Sharh al-Muqni li al-Baha al-Maqdisi
- Author died
- 624 AH
- Editions
- Dar Raka'iz lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi'
Sharh al-Muqni li al-Baha al-Maqdisi (Commentary on al-Muqni') is a Hanbali legal commentary composed by Baha al-Din al-Maqdisi (d. 624 AH / 1227 CE) on the intermediate jurisprudence manual al-Muqni by his teacher Muwaffaq al-Din Ibn Qudamah (d. 620 AH / 1223 CE).
Composition and Sources
Baha al-Din Abd al-Rahman ibn Ibrahim al-Maqdisi was among the closest senior students of Muwaffaq al-Din Ibn Qudamah and was the earliest scholar to write a commentary on al-Muqni. He composed the work after Ibn Qudamah's death, as indicated by his frequent invocations of mercy upon his teacher throughout the text.
In constructing his explanation, al-Maqdisi drew primarily on Ibn Qudamah's two major legal treatises, al-Mughni and al-Kafi, blending material from both to elucidate the concise text of al-Muqni. The commentary also preserves an early version of the text of al-Muqni prior to textual emendations that were later introduced into other transmission paths of the manual.
Method and Structure
The work follows the standard organizational sequence of Hanbali jurisprudence books, arranging legal topics across classical chapters of ritual purity, prayer, and transactions. Al-Maqdisi clearly distinguished individual points of law by opening each passage with headings such as mas'alah (legal issue), far' (derivative case), or fasl (sub-section).
Methodologically, the commentary places particular emphasis on textual evidence from the Quran and the Sunnah, at times omitting phrases found in al-Muqni if they lacked direct scriptural foundation. Beyond transmitting earlier rulings, al-Maqdisi articulated his own legal reasoning, putting forward more than one hundred independent legal preferences (tarjihat) across the discussed issues.
Reception and Preservation
The fifteenth-century Hanbali jurist Ahmad ibn Nasr Allah al-Baghdadi praised the work as an exceptionally verified commentary (sharh muhaqqiq) that surpassed al-Maqdisi's other famous commentary, al-Uddah Sharh al-Umdah, in depth and substance; he noted that he possessed it in three large volumes and cited it in his marginalia on al-Furu.
Despite its high scholarly esteem, the commentary had limited manuscript circulation among later Hanbali scholars and remained largely inaccessible to major late authorities, including the authors of al-Furu and al-Insaf fi Ma'rifat al-Raji. An incomplete manuscript spanning 295 folios—beginning within the chapter of purification (al-Taharah) on waters and concluding during the section on suretyship (al-kafalah) within the book of commercial transactions—survives in Kuwait from the personal library of the scholar Abd Allah ibn Khalaf al-Dahyan.
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