Islamic Law [IO Islamic 976]

Law: Ḥanafite.

This manuscript is now IO Islamic 976 in the India Office collections.

[metadata: Otto Loth, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, (volume 1), no. 206 here with further notations and hyperlinks].

206.

976. Size 141/4 in. by 9 in.; foll. 596. Twenty-nine lines in a page.

The first half of a Ḥanafite law-book, styled المحیط, the same as the محیط سرخسی of Ḥ. Kh. v. 433, ۱۱۵۶۳, or one of the editions of the work of RAḌÎ AL-DÎN SARAKHSÎ (Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, d. A.H. 544). See also Ḥ. Kh. v. 431 sq., and Flügel, Class. Hanef. Rechtsgel. 317.

The authenticity of this work has been questioned from the very beginning, and it has also been confounded with the المحیط البرهانی (Ḥ. Kh. v. 431)- the latter certainly without reason, as both works are very clearly distinguished in Ḥ. Kh. l.c. The identity of the present text with the محیط سرخسی is proved from the beginning and extracts of the preface as given by Ḥ. Kh. Less certainly may be attributed to his statement, that this is the larger edition in ten vols. The present text, at least, is complete in two vols. No other copy of the work is known to exist.

The present volume extends from کتاب الطهارة to کتاب الاصطیادات. The order of arrangement differs much from that usually followed in Ḥanafite law-books.

Plainly, but not carefully, written in different hands. There is a colophon on fol. 305, according to which the preceding portion was finished at the beginning of Sha’bân, 24 Julûs. Coloured lines round the pages. Foll. 560v. and 561r. have been left blank by mistake.

[Johnson.]