Sixty Authoritative Islamic Texts in Use in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

This is an annotated bibliography with introductory essay. It comes from Chapter 6 of P. Ostien, ed., Sharia Implementation in Northern Nigeria 1999-2006: A Sourcebook (2007). Chapter 6 is entitled “Two Famous Cases”; its principal contents are translations into English of the records of proceedings and judgments of all the courts that heard and decided the two zina cases of Safiyatu Hussaini and Amina Lawal; the bibliography is supplementary. The bibliography’s title in Chapter 6 is “Bibliography of Islamic Authorities Cited in the Judgments and Elsewhere in This Work”, referring to the judgments in the two zina cases and the Sourcebook more generally. Only the title of the bibliography has been changed for this SSRN edition; all else is as in the original. The bibliography lists the authoritative texts in alphabetical order by the short titles by which they are most commonly referred to in northern Nigeria. If the full Arabic title of a work is different from its short title, the full title, transliterated into the Latin alphabet, is then given, followed by the name and dates of the author or compiler and other information about the text. An analytical outline of the works listed is given at the end, under the headings “The Qur’an and commentaries on it”, “Collections of the traditions of the Prophet and commentaries on them”, “Collections of fatawa”, and “Books of fiqh and commentaries on them”.

Keywords: Nigeria, sharia, Islamic law, Islamic texts, fiqh