A four-volume Urdu commentary on the Mukhtasar of Abu'l-Husayn al-Quduri, the first book of Hanafi jurisprudence a student meets. Every ruling is given three supporting hadiths with a full reference, drawn from roughly thirty collections sifted for the purpose, and the positions of Imam al-Shafi'i and Imam Malik are stated alongside.
The Mukhtasar of Abu’l-Husayn Ahmad al-Quduri (362–428 AH) is where a student of Hanafi fiqh begins. It is terse by design, and the objection most often put to the madhhab — that its rulings stand behind no evidence from the Book and the Sunnah — is easiest to make against a text that states rulings without citing any.
Al-Sharh al-Thamiri answers that objection ruling by ruling. Its title page states the method in a single line: in this commentary there are three hadiths for every single ruling.
Writing in his endorsement, Mufti Muhammad Zafeeruddin — Mufti of Darul Uloom Deoband and compiler of its Fatawa — put it this way: no fundamental ruling in Hanafi fiqh lacks a basis in the Book, the Sunnah and the sayings of the Companions, but a person who has read only a little may not have come across the proof; what was needed was for the books already inside the syllabus to be given commentaries that set the evidence beside the ruling. He dated his endorsement 10 March 2003.
The commentary was the work of four years. Around thirty hadith collections were sifted to extract the evidence, and where a ruling could genuinely be traced to no hadith or saying, the commentary says so rather than manufacturing a reference. The positions of Imam al-Shafi’i and Imam Malik are stated with their own evidence from the six canonical collections, so that a reader who wants to weigh the Hanafi and Shafi’i evidence against each other has both to hand.
The four volumes divide the Mukhtasar as follows: Kitab al-Taharah to Kitab al-Hajj; Kitab al-Buyu’ to Kitab al-Musaqat; Kitab al-Nikah to Kitab al-Ashribah; and Kitab al-Sayd wa’l-Dhaba’ih to Kitab al-Fara’id. Published by Maktaba Thamir, Manchester.