Thamarat al-Awzan is an Urdu study of the weights and measures that the rulings of Islamic law are stated in, each set out in detail and converted into modern English ones. It covers the mithqal, qirat, dinar and dirham, the ratl, sa' and wasq, the shar'i and English mile, and the acre, bigha, jarib, katha and dhur.
Almost every ruling that turns on an amount is stated in a unit nobody now weighs anything in. Zakāt has its niṣāb in dirhams and mithqāls, the fidya of a fast in ṣāʿs, a journey in sharʿī miles, and a piece of land in bighas and kathas. Thamarat al-Awzan gathers them into one place and gives each one in grams, kilograms and English miles, so that a ruling can be acted on rather than merely quoted.
The book’s own list of what it does runs to twelve points. It writes out the mithqāl, the qīrāṭ, the dīnār and the dirham; the raṭl, the ṣāʿ and the wasq; the sharʿī mile beside the English one; and the land measures (the acre, the bigha, the jarīb, the katha and the dhur), together with the way to measure a round piece of ground. The measures used in Britain are given. The old units and the new ones are set out side by side rather than in separate chapters, which is the whole point of the book, and the values are taken from al-Durr al-Mukhtār and from published modern tables.
Old weights and modern ones are also given alongside each other in Thamarat un-Najah, which is where this book began.
First published in April 2018 by Maktaba Thamir, Manchester.