Azhar & Dardir’s Aqrab al-Masalik
It is wonderful to meet learners in English speaking countries who are seriously studying fiqh, specifically the Maliki madhab. A question several people asked me is why does the Azhar give preference to Dardir’s text: Aqrab al-Masalik to Khalil?
I want to be deliberately careful with my words; I don’t speak on behalf of Al-Azhar. I can share my experience there with teachers and my own ideas, deeply ingrained in my heart and mind and rooted in my experince. I studied the Khalil fir six years and the Aqrab for four years, reading the latter to different teachers.
In general, it is not about preference but about organization and coordination. I would not say it is preferred over Khalil, but rather a completion of the work; an indispensable tool to appreciate and benefit from it, just as Amir’s Majmou’, removed from the Azhar curriculum in 1924, completes the Aqrab and Khalil.
In short: Dardir’s work compliments its original: Khalil’s summary in several aspects:
1. Providing legal definitions for all chapters of jurisprudence, which he mentioned in his explanation as opposed to Khalil, who did not focus on definitions.
2. Determining the preferred and mashur opinions in most issues where Khalil mentioned “difference” in terms of mashur, or “hesitation” due to the later scholars’ hesitation in transmission or the absence of an explicit statement by earlier scholars, or said “two opinions” or “several opinions” due to his lack of exposure to a more valid opinion.
3. Replacing what Khalil deemed strong or popular with what is weak, odd, or opposed to the more reliable opinions, with the preferred opinions, even correcting some of Khalil’s oversights in the explanation, or what he did not address at all, which was later rectified by his text’s commentators.
4. Omitting issues which Khalil repeated in his text, and eliminating many examples from it relying on some of them to illustrate the fiqh opinions,, thus further abbreviating the text, even though an abundance of examples serves an important purpose in training for jurisprudence. This made Dardir’s work about two-thirds the length of Khalil’s.
5. Altering phrases from Khalil’s summary to clearer and simpler ones, often being more concise.
Allah knows
Suhaib Webb