Mustafa al-Zarqa

Mustafa Ahmad al-Zarqa (1904 – 3 July 1999) was a Syrian jurist who restated Islamic jurisprudence in the language of modern law. Born in Aleppo into a family of Hanafi scholars, he taught civil law and sharia at the universities of Damascus and Jordan, sat in the Syrian parliament for Aleppo, and held the ministries of justice and of awqaf. His al-Madkhal al-Fiqhi al-'Amm ("General Introduction to Islamic Jurisprudence") became a standard textbook, and in 1984 he received the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies. The Arabic Wikipedia article is the only Wikipedia article on him; this page rests on it and on his Wikidata item.¹²

He was born in Aleppo in 1322 AH/1904 into a house of learning: his father Ahmad al-Zarqa, author of a commentary on the legal maxims (Sharh al-Qawa'id al-Fiqhiyya), and his grandfather Muhammad al-Zarqa were both among the leading Hanafi scholars of Aleppo, a line Yusuf al-Qaradawi called "the golden chain" in learning.¹

He memorised the Qur'an in the kuttabs as a child and studied under his father and grandfather — Hanafi fiqh and the rules of the Majalla — and under Ahmad al-Maktabi al-Shafi'i, Muhammad al-Hunayfi, the historian and hadith scholar Muhammad Raghib al-Tabbakh, and others. In Damascus he attended the lessons of the hadith scholar Badr al-Din al-Hasani. He took his first baccalaureate in sciences and letters with the highest rank in Syria, went to Damascus in 1929 for a second baccalaureate in mathematics and philosophy, and graduated in 1933 from both the law and the literature faculties, again first of his class; in 1947 he added a diploma in Islamic sharia from the Faculty of Law of Fuad I (now Cairo) University.¹

He practised law in Aleppo from 1934 to 1943, before the national and the (French) mixed courts. He was elected deputy for Aleppo in the Syrian parliament in two legislative terms, 1954 and 1961, and was given the ministries of justice and of awqaf in two constitutional governments, in 1956 and again in 1962. He helped draft the Syrian personal-status law project of 1952 and the unified law project of Egypt and Syria during the union.¹

He taught at the Khusrawiyya school in Aleppo, then was professor of civil law and sharia at Damascus University from 1944 until the mid-1960s; he helped found the university's College of Sharia and draw up its curricula. From 1971 to 1989 he was professor of fiqh and law at the University of Jordan, and he lectured at the Arab League's Institute of Higher Arab Studies. Among his students were the hadith scholar Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda, Muhammad al-Mallah, Abd al-Rahman Ra'fat al-Basha, Muhammad Fawzi Fayd Allah and his own son, the Islamic economist Muhammad Anas al-Zarqa.¹

He was an active member of the Muslim World League's Islamic Fiqh Academy from 1978 and of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy in Jeddah from 1984, helped supervise the Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia (for whose ministry of awqaf he was appointed expert in 1966), and belonged to the Royal Society for Research on Islamic Civilization (Aal al-Bayt) in Jordan.¹

The Arabic article summarises his method as a fiqh-minded, purposive (maqasidi) and renewalist one joining the precision of the classical jurist to the outlook of the modern lawyer: restating the old fiqh in contemporary legal form, comparing it with the civil codes, and insisting on the objectives and universal maxims of the sharia. It notes his freedom from madhhab partisanship: despite his Hanafi upbringing and deep immersion in that school, he held himself a mujtahid who would not be confined to one school where a stronger proof or a weightier interest lay in another, and he called for a "general fiqh" drawing on the wealth of all the schools.¹

His chief work is the four-volume series al-Fiqh al-Islami fi Thawbihi al-Jadid ("Islamic Fiqh in its New Dress"): the two volumes of al-Madkhal al-Fiqhi al-'Amm, the Madkhal ila Nazariyyat al-Iltizam al-'Amma on the general theory of obligation, and al-'Uqud al-Musamma: 'Aqd al-Bay' on nominate contracts. His legal series is the three-volume commentary on the Syrian civil code. He also wrote on awqaf, on hadith, on istislah and unrestricted interests, on harmful acts and liability, a fiqh assessment of insurance, a UNESCO-commissioned survey al-Fiqh al-Islami wa Madarisuh, and a book of fatwas collected by his student Majd Makki and introduced by Yusuf al-Qaradawi; a poetry collection, Qaws Quzah ("Rainbow"), also appeared.¹

He received the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies in 1404 AH/1984, the article says, in recognition of his contributions to fiqh studies and especially of his book on the general theory of obligation. Ali al-Tantawi described him as the central bead in the "golden chain" of his scholarly family; Qaradawi called him a distinctive school in comparative fiqh and in joining the old to the new, and counted him among the four great scholars of the Levant of his time.¹

The museum records his affiliation as unknown. The Arabic article presents Hanafi Islam as his family's school and his own formation — his father and grandfather were leading Hanafi scholars, he studied Hanafi fiqh under them, and its method section speaks of his Hanafi upbringing while stressing that he did not confine himself to one madhhab. Family background and formation are not a personal attestation, and no second source names a school for him: Wikidata gives only Islam. The Hanafi formation is preserved in his data record.¹²

He died in Riyadh on Saturday 19 Rabi' al-Awwal 1420 AH, 3 July 1999, after the afternoon prayer, sitting at work editing and arranging his fatwas.¹

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