An early and unattested work on Muslim inheritance

Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Nushayli. Al-Durrah al-mudiyah fi a'mal al-munaskhat al-hisabiya.

€ 18,000.00

The only extant manuscript of a previously unknown work by the Egyptian scholar Shihab ibn Muhammad al-Nushayli (d. 1531/32 CE), comprising a treatise on Muslim inheritance law and its calculations, illustrated with several large charts. Though al-Nushayli is known to have authored several other works, he has never had a work on inheritance attributed to him. Additionally, this text was copied quite early - only 64 years after the author's passing - and in the city of Mecca where al-Nushayli died, making it not only an early and previously unattested copy, but also one that is likely to follow the authorial manuscript very closely.

The manuscript itself, including its complex charts, was copied by the scribe Abd al-Rahman ibn Isa al-Muwaqqit, who tells the reader that he was the time-keeper at the Holy Mosque of Mecca. Al-Muwaqqit describes how he completed the manuscript while in the time-keeper's room inside the Holy Mosque, painting a picture of one instance of late 16th century manuscript production in what is now Saudi Arabia. The scribe notes that the date of original authorship of this work was 913 H (1507/08 CE), and that he completed his copy on the 10th of Jumada al-Awwal in 1002 H (the 1st of February 1594).

Beginning with praise of the Tunisian writer Ibn 'Arafa (1316-1401 CE), al-Nushayli's treatise states that he wishes to clarify the more ambiguous sections of one of Ibn 'Arafa's own treatises on inheritance. Taking this discussion of Ibn 'Arafa's treatise as its basis, the text is a commentary on the complex concepts and mathematics of inheritance introduced in that text.

This highly interesting new work is bound with a second, later text from Ottoman Turkey which discusses several examples of inheritance scenarios.