Ujalat al-Muhtaj ila Tawjih al-Minhaj
- Author died
- 804 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kitāb
Ujalat al-Muhtaj ila Tawjih al-Minhaj is a Shafi'i legal commentary authored by Ibn al-Mulaqqin (723–804 AH / 1323–1401 CE) on the foundational legal manual Minhaj al-Talibin by al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH / 1277 CE) .
Composition and Purpose
Ibn al-Mulaqqin completed Ujalat al-Muhtaj in 773 AH (1371/1372 CE) after finishing his expansive, multi-volume commentary on the Minhaj, titled 'Umdat al-Muhtaj ila Sharh al-Minhaj . In the work's introduction, he stated that he intended to abridge and select core material from al-'Umda, while adding essential explanations needed by beginner students . He composed it as a concise clarification (tawdih) designed to be accessible for readers to consult, easy for instructors to teach, and an entry-level stepping stone for jurists before engaging with longer, detailed works .
Method and Scope
The book explains the phrasing of Minhaj al-Talibin and provides textual justification for its legal rulings from the Quran and the Sunnah . Ibn al-Mulaqqin corroborates these rulings with the positions of scholars within the Shafi'i school and occasionally compares them with the viewpoints of other legal schools to clarify the legal reasoning . Methodologically, he generally restricted himself to the legal problems directly raised in the text of the Minhaj, only alerting the reader when he considered a point in the text to have diverged from the correct position .
Reception and Influence
Ujalat al-Muhtaj came to be counted among the notable commentaries on al-Nawawi's manual . The later Shafi'i scholar Badr al-Din Ibn Qadi Shuhbah (798–874 AH) modeled his own commentary, Bidayat al-Muhtaj fi Sharh al-Minhaj, on the scale of al-'Ujala . In his preface, Ibn Qadi Shuhbah stated that he intended to produce an abridgment matching the size of Ibn al-Mulaqqin's al-'Ujala, while aiming to correct what he viewed as errors in it and replacing extraneous subsidiary branches (furu') with discussions directly pertinent to the explicit text and implicit meanings of the Minhaj .
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscripts of Ujalat al-Muhtaj are preserved across several global collections, including the Princeton University Library, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the British Museum in London, the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus, and madrasa collections in Mosul . The text was edited by Hisham ibn 'Abd al-Karim al-Badrani and published by Dar al-Kitab in Irbid, Jordan (1421 AH / 2001 CE), based on manuscript copies preserved in the Haj Zakar and Hajiyyat madrasas in Mosul .
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