A Believer’s Guide to Prayer
Two treatises on its merits and rulings in the Hanafi school
Shaykh Ahmad Ibn Zayni Dahlan & Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Burhani
Translated by Amjad Mahmood
The prayer, or ṣalāh, has been described by the Prophet
Muhammad صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم as
one of the five foundations of Islam, the first duty to be judged by Allah Most
High on the Day of Judgement and as the divider between faith and disbelief.
This annotated work includes two treatises that deal with specific aspects of
the prayer. The first treatise
is by Shaykh Aḥmad Daḥlān, and it outlines
the importance of the prayer according to the sources of Islam and the pious
figures of early Islam, the duty to perform the prayer in congregation, issuing
a stark warning against leaving the prayer. The second is a legal manual consisting of the rules
of purification and prayer according to the Ḥanafī legal school by Shaykh Hishām Burhānī. This work
includes detailed descriptions of how to perform the major ritual bath (ghusl), ablution (wudū), how to practically perform the prayer, together with the azan, the
integrals of the prayer, the Friday, Eid and the funeral prayers. In addition to these two treatises, extensive explanatory footnotes,
as well as detailed appendices on the nature of legal rulings (aḥkām) in the Ḥanafī school, and the merit and duty to adhere to the
Friday prayer have been included.
Shaykh
Aḥmad ibn Zaynī Daḥlān (1817–1886) was the leading Shāfiʿ ī mufti and scholar
of Mecca in his time, as well being an authority in Islamic history. He
authored, and personally published, numerous works on the Islamic sciences and history.
Shaykh Hishām Burhānī (1932–2014) was a Syrian scholar, who was an expert in the Ḥanafī legal school, as well as a spiritual guide (murshid) in the Shādhilī order. He served
as a lecturer in the Faculty of Shariah at the University of Damascus, where he
taught Islamic law (fiqh), Islamic
jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) and
Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr).
