Method

This site is a record, not a thesis. It presents the positions of scholars who are treated as authorities alongside the Quran, as recorded in the works their own traditions consider reliable, with the specific volume and page of that work. Every entry can be verified by the reader alone.

How an entry is verified

Every entry rests on a four-link chain: the Shamela page identifier, the volume and page number of the printed edition, a scanned image of that page, and the live page link on Shamela. If one link is missing the entry is not published. Digital text alone does not count as evidence; as Shamela’s own catalogue notes warn, some editions were corrupted when they were re-typeset. The scan is therefore mandatory.

Editions, page offsets and the limits of digital text

A volume and page number means nothing until the edition is named. Between two printings of the same work, page numbers shift — sometimes by a constant, sometimes not. The offsets measured for the entries published on this site are these: in al-Umm, between the Dar al-Fikr typesetting and the Dar al-Maʿrifa scan, −2, −12 and −8 pages (in one book, in different volumes, by different amounts); in the al-Saʿada facsimile of al-Mabsut, +2; in the scans of al-Mughni (Dar Alam al-Kutub), Kashshaf al-Qinaʿ (Ministry of Justice), al-Mudawwana (al-ʿIlmiyya) and Sahih al-Bukhari (the Sultaniyya), no offset; in the Dar Ihya al-Turath printing of al-Muwatta, +30 between the PDF index and the printed page (two parts in one file). The offset for each entry is stated again in that entry’s scan note. There is also the page break: a hadith or a question may begin on one page and end on the next, and the quoted sentence may fall on the far side of the break. Where that happens the page field gives Shamela’s page and the scan note gives the printed page the quote actually occupies.

The limit of the digital text is heavier than this: Shamela’s text can drop words, and may not carry the whole of a page at all. Three instances among the published entries: at Kashshaf al-Qinaʿ 12/70 the printed copy reads “if she has reached nine years” while the digital text omits the word “years”; at al-Umm vol. 7 the phrase “for they are fathers” has fallen out; and at al-Muwatta 2/736 the takhrij apparatus the printed page carries — including the editor’s note that the report is mursal in all the transmissions of the Muwatta — is absent from the digital text entirely. The evidence is therefore the scan, not the digital text.

One further rule follows: entry fields are not corrected against the printed copy. The Arabic text and the quote on this site are left as Shamela has them — because the “show the quote at the source” link on each page works by searching for those very words on the live Shamela page, and a corrected text highlights nothing. Every difference between the printed copy and the digital text is written into that entry’s scan note.

What we include and what we leave out

Included: the text of the work itself, the scholar’s own wording, attributions the tradition accepts as sound. Left out: weak or disputed attributions, editors’ footnotes, second-hand reports, sentences cut from their context. Each entry also shows the relevant part of the preceding and following pages.

Nuance is not hidden

If a scholar says “disliked but not annulled”, the entry says exactly that, not “permitted”. The level of the position is labelled too: fatwa, ijtihad, transmitted report or personal view. The objection “he is only transmitting a report” is answered before it is raised.

The tradition speaks in its own voice

Every entry includes how the tradition defends the position, in its strongest form. The positions of the other schools on the same question are shown side by side. Whether the position is still given as a fatwa today is shown with links to contemporary fatwa sites; if it is not, that is stated as well.

The Quran column

Next to every entry stand the relevant verses. In this section the only source is the Quran itself; what a verse says is labelled by level: stated explicitly, implied, compatible, or silent. Neither the norms of the tradition nor those of the modern world decide the reading.

Commentary is separate

Editorial commentary sits at the bottom of each page in its own section. The record can be read without it. A reader who thinks the commentary is wrong can still confirm that the record is accurate.

What this site is not against

This site is not against Islam. It is against authority placed beside the Quran and treated as its equal. The aim is not to belittle scholars but to show where following a human being without question leads, and to invite the reader to the Book itself.