Thamarat al-Fiqh

Thamarat al-Fiqh is a book of Hanafi rulings written to be counted rather than read through. Every subject is broken into numbered lists: the four obligations of wudu, the eighteen sunnahs of it, the fourteen desirable acts, the six disliked ones, the twelve things that break it and the fourteen that do not. The point is that an imam can look at one page before he is asked, and a child can learn the list on their fingers.

Each chapter is arranged the same way: the obligations, the necessities, the sunnahs, the desirable acts, the things that nullify, and the disliked acts. Every item is numbered.

The two parts take two different books as their source, and each says so on its own title page.

• Part one carries the 1025 rulings of the whole of Nur al-Idah, from purification through to hajj. Its title page adds that reading it makes Nur al-Idah easy, and al-Quduri and al-Hidayah easy after it.
• Part two carries the important rulings of the whole of al-Quduri.

Those are the two matns the author has commented on at length elsewhere: Thamarat un-Najah is his commentary on Nur al-Idah and al-Sharh al-Thamiri is his commentary on al-Quduri, as Athmar al-Hidayah is on al-Hidayah. This book is the short way into all three.

The book was written at the repeated request of Mawlānā Ilyās Desai, khatib at Masjid Maʿhad al-Shuhadāʾ in Preston, who asked while the author was at work on his commentary on al-Hidayah for a fiqh book small enough for younger children to memorise and complete enough to reach hajj, and it is dedicated to him.

First published in October 2010 by Maktaba Thamir, Manchester, printed in Delhi.