THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

2017, VOL. 8, NO. 3, 291–308

https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2017.1371540

Text, Body and Law: Naked Prayer in the Commentaries of

the Mukhtasar
. Khalīl
Matthew Steele
Harvard University

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Western scholarship has long associated the visibility of posi- Canon formation;
commentary tradition; fiqh;
tive law (furū` al-fiqh) texts with medieval Islam’s intellectual `ibāda; legal manuals; Maliki
decline. Lacking the originality of legal hermeneutics (uṣūl al- thought; Mukhtaṣar Khalīl
fiqh), works of positive law and their favorite literary genres,
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commentary (sharḥ) and abridgment (mukhtaṣar), have as a

result suffered a special neglect within the academy. Rarely has
either been addressed as more than stolid, imitative, work of
medieval legists. This article seeks to reassess such a narrative
of Islamic legal literature. Through a reading of eight commen-
taries of the classic fourteenth century furū` abridgement,
Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, this article explores the ways in which
Maliki jurists debated a particularly thorny issue underpinning
ritual, body, and society. It will consider three broad questions:
(1) How was the status of the body connected to maintaining
the health of the community? (2) In what ways did jurists
balance contradictory obligations between body, worship,
and society? (3) How did the commentary literature of the
Mukhtaṣar Khalīl serve to contest, and reinforce, claims to
consensus within the Maliki school? By doing so, the study
aims to present a more nuanced picture of the dynamism
characteristically dismissed of positive law, commentary, and
post-formative Maliki legal thought.

The moral body in early Islam

A man passes a young child wandering through seventh century Arabia. The boy
appears to be straining to carry a large stone held against his stomach. With each
step, the rock loosens his clothing, until, unable to adjust the stone, his pants fall
to his ankles. Coming across the boy, the man counsels, “Return to your pants,
take them [and tie them around your waist]. Do not walk naked.”1
The man in the story was of course the Prophet Muhammad. The narra-
tion has it that the object of his rebuke was a young al-Miswar b. Makhrama
(d. 64/683–4) while the latter was still a boy in Medina.2 As tales of the

CONTACT Matthew Steele msteele@fas.harvard.edu 6 Divinity Ave, Room 106, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
1
Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī al-Naysābūrī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawliya lil-Nashr,
1998), 154.
2
This article follows guidelines for the transliteration of Modern Standard Arabic according to the International
Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). For Arabic terms commonly used in English sources, conventional Western
spelling is maintained.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
 292 M. STEELE

Prophet’s life grew in the generations after his death, the report of al-Miswar
and his fallen underpants would come to be included among the most
authoritative texts from which the Prophet’s opinions were drawn.
One may suspect that more than clothing was at stake in the story. The
Prophet’s admonition of nakedness fit within similar verses in the Quran,
together conveying an understanding of the human body in deliberately
moral terms.3 As early Muslims sought to follow the injunctions of both,
regulating the physical body emerged as an issue central to debates of piety,
gender, and community. Yet whose body demanded covering, which parts,
when, and in front of whom was not always clear. What the Quran and
Prophetic hadith provided in a moral framework, they often lacked in
practical detail. The responsibility of bridging the two largely fell to legal
scholars.
By the ninth century, distinct communities had formed around precisely
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such legal interpretation.4 Jurists sought to build from the sources of revelation
a system of injunctions and prohibitions from which Muslims could live their
daily lives in accordance with the will of God.5 As the opinions of legists
swelled, the authoritative positions of each community regarding ritual and
social practice were eventually recorded in works of positive law affiliated with
each school. These furū texts, euphemistically termed “legal manuals” by
western scholars, addressed a dizzying number of daily concerns, setting the
conditions for prayer on one page, divorce on another, and the manumission
of slaves on a third. Questions of bodily practice were among the most
frequent topics of the genre as jurists sought to explain how Muslims were
to conduct pious lives both through ritual and with one another.6
Yet what of the nakedness of our story’s al-Miswar? By the ninth and tenth
centuries, nudity was defined in increasingly precise relational terms. The body
was divided into two sets of `awra or shame zones, each mandating different
degrees of concealment, depending on the context. Disrobing in the presence of a
spouse was permitted; doing so in the presence of an unrelated neighbor was not.
Given this understanding of nudity, a favorite pastime of jurists involved
contemplating a simple question: If completing five daily prayers was obli-
gatory, but leaving one's shame zones uncovered while praying invalidated
them, what was a Muslim to do if he or she was without clothes? The
question’s implications were further reaching than one might suppose. A

3
See, for example, Quran 7:26; Quran 24:58; Quran 24:31.
4
For a thorough study of the early development of Islamic legal schools, see, for example: Christopher Melchert,
The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1997), 32–41.
5
For a superb discussion of law’s development during Islam’s formative period, and particularly its relationship with
the concomitant rise of prophetic authority, see: Wael Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
6
One could not, for example, pray while defecating, nor could they pray in illicit clothing. However, exceptions to
both do of course exist, as with an incontinent worshiper or, as the article will explore, one lacking the means
appropriately to cover themselves. For an outstanding study of Islamic ritual and the body, see Kevin Reinhart,
“Impurity/No Danger,” History of Religions 30:1 (1990).
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 293

jurist’s support for completing the prayers, even without clothing, conveyed a
preference for God’s injunction to pray over his demand for physical mod-
esty. Likewise, suggesting one delay the prayers until clothing was available
seemed dangerously close to privileging decorum over worship. Support for
one would seem to violate the other. In making either choice, scholars
debated which would represent a greater threat to the person on one hand,
and society on the other.
This dilemma of the naked prayer is the focus of the article presented here.
The topic is a rich one because of its implications for evolving—and highly
moralized—notions of person, space, and society in Islamic law.7 For students
of a single, legal tradition, in this case the Maliki school, such a frequently
commented-upon issue also offers a unique lens into the development of the
legal school itself. 8 Better than a millennium of Maliki jurists attempted to
solve the dilemma of the naked prayer, explaining, rebutting, and even occa-
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sionally distorting the views of colleagues as they wrestled with what should
constitute the authoritative legal opinion of the school. Perhaps in no other
text of substantive law is this more apparent than the superbly glossed abridg-
ment of fourteenth-century Egyptian scholar Khalīl b. Isḥāq (d. 767/1365).9
Through hundreds of commentaries of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl—a literary
corpus spanning nearly six centuries—a history of Maliki juridical thinking
unfolds in which the body, and its relationship with social stability, was
debated in real time. This article will explore how Maliki jurists sought to
answer whether, and under what circumstances, Muslims were to pray if they
were unable sufficiently to cover themselves. A close reading of eight com-
mentaries from the school’s most authoritative legal manual, the Mukhtaṣar
Khalīl, will be used as a means for considering several related issues. How
was regulating the status of the body connected with maintaining the health
of the community? In what ways did jurists balance contradictory obligations
arising between body, worship, and society? To what degree did the com-
mentary literature of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl provide a space for contesting
consensus within Maliki legal thought? How widely did such contestation
exist in interpreting the Khalīl itself?

The abridgment of Khalīl

Khalīl b. Isḥāq was born to a military family outside of Cairo. As a young
man, Khalīl accompanied his Hanafi father to the lectures of the Maliki
7
See, for example, Baber Johansen, “The City and its Norms,” in Contingency in a Sacred Law: Legal and Ethical
Norms in the Muslim Fiqh (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999).
8
Because of its predominance in Islamicate Africa, the Maliki school of law will be the madhhab of emphasis here.
9
For an outstanding, though still incomplete, indication of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl’s prominence among Maliki fiqh
commentaries, see: Abdallah Muhammad al-Ḥabshī, Jāmi` al-Shurūḥ wa al-Ḥawāshī, vol. 3 (Abu Dhabi, UAE:
Majm`a al-Thaqāfī, 2004), 1595–619.
 294 M. STEELE

scholar `Abdullah al-Manūfī, eventually receiving teaching licenses in

Maliki law.10 He served for a time as a soldier in Mamluk Egypt, and
later resumed studies in grammar and legal hermeneutics under
Muhammad b. `Abd al-Raḥman b. al-Burhān al-Rashīdī, attending lec-
tures of Ibn `Abd al-Hādī `Abd al-Ghanī (d. 749/1348), reading hadith
with al-Baha’ `Abdullah b. Khalīl (d. 777/1375–6), and training in law
with the author of the manual Madkhal al-Shar`i, Moroccan `Abdullah
Muhammad b. Muhammad al-`Abdarī (d. 737/1336).11
Sometime thereafter, Khalīl left Cairo for the Hijaz, where he would
perform pilgrimage and continue studying and teaching in Medina. How
long is not yet clear, but upon his return to Cairo, he would continue studies
while writing and teaching nearby at the al-Madrasa al- Shaykhūnīyya. As his
reputation grew, stories abounded of an extraordinary scholar dressed in the
fraying clothes of soldier. Accounts describe Khalīl each day teaching nearby
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before retreating to his home to read and write well into the morning.12 The
routine served him well, as he developed a mastery over his school’s legal
literature that few were capable of matching. Before his death in 1365, he
would complete no less than six texts, three of them in law.13 The first, a six-
volume commentary of the legal manual of Egyptian jurist `Uthmān b.
`Umar b. al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), established Khalīl’s reputation among the
scholars of his day.14 Nonetheless, the second, a significantly shorter manual
titled in his own name, cemented Khalīl among the seminal figures of the
Maliki legal tradition.
Twenty-five years in the making, the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl drew from thou-
sands of legal opinions stretching back to the Maliki school’s founder, Mālik
b. Anas (d. 179/795). Khalīl graded each before distilling the most author-
itative rulings of the school into exceptionally short prose. Explaining the
process in his introduction, Khalīl wrote, “a group of students… asked of me
10
The legal affiliation of Khalīl’s father is interesting, though not entirely clear. Several early biographies note that,
although he was technically a Hanafi, he largely lived his daily life according to the precepts of the Maliki school,
thanks to his relationship with `Abdullah al-Manūfī. He was a fourteenth-century scholar, but the date of al-Man
ūfī’s death varies across sources, falling between 747/1346 and 749/1348. See: Ibn Ḥajar al-`Asqalānī, al-Durar al-
Kāmina (Hyderabad, India: Dā’irat al-Ma`ārif al-`Uthmānīyya, 1931), 86.
11
Al-Rashīdī’s exact death date also seems to range from 749/1348 to 754/1353.
12
One had it that Khalīl, a resident of Cairo for nearly all of his life, had not once seen the Nile, the ubiquitous river
cutting through much of the city. See: Muhammad b. `Abd al-Raḥman b. Ḥusayn al-Ru`aynī al-Ḥaṭṭāb, Mawāhib
al-Jalīl, vol. 1 (Cairo, Egypt: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2010), 20.
13
Medieval sources agree on at least five of these, in addition to an incomplete commentary of the Mudawwana he
was unable to finish before his death. The consensus texts are as follows: Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, al-Tawḍīḥ, Kitāb al-
Jām`i, Manāsik al-Ḥajj, Manāqib Sheikh al-Manūfī, and Ṣharḥ Alfīyyat Ibn Mālik. Khalīl authored but did not finish
a commentary of the Mudawwana and apparently the gloss, Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb. Though early historiographical
sources do not cite the work, contemporary accounts also mention Mukhaddirāt al-Mafhūm fi ma yata`laq bil-Tar
ājim al-`Ulūm attributed to a Khalīl b. Muhammad al-Maghribī. For a representative early source entry on Khalīl,
see the fourteenth-century al-Dībāj al-Mudhab fi Ma`rifat A`yān `Ulamā’ al-Madhab of Ibn Farḥūn (d. 799/1396).
For a modern work citing the Mukhaddirāt, see Khalīl’s entry in the al-A`lām of Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī.
14
Aḥmad Bābā (d. 1026/1627), among Islamic Africa’s most famous scholars, wrote, “Regarding al-Tawḍīḥ [of Khalīl
b. Isḥāq], there are few commentaries of the Mukhtaṣar Ibn al-Ḥājib that are more beneficial or famed. It was
relied upon by the students of Ibn `Arafa and others.” See: Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbaktī, Nayl al-Ibtihāj bi-Taṭrīz al-
Dībāj (Tripoli, Libya: Kulīyat al-Da`wa al-Islāmīya, 1989), 171.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 295

an abridgement of the legal school of Mālik b. Anas that explained the

school’s positions through its fatwas.”15 By highlighting what he considered
the rājiḥ (preponderant) and mashhūr (widespread) views of an issue while
avoiding questions that remained controversial, Khalīl intended that his work
would present a consensus of the Maliki school.16
In doing so, he relied not on other works of fiqh (legal doctrine), but
largely on legal opinions drawn from texts of hadith. Almost all were
attributed to commentaries of Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd b. Ḥabīb al-Tanūkhī’s (d.
240/854) al-Mudawwana, a compendium of legal opinions attributed to the
school’s founder, Mālik b. Anas.17 In his opening, Khalīl cites the work of
four scholars in particular, al-Tabṣira of al-Qayrwān’s Abu al-Ḥasan al-
Lakhmī (d. 478/1086), Sharḥ al-Talqīn of Muhammad b. `Umar al-Tamīmī
al-Māzirī (d. 536/1141) of Tunisia, al-Jāmi` li-Masā’il al-Mudawwana of the
Andalusi Muhammad b. Yūnus (d. 451/1059), and al-Muqaddimāt al-
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Mumahhadāt and al-Bayān wa al-Taḥṣīl of Ibn Rushd (the elder) (d. 520/
1126), also of Andalus. To maximize the range of opinions in the fewest
words possible, Khalīl created referents in which he assigned to each author a
word meant to designate his position. Opinions held in the Mudawwana
were abridged to a single preposition and pronoun, “fīhā,” disputes over the
Mudawwana were condensed into any variety of the passive, “uwwila,” and
the position of one of the four relied upon on authors noted earlier was
divided by noun and verbal forms of “al-ikhtiyār”—the distinction meant to
separate their personal opinions from those they selected among the views of
other scholars.18
The result was a piece of Maliki legal scholarship unlike virtually any
other. By building chains of referents and indexes into each line, Khalīl
reduced the abridgment genre to its most elemental form. He produced
something like a legal cryptogram, a short manual in which hundreds of
other books were folded into each verse’s abbreviated prose. His success, and
the text’s difficulty, prompted the frequent critique, “the Khalīl is an abridge-
ment of an abridgment of an abridgement.”19

15
Khalīl b. Isḥāq, Mukhtaṣar al-`Alāma Khalīl (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Fikr, 1981), 8.
16
This of course did not imply that the work was divested of any political sensibility. Khalīl’s very action of
privileging legal questions and opinions over others reflected an orientation toward ritual, law, and authority
specific to the author. Likewise, regarding his objectivity, it should be noted that, despite the influence of his
work, Khalīl goes to great pains to explain that he did not consider himself a mujtāhid. The degree to which the
work reflected his personal opinion rather than the school’s authority remains a question of perspective as much
as substance. Yet among certain teaching circles today, Khalīl is regarded as having avoided personally weighing
in on issues in all but two of the many thousand legal issues he explored in the book. For the rest, he is taken by
most mainstream Malikis as having merely conveyed the dominant views of the school.
17
The exceptions are al-Māzirī’s gloss of the al-Talqīn, an eleventh-century work of Maliki law written by perhaps
the most famous of the madhhab’s Iraqis scholars, `Abd al-Wahāb al-Baghdādī, and Ibn Rushd’s al-Bayān wa al-Ta
ḥṣīl, a recension of the al-`Utbiyya of Andalusi Muhammad b. al-`Utbī (d. 255/868–9).
18
Khalīl b. Isḥāq, 8.
19
Muhammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Hajwī, al-Fikr al-Sāmī fī Tārīkh al-Fiqh al-Islāmī, vol. 4 (Rabat, Morocco: Idārat al-Ma`ārif,
1922), 220.
 296 M. STEELE

The work’s condensed chapters facilitated memorization, but they were

nearly incomprehensible without explanation by an advanced scholar. To
meet the challenge, jurists wrote commentaries glossing the work, their
glosses often serving as new measuring sticks for scholarly rigor. Schools
made the text required reading, and teaching licenses for the book served as
necessary credentials for practicing law. Even courts took Khalīl’s text as
proof of authoritative Maliki precedent. By the early modern period, the
Mukhtaṣar Khalīl had assumed such a dominant role in Maliki scholasticism
that a career without mastery of the text was viewed with considerable
suspicion. Two centuries after its publication, Egyptian jurist Nāṣir al-Dīn al-
Laqānī (d. 958/1551) summarized the text’s influence over the legal field,
explaining, “We are the people of Khalīl. If the text errors, then we error.”20
A century later, West Africa’s preeminent scholar-historian, Aḥmad Bābā (d.
1036/1627), remarked, “from the East to the West, people have devoted
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themselves to the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl [and his al-Tawḍīḥ] to the extent that
among recent generations in the Maghreb, from Marrakesh to Fes and else-
where, they restrict themselves to Khalīl’s Mukhtaṣar alone.”21
Divided into some sixty chapters, the text’s treatment of the naked prayer
is characteristic of the book. The latter half of the chapter reads:

He who is incapable is to pray naked. If a group gathers together in darkness, they

are to pray as if they are concealed. If not, they are to separate. If this is not
possible, they are to pray standing with their eyes cast downward, the prayer leader
standing between them. If a slave girl, her head uncovered, learns of her emanci-
pation during the course of her prayer, or a naked man finds clothing [during his
prayer], each should cover themselves [sic] if cloth is near. If not, she should repeat
the prayer in its required time. If there existed a cloth among a group of naked
worshipers, they should pray with it individually. If clothing was in the possession
of one of them, it is recommended he lend it to them.22

The passage is just several lines in its original Arabic. It is not footnoted nor is
there further explanation. Yet in it, Khalīl manages to include the authoritative
positions of the Maliki school regarding a range of potential naked prayers.
Unearthing those positions from the text fell to the hundreds of published
commentaries making sense of the work. This study presents eight such glosses.23

20
Badr al-Dīn al-Qarāfī, Tawshīḥ al-Dībāj wa Ḥilya al-Ibtihāj (Cairo, Egypt: Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 2004), 74.
21
In describing fiqh studies in the Maghreb, Bābā continues, “rarely do you see someone devote themselves to [the
Mukhtaṣar of] Ibn Hajib (d. 1249) more than the al-Mudawwana. Rather they rely exclusively on al-Risāla [of Abu
Zayd al-Qayrwānī] and Khalīl.” See: Aḥmad Bābā, 171.
22
The commentators presented here more frequently gloss this latter section of the chapter than the first. To
incorporate as much material from the recensions as possible will therefore be the focus. See: Khalīl b. Isḥāq, 27.
23
Given the importance of both Morocco and Egypt in the development of Maliki thought during the medieval
period, and production of the legal literature that underpins it, all but one of the scholars discussed in the
following sections lived and wrote in the Maghreb or in Cairo.The exception is Muhammad b. `Abd al-Raḥman b.
Ḥusayn al-Ru`aynī, better known as Shaykh al-Ḥaṭṭāb (d. 954/1547). Though the peripatetic scholar was born in
Mecca and lived much of his life in Libya’s Tripoli, his commentary of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl traveled widely
throughout North Africa and the Maghreb.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 297

Regulating prayer through gloss

Six of the eight commentators discuss Khalīl’s opening line regarding the
naked prayer, “He who is incapable.” Egyptian `Abd al-Bāqi al-Zurqānī (d.
1099/1688) begins by relying on Khalīl’s commentary of another fiqh manual,
his al-Tawḍīḥ of Ibn al-Ḥājib, arguing that the obligation to pray with
designated parts of the body covered is contingent on two stipulations: (1)
recognition that one’s shame zones are indeed exposed; and (2) the ability to
conceal them.24 Incapability in this case then refers to the presence and type
of cloth available to the worshiper seeking properly to cover himself, citing
the three classes referenced by Khalīl in the preceding line: (1) ritually clean
(ṭāḥir); (2) silk (ḥarīr); and (3) impure (najis).25 Muhammad b. Aḥmad b.
`Arifa al-Dusūqī (d. 1230/1815), author of perhaps the most famous super
recension of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, explains that `ajaza (the verbal form of
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incapability) refers to an inability, presumably from physical deficiency or an

absence of clothing, to conceal on the body all that is obligatory when
carrying out ritual prayer.26 The subject of al-Dusūqī’s gloss, Aḥmad al-
`Adawī al-Dardīr (d. 1201/1786), clarifies that, in such a state, praying
naked is, in his opinion, a requirement, though the authoritative view of
the Maliki school is that the prayer should be repeated during its specified
time if clothing is later found.27
Egyptians Muhammad b. Aḥmad `Ulaysh (d. 1299/1881) and, nearly a
century later, Ṣāliḥ`Abd al-Samī` al-Ābī al-Azharī narrow the context of
incapacity to concealing one’s major shame zone, or `awra mughallaẓa,
commonly defined as the genitalia and anus.28 Like al-Dardīr, `Ulaysh and
Ṣāliḥ al-Azharī continue that prayer in such a scenario is required, “because
concealing one’s shame zone is not a stipulation of the soundness [ṣiḥḥa] of
the prayer for someone incapable of doing so. The ruling is predicated on
one’s capability.”29
Of the six, al-Dusūqī explains the requirement most thoroughly. He writes
that both ritual purity and concealing the designated parts of the body are
conditions for prayer. Though the loss of ritual purity is sufficient for
invalidating prayer, the same is not true for the loss of one’s covering, or
sātir. In such a context, praying naked remains an obligation. The difference,

24
`Abd al-Bāqi al-Zurqānī, Sharh al-Zurqānī `ala Mukhtaṣar Sīdī Khalīl, vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-
`Ilmiyya, 2002), 324.
25
Ibid., vol. 1, 318.
26
Muhammad b. Aḥmad al-Dusūqī, Ḥāshiyyat al-Dusūqī `ala al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr, vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub
al-`Ilmiyya, 2010), 355.
27
Aḥmad al-Dardīr, Al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr `ala Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Al-Maktaba al-`Asriyya, 2006),
145, 147.
28
This is contrasted by less restrictive prohibitions regarding the minor or literally lighter shame zone, the `awra
mukhaffafa.
29
The text in both is nearly identical. See: Muhammad b. Aḥmad `Ulaysh, Minaḥ al-Jalīl Sharḥ `ala Mukhtaṣar Khalīl,
vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmiyya, 2003), 160; Ṣāliḥ `Abd al-Samī` al-Abī al-Azhari, Jawāhir al-Iklīl
Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmiyya, 1997), 61.
 298 M. STEELE

according to al-Dusāqī, owes to the distinction between correctly performing

prayer and satisfying God's injunction for worship. He explains:
Ritual purity is a condition for the requirement and the correctness of prayer. If
one lacks the things with which they purify their body [sic], the obligation for
prayer no longer pertains. However, the concealment of one’s shame zones in
prayer, provided they realize their undress and are capable of covering it, remains
only a condition of the prayer’s correctness [not its obligation].30

When such prayer is justified, a second question follows. If one prays

naked only to later find cloth sufficient for covering one’s genitals, is the
original unclothed prayer valid? In one of the Khalīl’s oldest published
commentaries, Muhammad b. Aḥmad b. Ghāzī (d. 919/1513) traces the
passage, “lā `ājiz ṣalla `uryānan,” to `Abd al-Raḥman b. al-Qāsim (d. 191/
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806), a close companion of Mālik b. Anas. In a well-known narration

attributed to Ibn al-Qāsim, he explains, “he who is incapable of covering
himself should not repeat his prayer if he finds clothing during the desig-
nated prayer time.”31 This interpretation, by way of a student of Ibn al-
Qāsim’s, found considerable support among Khalīl’s commentators. The
glosses of Egyptian Sālim b. Muhammad al-Sanhūrī (d. 1015/1606) and
Algerian Muṣṭafa b. `Abdullah al-Ramāṣī (d. 1136/1723–4) judged the view
to be the most compelling within the madhhab, as did Ulaysh, who con-
cluded that Ibn al-Rushd (the elder) and Ibn al-Ḥājib verified it themselves.32
The view was not, however, unanimously supported among Khalīl’s com-
mentators. Dissenting voices raised their concern over the narration’s pro-
venance, loudest among them Ibn Ghāzī. He contended that Khalīl’s was not
in fact the majority position of the Maliki school. Instead, he pointed to
Tunisians Abu `Abdullah al-Māzirī (d. 536/1141) and later Muhammad b.
Muhammad b. `Arafa, better known as Ibn `Arafa (d. 803/1401), who argued
that the dominant opinion of the madhhab is precisely the opposite, that
once in possession of clothing, the formerly naked worshiper was obligated
to repeat the prayer if still within the designated period.33
Ibn Ghāzī’s rejection of the view held not only by the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, but the
primary source for Ibn al-Qāsim’s narration, Ibn Rushd’s al-Bayān wa al-Taḥṣīl,
suggests the type of textual criticism often thought to elude the medieval
30
Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 355.
31
Muhammad b. Ghāzī, vol. 1, 198. For one of the original sources of the narration, see: Ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa al-
Taḥṣīl (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1988), 519.
32
Supporting Ibn al-Qāsim’s view, Ibn Rushd writes, “the obligation regarding covering the shame zone is nullified
when one lacks the ability to perform it within the designated prayer time that is the required for correct
[worship].” Al-Amīr found the argument compelling, but still held that repeating the prayer was recommended,
not obligatory. For `Ulaysh, see: Minaḥ al-Jalīl, vol. 1, 161; for al-Amīr, see: Al-Iklīl, vol. 1, 41; for Rushd, see: Al-
Ḥaṭṭāb, vol. 2, 199; for al-Sanhūrī and al-Ramāṣī, see: Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356.
33
Like Ibn Rushd, the reference to al-Māziri is key, as he is one of Khalīl’s four relied-upon authorities cited in the
introduction of his Mukhtaṣar. See: Muhammad b. Ghāzī, Shifā’ al-Ghalīl fī Ḥal Muqfal Khalīl, vol. 1 (Cairo, Egypt:
Markez Najībūwayh, 2008), 173.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 299

commentary genre. That he targets two of the most influential legal sources in the
Maliki school in doing so is not insignificant. Nearly three centuries later, al-Dardīr
“agreed with Ghāzī's conclusion, if not his explanation. Contrary to Khalīl’s stance,
according to al-Dardīr, the stronger opinion holds that the naked prayer indeed be
repeated when possible.34 He arrived at the judgment through analogy with
another case of improper prayer. Al-Dardīr argued that if the dominant view of
the Maliki school held that worship in prohibited clothing was to be repeated when
permissible cloth was later found, the same principle must apply to the case of the
naked prayer as well. The naked worshiper suffered from a state of undress, and
was in violation of the conditions for prayer, more severe than the one in merely
incorrect clothing. Whatever ruling applied to the less significant of the two must
logically also hold for the more flagrant offense. He explains, “The ruling is clear
because the worshiper in silk or unclean clothing was incapable [of covering
themselves in permissible clothing]. If repeating the prayer after finding clothing
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were recommended [in this case], doing so in either silk or unclean cloth is
preferable to conducting the prayer naked. Therefore, it is even more appropriate
(bi'l-awla) for the naked worshiper to repeat his prayer [if cloth is found within
the prescribed time].35 The Moroccan jurist Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Amīr
(d. 1232/1817) agreed. Doing away with al-Dardīr's justification, he distilled the
position to an admirably concise three words in the original Arabic, stating, “the
authoritative opinion: the naked person praying repeats his prayer during the
prayer time [if licit cloth is secured].”36
Al-Zurqānī considered both positions at length earlier in his
commentary.37 In an explanation that al-Dusūqī would later gloss, he writes:

According to Ibn al-Qāsim in his oral transmission to `Īsa, the prayer is not to be
repeated [as Khalīl’s text derives]. In other words, the opinion is not drawn from
al-Mudawwana. Ibn Rushd does not attribute it differently. Al-Māzirī held that the
authoritative opinion of the legal school requires that the prayer be repeated during its
designated time [if cloth was found after completing the naked prayer]. Ibn `Arafa
enjoined his students, “follow al-Māzirī’s opinion.” The author [Khalīl] did not endorse
this view, according to Muhammad b. Aḥmad `Ulaysh. This is based on Khalīl’s
attributing the two previously mentioned narrations [of Ibn al-Qāsim and Ibn Rushd]
to be preponderant (murājiḥayn). Al-Ajhūrī maintained that the authoritative opinion of
the legal school is that the naked prayer should be repeated, in contradiction with that
which the author [Khalīl] adopted.38

34
Al-Dardīr, vol. 1, 145.
35
I would like to thank Abubakar Abdulkadir and Mukhtar Ba for generously discussing the translation of this
passage at length. See: Al-Dardīr, Vol 1, 145.
36
Al-Amīr's view is considerably more concise in its original Arabic. See: Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Amīr, Al-Iklīl
Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, vol. 1 (Cairo, Egypt: Maktabat al-Qāhira al-Ḥadītha, 1975), 40.
37
The question also figures prominently in legal manuals’ discussion of the ritual obligations placed upon
emancipated slaves, as the article will discuss shortly.
38
Al-Zurqānī, vol. 1, 318.
 300 M. STEELE

This distinction in the attribution of legal opinions is significant. Al-Zurqānī

clarifies, as does Ibn Ghāzī, that Ibn al-Qāsim merely narrates his personal opinion
in this instance, not the view of Mālik. Moreover, it is transmitted not by Ibn al-
Qāsim directly, but through his student, `Īsa b. Dīnār al-Qurṭubī (d. 212/827–8).
To scholars who denied Khalīl’s position that the naked prayer was not to be
repeated, this disconnect is critical. Ibn al-Qāsim’s personal narrations of Mālik’s
legal doctrine form the most authoritative of the four chains of transmission
supplying the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl’s primary source text, the Mudawwana. Al-Zurq
ānī is careful to point out that, in this case, Khalīl relies on the secondhand
narration of a student, rather than a view al-Qāsim transmitted to the
Mudawwana’s Saḥnūn himself. Presumably for Ibn Ghāzī, al-Māzirī, `Alī Nūr
al-Dīn al-Ajhūrī (d. 1066/1656), and al-Zurqānī, among others, if admitting the
authority of Ibn al-Qāsim's narrations of Mālik was a prerequisite for treating the
Khalīl, accepting Ibn al-Qāsim's personal views by way of one of his students was
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not39
Writing from eighteenth-century Morocco, Muhammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Mas`ūd
al-Bannānī (d. 1194/1780) returned to the same debate, this time defending Khalīl’s
position that the naked prayer need not be repeated through a critique of Ibn
Ghāzī, al-Zurqānī, and others. Al-Bannānī notes in his ḥāshīya (supercommen-
tary) of al-Zurqānī that scholars sought to verify the latter’s claim that Ibn `Arafa
supported al-Māzirī’s interpretation of the naked prayer. According to al-Bannānī,
they found no such evidence. Instead, they discovered that, among the authorities
in the Maliki school that did follow al-Māzirī’s views generally, `Abd al-Ṣamad b.
Bashīr (d. 526/1132), Ibn al-Shās (d. 616/1219), and Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 73–4/1249)
among them, even they did not concur with his ruling that the naked prayer be
repeated if clothing was found.40
To this dispute Khalīl adds the dilemma of finding clothing while still in the act
of naked prayer. He describes a female slave, her head uncovered, learning of her
emancipation while praying. The scenario is an ingenious one, tying multiple legal
debates together into a single proposition. Because slave women were not required
to cover their heads in prayer, though free women of course were, it is uncertain
whether the girl was required to cover her head while still in the act of praying.
Once she was formally manumitted, there is no such debate. Yet at what point the

39
Interestingly, such a narration figures in the opinion of at least one other commentator regarding the naked
prayer. Shaykh al-Ḥaṭṭāb’s view that the prayer be repeated if cloth is found within the designated prayer time is,
according to al-Dusūqī, based on a narration of Ibn al-Qasim attributed through Mūsa b. Mu`āwīyya. See: Al-
Ḥaṭṭāb, vol. 1, 199; Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356.
40
Ibn al-Ḥājib does in fact make no mention of al-Māzirī when discussing the naked prayer, and though Ibn Shās
mentions al-Māzirī’s al-Talqīn, he does so only in referencing the latter’s explanation regarding the different
positions staking claims in the debate. He interestingly makes no mention of Ibn al-Qasim or the Mudawwana in
doing so, but says only that the disagreement is due to competing views regarding whether covering one’s
shame zones is recommended or obligatory. See: Muhammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Mas`ūd al-Bannānī, al-Fatḥ al-Rabānī
fīmā dhahala `anhu al-Zurqānī, vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmiyya, 2002), 318; Ibn al-Ḥājib,
Mukhtaṣar Ibn al-Ḥājib al-Far`i (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmīyya, 2004), 36; Ibn al-Shās, `Iqd al-Jawāhir
al-Thamīn fī Madhhab `Ālim al-Madīna (Beirut, Lebanon: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2003), 117.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 301

former slave woman could be held accountable for worshiping according to the
stipulations of a free woman is not at all clear.
Al-Dusūqī, `Ulaysh, and Ṣāliḥ al-Azharī begin by specifying what would
constitute the permitted state of undress for a slave woman and, inversely,
the prohibited state for a free woman. They write that Khalīl’s reference to an
uncovered head is one of many such conditions, as were the slave’s uncov-
ered chest, thigh, or shoulder. To the free woman, the covering is obligatory.
But for the slave girl, varying degrees of undress is permissible. This makes
her emancipation in mid-prayer all the more problematic.
The commentators explain that Khalīl’s statement, “they should cover them-
selves if cloth is near,” and finish the prayer if none is present, imposes an
obligation on the slave girl and the unclothed freeperson alike. Sixteenth century
scholar, Muhammad b. `Abd al-Raḥman b. Ḥusayn al-Ru`aynī, better known as
Shaykh al-Ḥaṭṭāb (d. 954/1547), Shaykh al-Ḥaṭṭāb considers the issue in some
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depth.41 Like Khalīl, he argues that the uncovered worshiper who finds clothing
nearby as he prays should stop, conceal his shame zone with the cloth, and only
then resume the prayer.42
The distance of the cloth from the worshiper is significant, a proximity that
commentators debate in later glosses. Ibn Ghāzī, like al-Ḥaṭṭāb, does not specify
how far the clothing could be from the worshiper before it is no longer considered
accessible. Al-Dardīr and the Moroccan Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Amīr limit
the distance to two rows of worshipers in prayer, though the length of such rows is
itself debatable.43 `Ulaysh, al-Dusūqī, and Ṣāliḥ al-Azharī expand the distance to
three, but give no justification for the difference.44 According to al-Dusūqī, how-
ever, Saḥnūn rejected any distinction in the proximity of the clothing to the
uncovered person undertaking prayer. If one discovered clothing as one wor-
shiped, one was obliged, without exception, to stop, find the cloth and cover
oneself, and only then resume one’s prayer. The location of the clothing had no
bearing on whether the obligation remained valid.45
Yet most naked prayers presumably did not end with the discovery of
clothing. In such cases, how should worship be performed? If surrounded by
others also dispossessed of clothing—in a convoy attacked by brigands, for
example—how were the worshipers expected to carry out their ritual obliga-
tion? The scenario is a popular one among medieval legists on the one hand,
individual prayer would seem to ignore the desirability of communal wor-
ship, while, on the other, collective prayer would seem to make concealing
one’s shame zones all but impossible.

41
Al-Ḥaṭṭāb, vol. 2. 199.
42
According to Khalīl, once cloth is found nearby, there is no need for the prayer to be repeated.
43
Al-Dardīr, vol. 1, 148; Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 357; Al-Amīr, vol. 1, 41.
44
`Ulaysh, vol. 1, 161; Ṣāliḥ al-Abī al-Azhari, vol. 1, 61.
45
Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356.
 302 M. STEELE

Al-Zurqānī, al-Dardīr, and al-Amīr explain that gathering in darkness

through extinguishing any form of light is incumbent on such a group.46 Al-
Zurqānī clarifies the requirement, noting that light from either the sun or
moon would invalidate the group’s prayer. `Ulaysh adds that sufficient
darkness may be obtained through the setting of the sun, or the absence of
light in an enclosed area—a cave, for example.47 In his Mukhtaṣar, Khalīl
himself equates darkness with the concealment provided by clothing, enjoin-
ing the naked group to pray in the absence of light as it would if it was fully
clothed. His phrase “as the concealed” is taken by `Ulaysh as a recommenda-
tion that the prayer leader would, as in a normal scenario, move to the front
of the congregation while the remaining members of the group would form
rows behind him. Each would stand, bow, and prostrate as usual.48
In lieu of a material veil, the commentators argue that darkness provided the
key, albeit non-material, cover for concealing the group’s shame zones.49 When
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praying under the cover of darkness was not possible, as Isḥāq implies in “wa
illā,” the commentators agree that the group must separate, with conditions, and
carry out the prayer individually. Here, the texts of al-Zurqānī, al-Dardīr, and
`Ulaysh are nearly identical, all three writing that the need to pray alone is
required. If a congregant was to pray individually while still having the capability
to cover his shame zones, the prayer must be repeated. Though the three relay
identical passages supporting this opinion, written first by al-Zurqānī, all but
`Ulaysh append different justifications of the ruling. Al-Dardīr hesitates to stake
a clear position, noting simply that whether the naked prayer is invalidated once
clothing is found remains undetermined among jurists.50 Al-Zurqānī is more
convinced, arguing that the responsibilities of the group are no different from
those of the individual; whether alone or with others, obtaining the capability to
conceal one’s `awra requires that prayers completed while in impermissible
undress must be repeated within the prescribed period.51
If neither praying under the cover of darkness nor outside of the view of
other congregants were possible, the group was to pray together while

46
Al-Dardīr notes that complete darkness is necessary unless otherwise mitigated by extenuating circumstances. Al-
Amīr uses the same morphological root, but in its verbal form, implying that darkness is required unless finding
such a space posed some danger to the congregant. See: Al-Dardīr, vol. 1, 355; Al-Amīr, vol. 1, 41.
47
Al-Dusūqī calls the latter “darkness of a place,” rather than specifying a cave. To these, Ṣaliḥ al-Abī al-Azhari adds
the term jubb, or pit. For `Ulaysh, see Minaḥ al-Jalīl, vol. 1, 160; for al-Dusūqī, see Ḥāshiyyat al-Dusūqī `ala al-Shar
ḥ al-Kabīr, vol. 1, 355; for Ṣāliḥ al-Abī al-Azhari, see Jawāhir al-Iklīl, vol. 1, 61.
48
`Ulaysh, vol. 1, 160.
49
Earlier in the same chapter, Isḥāq explains the problem of fixing one’s gaze at the prohibited body parts of a
congregant engaged even in fully clothed prayer. He writes, “Prayer is correct if without silk or gold, or without
glancing or gazing at that which is prohibited.” Writing in the sixteenth century, Muhammad b. Ghāzī clarifies the
different opinions of what would be prohibited in such a scenario, explaining that the prohibited space
(muḥarram) for affixing one's gaze included the shame zone of the worshiper in front of him, the prayer leader
at the front of the group, and even his own genitalia. Less clear, however, was whether glancing at any of the
three, even forgetfully or without illicit intent, invalidated the prayer. For Khalīl’s passage, see: Mukhtaṣar al-
`Alāma Khalīl, 27; for Ibn Ghāzī, see: Shifā’ al-Ghalīl fī Ḥal Muqfal Khalīl, vol. 1, 199.
50
Al-Dardīr, vol. 1, 147.
51
Al-Zurqānī, vol. 1, 324.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 303

standing.52 Al-Amīr distills the ruling into simply the reply, “single line.”53
Al-Dardīr, whose commentary no doubt informed al-Amīr’s view,
describes the congregants in one horizontal line, the prayer leader posi-
tioned between, rather than in front of, them. With eyes cast away from
the shame zones of themselves and others, the group’s members remained
upright and prayed without bowing or prostrating.54 For at least four of
the commentators, the makeshift prayer was considered satisfactory, unless
clothing or darkness arrived during the same specified time of worship. If
such a case does occur, the group is required to repeat the prayer properly
covered.55
The group may, of course, encounter a cloth sufficiently large for only
one of its members. Faced with the scenario, commentators could advo-
cate for group prayer or for concealing the shame zones of worshipers,
but not both. Khalīl writes that if a member possesses clothing among a
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group otherwise naked, he is to share it by lending it to them so that

they can satisfy their obligation for ritual prayer. Yet where the collective
prayer, even naked, was preferred to the individual one, `Ulaysh, and
more briefly al-Amīr, explain that, in this case, Khalīl enjoins worship to
be carried out individually, each member covering himself with the cloth
and rotating one after another as time allowed. In doing so, al-Zurqānī
injects a typology of possession familiar to students of Islamic law else-
where, distinguishing cloths possessed by single and multiple owners and
the different rights to usage that each enjoys, presumably through rent-
ing or lending. Al-Bannānī rejects any equivalence between the types of
possession—impossible to avoid in al-Zurqānī’s list—arguing that there
is in fact no ambiguity over who would use the cloth in cases of
simultaneous ownership. In such examples, the holder of the cloth’s
usage rights rather than its physical owner would be given the first
chance to pray with it.56
Al-Zurqānī and later `Ulaysh concede that if the designated time for prayer
was soon expiring, or a dispute emerged over who was to borrow the clothing
first, the group would draw lots in order to determine who would pray clothed.
The possessor of the cloth would, according to al-Zurqānī, first pray with his
shame zones covered, before lending the cloth to others and sitting naked while
others complete their prayers. He cites support for drawing lots from one of
Khalīl’s students and first commentators, Yūsuf b. Khālid al-Basāṭī (d. 829/

52
Al-Zurqānī, al-Dusūqī and `Ulaysh envision these scenarios in confined spaces such as boats, areas of endemic
crime, and environments rife with predatory animals.
53
Al-Amīr, vol. 1, 41.
54
Al-Zurqānī cites the opinion of al-Basāṭī in holding that the ruku` (bowing) and sujud (prostration) would be done
while standing. See al-Zurqānī, vol. 1, 325.
55
`Ulaysh, vol. 1, 160; Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356; Ṣāliḥ al-Abī al-Azhari, vol. 1, 61.
56
Muhammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Mas`ūd al-Bannānī, al-Fatḥ al-Rabānī fīmā dhahala `anhu al-Zurqānī, vol. 1 (Beirut,
Lebanon: Dār al-Kutub al-`Ilmiyya, 2002), 326.
 304 M. STEELE

1426). Al-Basāṭī maintained that if a previously naked member completed his

obligatory prayer before arriving at the cloth loaned between members, they
were to repeat the prayer, shame zones covered, provided they remained within
the designated time of prayer.57 According to `Ulaysh, in the event that neither
solution worked, the members were to pray naked so that they would avoid
neglecting altogether their ritual obligation.58

Development in the margins: Reimagining the Khalīl and

commentary
The discussion began with the story of the boy losing his pants and the
Prophet scolding him for public nudity. Generations later, this account
would find itself included in a bourgeoning Sunni hadith canon. The corpus,
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alongside the Quran, provided jurists the material from which they trans-
formed the revealed word into a practicable system of law. Status and
hierarchy, public and private, and gender and sexuality, were frequently
defined through licit and illicit uses of the body; the social was deeply
imbricated in administering the physical.
The paradigmatic manual of the Maliki school, the fourteenth-century
Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, suggests an understanding of ritual obligation and physi-
cal modesty that is intertwined in complicated ways. The Mukhtaṣar Khalīl
and its glosses are presented here for two purposes. The first explores the
makings of a legal literary genre, the medieval fiqh manual and its attendant
commentary. By putting the glosses in conversation with one another, the
study hopes to present a clearer picture of the dynamism too often ignored in
post-formative Maliki law. Despite their neglect in the academy, the com-
mentaries of the Khalīl, and presumably glosses in the Islamic tradition
elsewhere, are far from the stolid, endlessly repetitive formulas of their
frequent caricature.59
The selections presented here vary widely not just in style, but in sub-
stance. A passage typically glossed by Egyptians al-Dardīr, al-Amīr, and
`Ulaysh is instructive. The latter two were almost certainly familiar with al-
Dardīr’s commentary of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl. That they rarely felt it neces-
sary to cite the text attributed to him suggests that their audience likely was
as well. Yet even in their transmitting nearly identical glosses of the same
passage, significant differences emerge. Al-Amīr characteristically did not
include the concluding rejoinders of other commentators in his text, while
`Ulaysh frequently explored material ignored by al-Dardīr. In this sense, each
was in conversation with the others in the most literal sense possible as they
57
Ibid.
58
`Ulaysh, vol. 1, 161.
59
For an outstanding, though still rare, study of medieval Islamic commentaries, see the Oriens special volume (41)
on the ḥāshīya coedited by Asad Ahmed and Margaret Larkin in 2013.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 305

chose from whom their glosses would draw upon, and who they would
ignore, or worse, take to task.
Such critique is most visible in the work on which much of al-Dardīr relies,
fellow eighteenth-century jurist Muhammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Bannānī’s super com-
mentary of `Abd al-Bāqī al-Zurqānī. Both al-Bannānī and al-Zurqānī were hardly
cautious in pointing out the inadequacies of earlier jurisprudents.60 Al-Bannānī
argued that not only were many of al-Zurqānī’s views unconvincing, but much of
the literature rejecting Khalīl’s view that the naked prayer not be repeated was
simply wrong. He alleged that, despite the common refrain, the prevailing opinion
offered by twelfth-century scholar al-Māzirī was, in fact, not supported three
centuries later by Ibn `Arafa.61 Al-Bannānī continued that al-Zurqānī’s grasp of
Khalīl’s distinction between standing and seated prayer was questionable, while
his analogy between worship without water or soil and naked prayer was, "held by
no one."62
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If al-Bannānī’s intervention was surprising, it was not uncommon. Ibn

Ghāzī, al-Zurqānī, and later al-Dusūqī all remark on the ways in which Khalīl
and his commentators evaluate the opinions attributed to Mālik. In a type of
isnad criticism not usually expected of later fiqh manuals, al-Dusūqī notes
that the dispute over whether the naked prayer is to be repeated if clothing is
found, largely hinges on two narrations of Ibn al-Qāsim’s personal opinion.
The first, transmitted by `Īsa b. Dīnār al-Qurṭubī, maintained that the prayer
need not be repeated within its designated time. The second, narrated
by Mūsa b. Mu`āwīyya, affirmed the opposite, that the prayer must be
completed again. Though glosses of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl generally accepted
the authority of Ibn al-Qāsim’s narrations of Mālik’s legal opinions through
the Mudawwana, there was little consensus regarding narrations that fell
short of that standard. In such cases, methods for reconciling contradicting
views attributed to the same authority, as with Ibn al-Qāsim, varied widely.
Commentators were likewise conflicted regarding how strong the injunction
to conceal one’s `awra should in fact be, a question treated by nearly every
gloss and given particular resonance with Ibn Ghāzī’s use of al-Māzirī in
challenging the view of Khalīl. More practically, they also found themselves
divided over the maximum distance a cloth could be located from a naked
worshiper while still being considered proximal. Al-Dardīr and al-Amīr limited
the distance to two rows of congregants, while `Ulaysh, al-Dusūqī, and Ṣāliḥ
al-Azharī added a third. Yet for Saḥnūn, by way of the Mudawwana, there was
no valid distinction between a near or far cloth; worship was to be temporarily

60
See, for example, al-Zurqānī’s reminder that Khalīl’s argument that the newly clothed worshiper was not required
to repeat his prayer did not in fact derive from the Mudawwana.
61
Al-Bannānī, vol. 1, 318.
62
Al-Zurqānī claimed that the injunction to conceal one’s shame zones in prayer was conditional, not absolute, as
were the requirements regarding a worshiper who performs tayammum (ablutions with dust) only to discover
water sufficient for ablutions while completing the prayer. See: Ibid., vol. 1, 324–325.
 306 M. STEELE

suspended until the cloth was located and used properly to cover one’s shame
zones.
The views of the commentators point to evolving notions of body, ritual,
and society in late Maliki positive law. The Mukhtaṣar Khalīl and its recen-
sions present a narrative in which the consequence of neglecting prayer is
continually measured against the risk posed by sexual and, more broadly,
moral transgression. Whether worshiping in darkness or gesturing while
standing, illicit nudity is, in the commentaries, taken very much to be a
threat to the community as much as the individual.
Al-Dusūqī best explains the risks involved in a worshiper praying naked. By
maintaining the preference for collective prayer over the possibility for exposing
one’s shame zone to another congregant, Khalīl privileges the desirability of group
prayer. He notes that neither option—prayer in solitude or collective worship—
mitigated the likelihood that members of the group would be exposed to others,
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writing, “if they were to pray individually, some of them would [still] see on others
that which they would view were they to pray together. [Therefore] group prayer is
preferable.”63
Even if inevitable, what was the consequence for viewing another’s `awra
in prayer? Al-Dusūqī considers the question through al-Dardīr’s reading of
Khalīl. Al-Dardīr argued that the prayers of the naked group were not
invalidated by the mere visibility of a worshipers’ shame zones, but rather
only when gazing at their `awra was intentional. He explained that averting
one’s gaze from shame zones was a means for avoiding unnecessary sexual
desire. It did not, however, vitiate the need for concealing prohibited areas of
the body altogether. Al-Dusūqī clarifies the stipulation, arguing, “The reli-
gious obligation applied to the group [is contingent] on their [sic] being
incapable of concealing the prohibited areas of their bodies. Averting their
gaze is obligatory in order to safeguard their vision. The most extreme case is
that they would abandon without condition the obligation to cast their gaze
away from shame zones.”64 This, according to al-Dusūqī, is the position of al-
Bannānī, contradicting that of seventeenth-century Azhari scholar `Alī al-
Ajhūrī, who writes, “Refraining from averting the gaze nullifies prayer
because averting one’s eyes is the equivalent of the cover concealing one’s
shame zone. For he who abstains from averting his gaze becomes like the
worshiper who has the ability to clothe himself, but chooses to pray naked.”65
al-Dusūqī continues that although deliberately gazing upon a shame zone
violates the prayer according to al-Dardīr, the authoritative position of the
Maliki school is best expressed in the view of Ibn ʿArafa. The fourteenth-

63
Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356.
64
Ibid.
65
`Ulaysh largely follows the logic of al-Dardīr, writing that failing to avert one’s gaze did not invalidate the prayer,
though it was not recommended, except in the case of intending to look at the shame zones of one’s own or the
prayer leader’s body. See: Ibid.; `Ulaysh, vol. 1, 161.
 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 307

century Tunisian scholar, according to al-Dusūqī, claimed that only through

intending to look at the prohibited body part and also receiving sexual
pleasure in doing so would the prayer be invalidated.66
Ibn `Arafa’s qualification raises a third point in the literature, the rela-
tional nature of undress. Khalīl’s commentators reveal that nakedness or, at
minimum, the prohibitions associated with it, was hardly universal.
Determining whose nakedness was at issue and what constituted being
unclothed were rarely simple. Stipulations for performing naked prayer
alone were of course different than those in a group, as were conditions of
gender and class. The manumitted woman of Khalīl’s passage was to stop her
prayer and cover herself not because her state of undress increased while
praying, but because the social implications of doing so were too significant
to ignore. After her emancipation, she was no longer a member of the slave
class. Worshiping as if she were would both void her prayer, as the ritual
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obligations imposed upon free and enslaved women were not the same, and
perhaps as importantly, would undermine a visible marker between free and
unfree. It was precisely in her transgression of class and gender that made
such a prayer so threatening.
Yet even with the naked prayer of the slave, striking a balance between
social order and ritual obligation was not an easy task. Ibn Ghāzī reminds his
reader that, in his al-Tawḍīḥ, Khalīl argues that the `awras of slave women
were to be clothed no differently than those of free men, though still less than
free marriageable women. Both were to conceal the area running from their
thighs to their waists. Nevertheless if the sight of the slave girl’s body aroused
the desire of men for whom she has no licit relation, the body must,
according to Khalīl, be covered to avoid the moral disorder she poses.67
Such logic lays bare the difficulty faced by scholars to balance ritual distinc-
tions with social stability. One could imagine the sight of the slave girl’s
exposed head posing the same illicit sexual desires that Ibn Ghāzī attributes
to her uncovered body, requiring that it too would need to be covered. Yet
doing so would violate the boundaries distinguishing free woman and slave,
while refraining to cover the girl would jeopardize sexual and moral
boundaries.
The Mukhtaṣar Khalīl illustrates well the ways in which jurists confronted
such a dilemma. Displaying little of the repetition expected of a medieval
legal gloss, the Khalīl’s commentators found in the text’s margins a space for
reimagining the boundaries of authority and consensus in Maliki thought.
The recensions presented here reveal the ways in which that space differed
significantly from common notions of positive law and legal gloss. From Ibn

66
Al-Dusūqī, vol. 1, 356.
67
Muhammad b. Ghāzī, vol. 1, 171. In addition to his al-Tawḍīḥ, Khalīl’s considers prayer among free versus slave
women at relative length in his Mukhtaṣar as well. For that discussion, see the first half of his chapter on satr al-
`awra.
 308 M. STEELE

Ghāzī to Ṣāliḥ al-Azharī, the Khalīl’s commentary tradition reveals a culture

of dispute and ingenuity rarely associated with legal manuals. It suggests that
the assumption that medieval Islamic scholarship was characterized by an
extended period of decline is, at minimum, in need of reconsideration. While
legal glosses may be unique, the experience of the Mukhtaṣar Khalīl reveals
that they are far from the lifeless repetitions of their stereotype; furū, as with
commentary and abridgement, are overdue for serious treatment in the
academy. It is hoped that this article is a small contribution toward doing so.

Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Baber Johansen for inspiring the topic of this article. His generous
feedback and exhaustive knowledge of Islamic law have improved the work immeasurably.
Downloaded by [Matthew Steele] at 19:08 08 November 2017

Funding
The author was a recipient of a 2016 Moroccan Studies Research Grant to support work that
resulted in this article. The author was a recipient of a 2016 ASMEA Research Grant to
support work that resulted in this article.

Notes on contributor
Matthew Steele is a Ph.D. student in Islamic Studies at Harvard University. His research
centers on Islamic law and knowledge practices in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Sudan,
Mauritania, and Guinea. Matthew has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and archival
research in Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, and Sudan. His research
has been funded by the West African Research Association (WARA), U.S. Department of
Education, Dartmouth College, and Harvard’s Center for African Studies and Islamic Legal
Studies Program.