4to. Volume I: lxxxix, xii 561 pp., + 1 pp. errata leaf/ Volume II: viii 727 pp., / Volume III: viii 609 pp., + 1 pp. errata leaf/ Volume IV: viii 574 pp., + 52 pp., supplementary index + 1 pp. errata leaf; some wormholes at margins, spotting and repaired tears, Ex-library copy, library stamps front and rear, library book labels, contemporary tree calf, some tears and losses to spines, a little rubbed and scuffed, marbled endpapers and edges, Orientalist Charles Hamilton’s translation from the Persian, for the East India Company, of the al-Hidayah (Islamic personal law), originally composed by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani in the 12th century, T. Bensley, London, 1791.

Synopsis

First English edition of this important hadith collection. The work is a translation of the compendium Bidayat al-Mubtadi (mss. in Brockelmann), based on al-Kuduri’s Muktasar and al-Shaybani’s al-Jami al-saghir. On this work, he himself wrote a large commentary in 8 volumes Kifayat al-muntaha. But before he had completed it, he thought the work was much too diffused and decided to write a second commentary, the celebrated Hidaya, which later writers repeatedly edited and annotated. For the manuscripts and printed texts of these commentaries and synopses and of many superb commentaries and glosses. See Brockelmann, II 2, 466-9, S I, 644-9.