A Critical Edition and Analysis of Nuh ibn Mustafa’s al-Fawāʿid al-muhimma fī bayān ishtirāt al-tabarrī fī islām ahl al-dhimma

Abstract: Nuh ibn Mustafa is an Ottoman scholar lived in the 16th century. He spent the last 40 years of his life in Egypt. Nūh ibn Mustafa was a prolific scholar who wrote over 50 works in different fields of Islamic sciences, especially jurisprudence, legal theory, kalam, and mysticism. The treatise (Al-Fawāʿid Al-Muhimma) was written based on a discussion that was about conversion. The debate is on whether it is sufficient for a Christian converting to Islam to recite the Shahāda - ‘the testimony of faith’ (I testify that there is no god, but God and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God), or whether the convert needs to announce their dissociation from their original faith (tabarrī). Nuh ibn Mustafa says that the opinion that regards saying only the Shahāda, as a sufficient proof for one’s conversion, contradicts the widely accepted opinion in Hanafī legal tradition and that to discuss the issue with respect to regional differences is incorrect, for there is no difference between Christians living in Iraq and Egypt. In the pre-modern period, a person’s social status was primarily determined by faith. The legal procedure concerning the conversion of Cairene Jews and Christians to Islam was the subject of discussion, at the time when the work was composed. The discussion was about how authorities will determine the religious and the social status, within the framework of the official rights and responsibilities. You will find the analysis and the critical edition of the relevant treatise in this article.