Sharayi' al-Islam (Taharat) | English | Phase 3

Sharāʾiʿ al-Islām fī masāʾil al-ḥalāl wa l-ḥarām (Arabic: شَرائِع الاسلام فی مَسائِل الحَلال و الحَرام), known as Sharā'i', is a well-known work in Imamiyya Fiqh (jurisprudence), written by Abu l-Qasim Najm al-Din Ja'far b. al-Hasan al-Hudhali, known as al-Muhaqqiq al-Hilli or al-Muhaqiq al-Awwal (d. 676/1277). The book has always been the focus of attentions and one of the textbooks of the Islamic Seminary schools in Fiqh. There are many commentaries on this book. Shara'i' is a comprehensive book of Islamic jurisprudence on all matters, including over 12,000 problems in all areas of Fiqh. The book has been a center of discussions and a textbook in Shiite seminary schools for more than 750 years. This work is usually cited in the subsequent works.

Shara'i' has four main parts as follows:

1. Worships (ʿibādāt), including ten books: ritual cleanness (ṭahāra), prayers (ṣalāt), zakat (an obligatory Islamic tax on certain goods and products), khums (the obligation of paying one fifth of one's annual benefits), ṣawm (fasting), iʿtikāf (the practice of temporary retreat in a mosque for few days), hajj (obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca), ʿumra (non-obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca), jihad, enjoining the good and forbidding the evil (al-amr bi l-maʿrūf wa l-nahy ʿan al-munkar).


2. Contracts (ʿuqūd), including 18 books: transaction (tijara), mortgage (rahn), iflās (bankruptcy or inability to pay one's debts), ḥijr (being ward), guarantee (ḍimān)—including drafts (ḥawāla) and bails (kifāla), compromise (ṣulḥ), partnership (shirka), muḍāraba (a kind of partnership in which one party provides the fund or capital, and other contributes by his work), muzāraʿa (a kind of agricultural partnership in which one party provides lands for farming, and the other works as a farmer), musāqāt (a sort of contract in which one party takes care of the other party's trees and garden, especially by water supply, and then they share the products as agreed upon), deposit (wadīʿa), borrowing and loaning a property (ʿārīya), renting (ijāra), wikāla (agency), waqf (a sort of religious endowment of lands or any property), gift (hiba), sabq and rimāya (overtaking by a horse in a match and shooting in a match in order to prepare for wars), will and testament (waṣīyya), and marriage (nikāḥ).


3. Unilateral obligations (īqāʿāt), including 10 books: divorce (ṭalāq), ẓihār (a sort of divorce in Arabia before Islam that is forbidden by the Quran), īlāʾ (a practice in Arabia that is forbidden in Islam: the husband swears that he will never have intercourse with his wife, without divorcing her, in order to hurt her), liʿān (mutual curse: in some conditions when the husband accuses his wife of adultery and there is no one to testify on this claim, the husband and the wife should curse each other, and then they will be separated forever and can never marry again), ʿitq (emancipation of slaves and bondwomen), tadbīr (the owner wills that his slave be emancipated after his death), mukātaba (a sort of contract between a slave and his owner to the effect that the slave might be emancipated by paying certain amount of money), istīlāʾ (if a bondwoman has a child from her owner, she will be emancipated after her owner's death), iqrār (to acknowledge something not to one's own benefit), juʿāla (a commitment to certain fee in exchange with a work), aymān (oaths), and nadhr (vow).


4. Verdicts (aḥkām) including: hunting (ṣayd) and dhabāḥa (slaughtering or exsanguination), foods and beverages (al-aṭʿima wa l-ashriba), usurpation or expropriation (ghaṣb), shufʿa (preemption, that is, the priority of a person to purchase the shares of his partner if he wants to sell them), restoration of wastelands (iḥyaʾ al-mawāt), luqaṭa (lost property), farāʾiḍ (verdicts concerning heritage), judgeship (qaḍāʾ), testimonies (shahādāt), ḥudūd and taʿzīrāt (certain punishments for violating some Islamic laws), qiṣāṣ (the killing of a murderer at the request of the victim's family), and dīyāt (blood money).

Besides this, al-Muhaqiq al-Hilli strctures each section with first mentioning the obligations (wājib), and then supererogatory (mustaḥab) actions, then detestable ones (makrūh), and finally forbidden (ḥaram) ones.