Linked: Ibn ‘Ashur’s Treatise on Maqasid
April 19, 2007Ibn ‘Ashur, who was arguably one of the greatest scholars of the past century, followed in the tradition of al-Shatibi and al-’Izz with his book Maqasid al-Shari’ah.
Maqasid al-Shari’ah, a concise and intriguing work in its original Arabic, it is now available in the English from IIIT. For a review of the translation look here. Hat tip to Dr. Mahmoud El-Gamal who posts on reinvestigating legal objectives. He links to this article by Dr. Robert Crane, which mentions a bit about Ibn ‘Ashur and the Maqasid. The author cites the edition of al-Maqasid in Arabic saying:
“…His major work, first published in Arabic in 1946, was translated and annotated for a modern reader with incredibly thorough footnotes by Mohamed el-Tahir el-Mesawi under the title Ibn Ashur, Treatise on Maqasid al Shari’ah…”
While al-Mesawi’s edition is probably one of the better prints of the book, the footnotes are hardly “incredibly thorough”. There is however a another edition of this book which fits this description; the one annotated by Shaykh Muhammad al-Habib Bin Khujah and printed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Qatar.
Bin Khujah (to my knowledge one of the last living students of Ibn ‘Ashur) has done an impeccable job of presenting the Maqasid of his teacher; servicing his knowledge, memory, and legacy.
This edition is printed in three volumes:
- Volume one: The biography of al-Imam al-Akbar Muhammad Al-Tahir Ibn ‘Ashur
- Volume two: Between the sciences of Usul al-Fiqh and Maqasid al-Shariah (Bayna ‘ilmay Usul al-Fiqh wa Maqasid al-Shariah); an introductory work on the relationship between these two sciences by Bin Khujah himself.
- Volume three: The Maqasid al-Shariah of Ibn ‘Ashur
The third volume of this set services the knowledge of the Imam; in doing so Bin Khujah depends on two of the earliest prints of this work, as well as the personal notes of Ibn ‘Ashur himself. He compares the two prints (in that the original manuscripts were not available to him), adds the author’s personal notes to the marginalia, as well as adding his own notes to issues he sees pertinent.
One of the major contributions that this edition make is the attribution of the texts referenced by Ibn Ashur back to their sources, including al-Shatibi’s al-Muwafaqat, al-Qurtubi’s Jami’, Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ahkam, as well as various works in fiqh and Usul. Ibn Ashur’s other seminal works are referenced as well, such as his tafsir al-Tahrir wa ‘l-Tanwir and his “Usul ‘l-Nizam ‘l-Ijtima’i fi ‘l-Islam”. At times Bin Khujah will even relate verbatim some of these referenced texts, in an attempt to give the reader more context of the original. This is in addition to explaining some of the terminology found in the book that might be lost on the non-specialist.
For those concerned with the area of business, finance, and economics, one of the latter portions of the book would be of interest “Maqasid ‘l-Tasarrufat ‘l-Maliyyah”. To give you an idea of the importance of this chapter he says:
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the most important objective here is preservation and economization of this nation’s wealth. This nation’s wealth, whence viewed as a whole, is preserved through regulating the manners by which it is managed generally, in addition to the manners in which individual wealth is preserved and managed. Preservation of the whole depends on preservation of its components; the majority of Islamic legal principles dealing with wealth relate directly to the preservation of individual wealth, which in turn preserves the wealth of the nation; there being a direct correlation between the benefit of personal wealth and the benefit of public wealth in relation to the prosperity of the nation.
This section of the book is deserving of further analysis by Muslim economists, in that (in the eyes of this non-specialist) it presents a far better survey of Islamic views related to economics than what has been presented so far.
In conclusion this is probably the best print of Maqasid al-Shari’ah so far, and an indispensible one at that in light of the value added by Bin Khujah’s service to the book.
