Customer Reviews

Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law 'Umdat Al-Salik

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I won't comment on the actual material of the book, since the content is based on Imam Nawawi's work - Which basically says the text is about as good as it gets.

The content of the book covers the Shafi Fiqh. Basically, all rulings that could concern a Muslim. (ie. Sunnah of Wudu, Fard of divorce proceedings, etc.) It even has quick autobiographies at the end. (A nice touch for background on some of those scholars I had never heard of.)

As for the rest: The translation into English seems excellent, the book is hardcover with good binding: Excellent. And the cover is green and looks nice. The font is nice, and it even has the original Arabic text on the side. Most important, there are several seals on the first several pages indicating that the book has passed inspection from various large Muslim Universities. Something I don't see in other translations.

Recommended.

I began translating Reliance of the Traveller in Jordan, out of personal need for a shari'a manual, to know and practice Islam in my own life. Making it available to others was an afterthought that came to me after I had set out to produce a work in which I could look up the questions that I needed to know without having to memorize it all. I had moved to Jordan in 1980, and lived near Amman in Suwaylih, with many students and teachers of the University of Jordan's shari'a college. That first year, I heard a lot of well-meaning religious advice that one might have preferred to know rather than be told, a perhaps not unfamiliar feeling to many new Muslims. During this period I began to translate the meanings of the Qur'an using other English translations, and then read through the Muhammad Muhsin Khan's interpretation of Sahih al-Bukhari, trying to record every Islamic ruling I could find in the hadith. In the end, I realized that there was a tremendous number of questions in my life that I did not have Islamic answers for.

At the end of summer 1981 I moved to Huwwara, a village in the north of Jordan, both to improve my spoken Arabic and to work on a master's degree in educational psychology while teaching English at the University of Yarmouk, in nearby Irbid. The move to the north led to my meeting people who knew traditional Islamic ulama in Damascus, among them, Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil al-Durubi, who I made the acquaintance of in his bookshop off the courtyard of the Darwishiyya mosque, where he was imam.

In Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil, I felt I had found someone who really knew Islam, and he was the one who eventually inspired me to try to translate a fiqh manual. I had been a commercial fisherman in the North Pacific for seven seasons, and I remembered a book the captain used to keep in the wheelhouse near the charts, a book of bearings, with the precise compass directions between one point of land and another in Alaskan waters. This was the sort of work I hoped to produce in shari'a, a book that I could open up and find accurate, substantive ethical knowledge to apply in my life.

Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil had such knowledge, and I came to produce a book that would try to represent his kind of traditional learning. In the following eleven years of my association with him, I never asked him a question that he didn't know the answer to, and I never asked him why he said so except that he would produce a text for it from a recognized shari'a work. It was something I had not been aware of before. When one meets a universsity professor of shari'a, one gets the impression of a senior student who is but more widely read than the students he teaches; but when one meets a traditional alim, one gets the impression of someone who knows the actual content of the shari'a by having learned and memorized, in a word, someone with 'ilm or "knowledge."

A second difference was one of attitude. Traditional sheikhs like Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil impressed me deeply as Muslims, men whose concept of spirituality was to learn the divine command, hold it absolutely sacred, and to do their utmost to live it, outwardly and inwardly. They had apparently taken this attitude from the living example of their own teachers, and so on, back to earliest times. For example, Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil was a genuinely humble man, not out of ignorance of his level of learning (which was arguably above that of a mufti), but rather because Allah had ordered him to be humble.

I once made a remark to him about someone who gave one of the notoriously lax fatwas of the present century, saying that one had to respect his opinion, since he was an alim. "An alim?" he said, looking incredulous. "The first thing an alim knows is that the next world is more important than this one." He was totally what he taught in this respect, and his approach of 'amal bi 'ilm, "living what one knows" was also something I later sought to preserve in my translation.

In autumn of 1982, I took the Shafi'i fiqh manual Kifayat al-akhyar (The sufficiency of the good) to Sheikh 'Abd al-Wakil and asked him what he thought of translating it. He said that it often mentioned several positions on an issue without telling which was the most reliable for fatwa. He suggested instead a copy of `Umdat al-salik (Reliance of the Traveller), and I bought it from him. Working through the translation, the knowledge-based shari'a approach captured my imagination, and I was to add several appendices on questions not treated in the text, including biographies of all the scholars mentioned, not only to help Muslims know their scholars, but also to clarify, by actual examples, the difference between the present level of Islamic scholarship and the past.

I give this product one star because I deeply disagree with its content, but urge non-Muslims to become familiar with it.

This book contains the legal rulings of the Shafii school of Islamic law. It contains a legal description of mainstream Islam, a codification of the culture of the Islamic Middle East.

It makes clear to me that there is an unbridgeable gap between the legal and cultural standards of Islam and America. That means that the more Islamic America becomes, the less American it is.

It shows me why a person can be a pious Muslim or a patriotic American but not both. A person who follows the interpretation of the Koran found in this book cannot share American attitudes toward women, sexual preferences, secular government, equality of opportunity for all regardless of religious belief, military defense of America against Muslim enemies and, above all, freedom of speech.

In short, Islamic law as described here does not pass Constitutional scrutiny. Islam, as described by this book, is a political system within a religion and should be considered a competitor of our liberal democratic system, not a component of it.

Every Shafee follower should have this book. It really is a legislative one stop shop for everyday matters with clearly laid out clauses which are easy to follow and understand.
It can be compared to the "Bahisti Zewar" (Heavenly Ornaments" by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi for Hanafi follwers except that Mr Keller has no doubt done a better job of translating it. I have been looking for this book since 1997. In Australia (out of stock), India (I should have known better) and Singapore (out of stock) but with no luck until amazon.com was suggested to me. Anyone wanting to order through the internet can be rest assured of a very professional service and delivery. The package arrived on time in a very carefully sealed box. The price is very competitive and postage nominal.
The only way to really find out how great this book is, is not to read the reviews but to actually buy and read the book. It is everything the reviews say and more. May Allah give unlimited rewards to all those involved in its compilation and production. Ameen

With ample credentials laid out in the front of the book from numerous Islamic scholars, this book acts as a sober warning to all who love western freedoms that Islamic Sharia Law is incompatible with the US Constitution or ANY other form of government. A MUST READ!!!

The Reliance is a classical manual of Jurisprudence (fique) according to the shafi'i school of Islamic Law. The appensices form an integral part of the book and present original texts and translations from classic works by prominent scholars such as Ghazali, Nawawi, Qurtubi, Dhahabi, Ibn Hajar and others, on topics of Islamic Law, faith, and spirituality. Quranic exegesis and Hadith sciences. It has also 136 works of biographical nature about many of the tradtionalist Islamic figures. Much of what the translator (sheikh nuh ha mim keller) has included is essential in knowing the shari'a of the shafi'i school as well as the basics of the tariqa of Abû al-Hasan al-Shâdhilî. It is a must own for anyone seeking to meet his lord as a knower of the traditional path. Although many salafi's oppose the sheikh, it can never be denied that his is a work that is indespensable to anyone open to take the path as has been passed down through fourteen hundred years of classical learning. Sheikh Nuh's translation is one of deep understanding of the author's intentions and wisdom beihind what he was intending to write.

The book is very well laid out and comprehensive. The index in the back makes it easy to find any ruling that is needed.

Speaking as an American student of Islamic law, I highly recommend this translation for other students. What the translator says about specialists in universities is true of my acquaintance, and so it should be: the Western academic student of Islamic law is no more a man of religion (in this case a mufti qualified to answer Muslims' religious questions) than the historian of medieval physics is a physicist. The old Egyptian edition of _`Umdat al-salik_ included commentaries from two shaykhs, which Keller seems to have translated along with the main text, scrupulously identified. Since a handbook like this was largely an outline for lectures, the commentaries are often essential to understanding the text. A fine piece of work for which all English-speaking students of Islamic law may be grateful.

An exellent and well written book. The translation is well written and accompanied by the original Arabic text, there are translations also of religious rulings regarding everything from creed to smoking. The index is exellent and well formatted and the book is well sourced (a previous reviewer mentioned that the text does not give any sources (I assume he means the original Arabic writer) while this is true, Nuh Keller does well document his own sources including a brief biography of them and even other source reading material) The book has also been certified by some of the leading institutions in the Islamic world.

On an negative side, the actual text itself does not have a sufficient commentary (if at all) in that matter I am in agreement with the previous reviewer as there are many controversial matters brought up in the original Arabic text that need further explanation, to not do so surely does a great hindrance to the book. There are many who will argue that this book was intended to be read with a qualified Islamic scholar, if that were the case then what was the point in making it a book available for worldwide distribution? This could have been easily avoided by making it simply a University syllabus book and not one for general public consumption.

Secondly the contentious matters brought up with regards to creed. Nuh Keller as with the original author of the Arabic text and most of the sources he cites belong to the Ashari school of Islamic creed while a minority in contempory Muslim society belong to a creed followed by ibn Taymiyah and his student ibn al-Qayyim. The matters of contention between the two schools are of little interest to Muslims never mind non-Muslims who will undoubtedly have access to this book so it begs the question as to why Nuh Keller even bothered to bring up such a controversial matter. Suerly it would have been sufficient to state his and the original authors beliefs and leave it at that?

Aside from this it is an exellent book and although it is according to the Shafi school of law much of the content is of equal value to a follower of any of the schools of Islam.

Highly recomended but with a commentary this could have been exellent

I am a Muslim convert of some 15 years and in the 1980's when this book was first published I was one of 12 Australians to receive a copy. That was all that was available at the time. With exception of the Al'Qur'an and scholars this book was my guide until late 1996 when the book was destroyed in a fire in Indonesia where I was staying.

I have tried ever since to get another copy. If you are new to Islam or even a born Muslim this book is a MUST for you. It's level of fiqh and shari'a is unrivalled. It is mainly for the Shafi'i Mus'hab but also distinguishes between the other Mus'habs.

If you get any book of Shari'a then make this your number one choice.

May Allah (SWT) Bless brother Nur for this much needed Translation