Sharh al-Fusul al-Muhimma fi Mawarith al-Umma
- Author died
- 912 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-ʻĀṣimah
Sharh al-Fusul al-Muhimma fi Mawarith al-Umma (Commentary on the Important Chapters on the Inheritance of the Community) is a legal treatise on Islamic inheritance law (fara'id) and estate arithmetic by the Egyptian Shafi'i astronomer and jurist Sibt al-Mardini (826–912 AH / 1423–1506 CE) . It is a commentary on al-Fusul al-Muhimma fi Mawarith al-Umma, an inheritance handbook written by the mathematician and jurist Ibn al-Ha'im (753/756–815 AH / 1352/1355–1412 CE) .
Background and Attribution
The base text was composed by Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad, known as Ibn al-Ha'im, who did not explicitly title it in his introduction; manuscripts and bibliographers variously refer to it as al-Fusul fi al-Fara'id, Kitab Fusul al-Shaykh Shihab al-Din Ibn al-Ha'im fi al-Fara'id wa-l-Hisab, or al-Fusul al-Muhimma fi Mawarith al-Umma . In the opening of his commentary, Sibt al-Mardini describes his work as a concise gloss (ta'liq mukhtasar) intended to explain Ibn al-Ha'im's treatise .
The work is attributed to Sibt al-Mardini across surviving manuscript copies as well as biographical and bibliographical dictionaries, including al-Sakhawi's al-Daw' al-Lami', al-Shawkani's al-Badr al-Tali', Hajji Khalifa's Kashf al-Zunun, and Isma'il Pasha's Hadiyyat al-'Arifin . In certain manuscript catalogues, the commentary is recorded under variants such as Sharh al-Fusul fi al-Fara'id, Tashrih al-Fusul al-Muhimma, or al-Ghawamid fi Sharh Fusul al-Fara'id .
Legal and Doctrinal Contents
The commentary covers the classical doctrines of inheritance jurisprudence and estate calculation according to the Shafi'i school, elucidating the legal maxims, distribution quotas, and mathematical procedures established in Ibn al-Ha'im's text. Throughout the work, Sibt al-Mardini articulates several specific juristic preferences (ikhtiyarat):
- Subject Matter of Inheritance Science: He maintains that the subject matter of the science of inheritance is estates (al-tarikat), rather than pure numbers (al-'adad) .
- The Public Treasury: He adopts the view that the public treasury (bayt al-mal) does not inherit if its administration is irregular or unjust .
- Prescribed Shares: He classifies one-third of the remainder (thuluth al-baqi) as a distinct seventh prescribed share (fard) .
- Special Cases: In the joint-inheritance case (al-mushtaraka), he supports sharing the estate portion between full brothers and uterine brothers .
- Return of Residue (Radd): He rules against returning the surplus residue of an estate to either spouse .
- Impediments to Inheritance: He restricts the impediments to inheritance (mawāniʿ al-irth) to six .
- Interfaith Inheritance: He holds that there is no mutual inheritance between a protected non-Muslim subject (dhimmi) and a hostile non-Muslim (harbi), and treats the estate of an apostate as public revenue (fay') .
- Grandmothers: He asserts that a paternal grandmother does not exclude a maternal grandmother from inheritance .
Reception and Manuscripts
Ibn al-Ha'im's al-Fusul attracted multiple commentaries; alongside Sibt al-Mardini's work, Zakariyya al-Ansari (d. 925 AH / 1519 CE; also reported d. 926 AH) authored two commentaries—a major work titled Manhaj al-Wusul ila Tahrir al-Fusul and an abridged commentary titled Ghayat al-Wusul ila 'Ilm al-Fusul—and Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Kamal Abu al-Hana al-Qudsi (b. 822 AH) composed a separate commentary . Later jurists, such as Ibn Abidin, frequently cited Sibt al-Mardini and Zakariyya al-Ansari together as standard authorities and commentators on Ibn al-Ha'im's text .
Manuscripts of Sibt al-Mardini's commentary are preserved across several international collections, including the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (fols. 61b–137a), the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the King Abdulaziz Library in Medina (MS 1559) . The text was edited and published by Abd al-Muhsin ibn Muhammad al-Munif based on five complete manuscript copies as a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Higher Judicial Institute in Riyadh .
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