الدر الأزهر في شرح الفقه الأكبر

al-Durr al-Azhar fi Sharh al-Fiqh al-Akbar

Al-Durr al-Azhar fī Sharḥ al-Fiqh al-Akbar is by the eminent scholar and judge Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Idrīs al-Silhātī, may Allah have mercy on him, who died sometime after 1297 AH. He was one of the distinguished scholars of the Indian subcontinent in the thirteenth century AH and was associated with the town of Sylhet, now situated in Bangladesh, where he served as its chief and judge.

The commentator was a contemporary of the eminent scholar Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān al-Qannawjī (d. 1307 AH), the ruler of Bhopal. The two engaged in scholarly discussions and wrote responses to one another, as our commentator was a Ḥanafī Māturīdī, while the latter was one of the leading figures of the Salafī non-madhhab movement in India.

Since the treatise Al-Fiqh al-Akbar of the Greatest Imam, Abū Ḥanīfah, represented a foundational text of Islamic creed, it was received with acceptance by the scholars, who readily undertook to write commentaries upon it. A great many scholars eventually commented upon the work, with nearly thirty commentaries having been recorded.

The book before us is regarded as one of the later commentaries, and its author therefore benefited from the works of his predecessors and brought together within it material not gathered elsewhere. This commentary is also moderate in length: neither tediously lengthy nor excessively abridged. The commentator makes extensive use of transmitted proofs alongside rational arguments, to the extent that this commentary may be regarded as one of the finest and most accomplished commentaries on Al-Fiqh al-Akbar after that of Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī. Indeed, it surpasses it on many issues, as the commentator responds to al-Qārī and critically examines his views in a scholarly manner.