the curriculum's core textbook, al-Risalah al-Tadmuriyyah by Ibn Taymiyyah . Al-Hamad subsequently gathered these terminologies from annotations he had written in the margins of books he taught or read, material dispersed throughout his own published writings, and additional expressions requiring clarification .
Scope and Structure
The book is not intended to be a comprehensive or exhaustive dictionary; rather, it is a curated collection of theological and doctrinal terms aimed at resolving difficult and ambiguous meanings . Although centered on creed, the terms discussed also appear across other disciplines, including Quranic exegesis (tafsir), legal theory (usul al-fiqh), jurisprudence (fiqh), hadith studies, Arabic linguistics, and logic .
In organizing the work, the author grouped related concepts together and categorized the terms according to their degree of complexity into four main types:
- Inherently clear terms that benefit from further analytical elaboration.
- Ambiguous and problematic terms requiring clarification and disambiguation.
- Obscure terms situated within specific textual contexts whose surrounding meaning depends on defining them.
- Terms that are intelligible in isolation but become conceptually intricate when embedded in particular contexts .
The level of analysis varies between terms, with some receiving extensive exposition and others concise explanations . The book concludes with both an alphabetical index and a general subject index to assist readers in locating entries .
Publication
The book was published in a single volume under the full title Mustalahat fi Kutub al-Aqaid: Dirasah wa-Tahlil by Dar Ibn Khuzaymah, with its first edition issued in 1427 AH (2006 CE) .
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