Sharh al-Mukhtasar al-Kabir lil-Abhari
- Author died
- 375 AH
- Editions
- Jam‘īyat Dār al-Birr
Sharh al-Mukhtasar al-Kabir (Commentary on the Major Abridgment) is a legal commentary on Ibn Abd al-Hakam's foundational Maliki compendium, authored by the Baghdadi Maliki jurist Abu Bakr al-Abhari (d. 375 AH / 985 CE) .
Composition and Scope
Al-Abhari composed the commentary in 345 AH (956 CE), though another account dates its composition to 340 AH (951 CE), eleven years after he wrote his commentary on Ibn Abd al-Hakam's al-Mukhtasar al-Saghir in 329 AH . The base text, al-Mukhtasar al-Kabir, was compiled by Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Hakam (d. 214 AH) as an abridgment of legal transmissions from Ashhab . Along with al-Mukhtasar al-Saghir, it served as the core curriculum and primary reference for the Iraqi school of Maliki jurisprudence, with both treatises encompassing around twenty thousand legal issues (masail) .
Method
Al-Abhari's approach was to cite each legal case from Ibn Abd al-Hakam's original text verbatim before providing an extensive analytical commentary . His explanations frequently begin with the explanatory formula: "He said that only because..." (Innamā qāla dhālika...) . Throughout the work, al-Abhari strictly adhered to the structure and arrangement of the original text, without rearranging or altering the sequence of topics .
Manuscripts and Publication
Several manuscript volumes of the work have survived, specifically parts 3, 4, 7, and 12, preserved in the al-Azhar Library in Cairo under manuscript number 1655 and in the Goethe University Library in Germany under manuscript number 1143 . A portion of the work, Kitab al-Jami', was edited by Hamid Lahmar and published by Dar al-Gharb al-Islami in 2004 .
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