Mufti Muhammad Taha Karaan (RA) on Ibn Hajar, Ramli, and Imam Nawawi’s Majmu’

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Question

As Salamu alaikum. Was Ibn Qasim al-Abbadi a student of Ibn Hajar and Ramli? Is there a Majmu‘ style work written by the latter Shafi’is comparing and mentioning the different aqwal of the commentators Minhaj, etc., that is not written in a hashiyah format?

Mufti Taha’s Response

Wa `alaykum as-salam wa rahmatuLlah

As far as I can tell, Ibn Qasim al-`Abbadi was a student of neither Ibn Hajar nor Ramli. Rather, he was their contemporary. He died in either 992 or 994, which is about two decades after Ibn Hajar and one decade before Ramli. His main shaykh is said to be Shihab al-Din al-Burullusi, better known as `Amirah, author of one of the two famous hashiyahs on Mahalli.

Nothing on the scale of Majmu‘ exists for the ikhtilafat of the commentators of the Minhaj. What does exist is works that tabulate their differences without going into tarjih. Of these works I might mention Shaykh Umar al-Qaradaghi’s al-Manhal al-Naddakh fi Ikhtilaf al-Ashyakh, published by Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islamiyyah, and Shaykh Umar Ba Faraj’s Fath al-`Ali bi jam’ al-khilaf bayna Ibn Hajar wa l-Ramli, published by Dar al-Minhaj. The former work’s advantage is that it counts Shirbini in as well; the latter work carries the advantage of explanatory annotations by the editor, Dr Shifa Hitou, daughter of Shaykh Muhammad Hasan Hitou.

None of these works, however, attempt to give a standardised tarjih, for the simple reason that there IS no standard tarjih at this stage of the madhhab. The rule of the madhhab for this stage is that the mufti is either capable of designating tarjih on his own, or incapable. In the former case he should follow his own tarjih whilst in the latter he has an open choice. Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Kurdi speaks hereof where he explains in al-Maslak al-`Adl why he eschewed a standardised tarjih. He writes:

واعلم أني أذكر كثيرا في هذه الحاشية الخلاف الكائن بين الشارح [يعني ابن حجر] و م ر وشيخيهما شيخ الإسلام والخطيب فإنهم مما اتفق على جلالتهم. وعذري في عدم التصريح بالترجيح في كثير من المسائل المختلف فيها بينهم ما تقدم في كلام السيد عمر وغيره، فإن من هو من أهل الترجيح لا يتقيد بما أُرَجِّحُه، ومن لا فرُتْبَتُه التخيير. فأي ثمرة له في الترجيح؟

For this era as well as for the past 700 years, there are very, very few works, if any, that can be compared to Imam Nawawi’s Majmu‘ in terms of providing an understanding not only of the structure of the madhhab, but as importantly, of its spirit. This spirit is often lost in the hawashi, and even at times by the commentators of the Minhaj. Thus, while these works remain important to the madhhab, they have not, and indeed cannot supercede the Majmu‘. As for the barakah of this book, fa haddith wa la haraj.