"Bashaʼir al-futuhat wa-al-su'ud fi ahkam al-ta'zirat wa-al-hudud" by Yahya b. Abi al-Barakat

Al-Imam, Fatima Muhammad Najib (1985) "Bashaʼir al-futuhat wa-al-su'ud fi ahkam al-ta'zirat wa-al-hudud" by Yahya b. Abi al-Barakat. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis is essentially an examination of the hudud, punishments divinely decreed for specific offences which involve a right both of God and of Man. It sets out from a practical hand-book, Basha'ir al-futuhat wa-al-Su'ud fi Ahkamal-ta 'zirat wa-al-hudud, by Yahya b. Abi al-Barakat al-Nali al-Tlimsani al-Ghammari, written for a Moroccan ruler of the 8/14 century, an edition of which forms the first section, followed by a resume of the contents. Even in a text dealing with a single school of Islamic law, the Maliki madhdhab, it is remarkable how many different opinions are given as to what the law actually is. This emerges even more strikingly in the most extensive section of the thesis, in which the attitudes of the various madhahib to the hudud are compared. The hudud, together with the allied, but formally separate, matters of killing and wounding, which are often treated in conjunction with them, may be regarded as the core of the Sharia, or at any rate of that part of it that deals with roughly what we should consider the criminal law; it is surprising, therefore, that, in spite of the fundamental measure of consensus, there should still be the degree of dispute that is evident, not only between the madhahib but also between individual fuqaha' of the same madhhab, as to what the divine prescriptions concerning these offences and their punishments are, and, in some cases, as to which offences are covered by the hudud. In particular, there seems, in some quarters, to be a certain confusion between hudud and qisas, presumably because both are of divine origin. All in all, one is struck not only by the pains taken in the Shari a to ensure that no injustice is perpetrated, but also by the degree of uncertainty that appears to obtain in what is often thought of as being a code of great rigidity and severity.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Religious history, Middle Eastern literature, Islamic studies
• Date of Award: 1985
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1985-76548
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 19 Nov 2019 14:10
• Last Modified: 19 Nov 2019 14:10
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/76548