The Differences of the Imams
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Translator
Muhammad Kadwa
Description
Every student of knowledge eventually runs into the same quiet unease: if the Imams of the four schools all drew from the Qur'an and the Sunna, why did they differ so often, and so sharply, on matters of fiqh? This slim, focused work takes that question seriously rather than brushing past it.
Drawing on examples from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, his Companions, and their Followers, the book walks through how apparent contradictions between authentic narrations were understood and reconciled by the early generations. It addresses, too, the harder question of when disagreement among Muslims is not a failure but a legitimate feature of sound scholarship — a distinction that matters as much now as it did then.
At 136 pages, this is not a sprawling treatise but a clear, contained study, well suited to a reader who wants to understand the roots of madhhab difference without wading through volumes of usul al-fiqh. White Thread Press's 2008 edition keeps the focus tight and the argument accessible, making it a useful companion for anyone who has wondered why the scholars of Islam, working from the same sources, could still arrive at different conclusions — and why that itself is part of the tradition's integrity.
About the Contributor(s)
About the author
Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi: Shaykh al-Hadith Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi rahimahullah (1897-1982) was born in Khandhla, Uttar Pradesh, India, into a deeply religious family. He was privately tutored by his father, Shaykh Yahya, in the Islamic sciences and completed the six canonical books of hadith under his instruction. He remained in the company of his shaykh, the hadith master Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri, for seventeen years until the latter's passing in 1927. Together they worked on an eighteen-volume commentary of Abu Dawud; Shaykh Zakariyya later independently composed a twenty-three-volume commentary of Muwatta Imam Malik over a span of thirty years. He began teaching the Islamic sciences at age twenty and taught hadith for 46 years (1923-1969). His other celebrated works include Fada'il al-Amal, Khasa'il-e-Nabawi (a commentary on Shama'il al-Tirmidhi), and al-Abwab wa al-Tarajum (an explanation of the chapters of Sahih al-Bukhari). He was granted spiritual successorship (khilafa) in the Chishti-Sabriyya order.
About the translator
Muhammad Kadwa: Mufti Muhammad Kadwa is a South African Islamic scholar working within the Hanafi-Deobandi scholarly tradition. He is associated with Darulifta Azaadville in South Africa, where he is listed among the scholars providing Islamic rulings in the Hanafi madhhab. His translation work has introduced significant classical Deobandi texts to English-speaking readers. He translated Shaykh al-Hadith Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi's Arabic treatise 'Ikhtilaf al-A'imma' into English as 'The Differences of the Imams', published by White Thread Press; the book addresses the historical and methodological reasons behind juristic differences among the four Sunni schools across three eras of Islamic scholarship. He also co-translated, with Maulana Mahomed Mahomedy, the complete three-volume English edition of Maulana Idris Kandhalwi's celebrated Urdu seerah 'Seerat Mustafa', a highly regarded biography of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. An abridged single-volume edition of this seerah translation has also been published. He is recognized by IslamQA as a Hanafi fiqh scholar. Beyond these confirmed details, no further personal biographical information has been verified from available public sources.
Specifications
EAN 13 / ISBN
9781933764085
Publisher
White Thread Press
Author
Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi
Pages
136
Translator
Muhammad Kadwa
Year Published
2008
Size
W-5.5 in | H-8.5 in | D-0.4 in
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