On the prophet, the pure, the illustrious,

MOHAMMED, the best of created beings, the last of prophets,
And on his family, bright with glorious qualities,
And his companions, the excellent, the noble,
The spotless, the exalted, the beneficent!

And our sufficient help is GOD! O all-sufficient!
Endued with greatness, and with power, and with clemency

The work is ended. Praise be to GOD,
The ruler of worlds! and his blessing.
And peace on our lord

MOHAMMED, the Unlettered Prophet,
And on his family and his companions,
The excellent, the unblemished!

On Friday night, one of the four nights
at the close of Shewál in the year

seven hundred and twelve *

The Transcriber, surnamed

FAKHRO'L SA BIKA'NI

(or, Excelling his Predecessors)
confides in GOD Most High":
May GOD forgive his sins!

Y. C. 1312.

AL SIRAJI Y YAH:

OR,

THE MOHAMMEDAN LAW OF

INHERITANCE;

WITH

A COMMENTARY,

BY

SIR WILLIAM JONES

THE

P R E F A СЕ.

THE two Mufelman authors, whom I now introduce to my countrymen in India, are Shaikh SIRA JU'DDI'N, a native of Sejávend, and Sayyad SHARIF, who was born at Jurján in Khwárezm near the mouth of the Oxus, and is faid to have died, at the age of feventy-fix years, in the city of Shíráz: their compofitions have equal authority in all the Mohammedan courts, which follow the fyftem of ABU HANIFAH, with those of LITTLETON and COKE in the courts at Westminster; and there is, indeed, a wonderful analogy between the works of the old Arabian and English lawyers, and between thofe of their feveral commentators; with this difference in favour of our own country, that LITTLETON is always too clear to need a glofs, and with this difference in favour of the Arabs, that the fole object of SHARIF was to explain and illuftrate his text, without an oftentatious dif

play of his own erudition; but, when it is admitted, that a defire of extreme brevity has often made the Sirájiyyah obfcure, the reader should in candour allow, that every author must appear to great difadvantage in a literal translation, especially when his own idiom differs totally from that of his tranflator, when his terms of art must be rendered by new words, which ufe alone can make eafy, and when the system, which he unfolds to his countrymen, has no refemblance to any other, that the world ever knew. In the Sharifiyyah (for that is the po-. pular title of the Arabian comment) we find little or no obfcurity; and, if there be a fault in the book, it is a fcrupulous minuteness of explanation, and a needless anxiety to remove every little cloud, which the reader himself might difperfe by the flighteft exertion of his intellect. Both works were tranflated into Perfan by the order of Mr. HASTINGS; and the tranflation, which bears the name of Maulavi MUHAMMED KA'SIM, muft appear excellent, and would be really useful, to fuch as had not accefs to the Arabick originals; but the text and comment are blended without any difcrimination, and both are fo intermixed with the notes of the tranflator himself, that it is often impoffible to feparate what is fixed law from what is merely his own opinion: he has