The School of Madinah

Starting with the Muwatta’ of Imam Malik, Diwan Press has had a longstanding commitment to bring the works of the school of People of Madinah to press. These two works are two practical manuals on making the basics of Islam accessible and known. They both emerged from dynamic movements which revived Islam at points in which it had fallen into decay and corruption, which makes them doubly interesting for us in our time.

The Foundations of Islam

Qadi ‘Iyad

The first of our books is from Qadi ‘Iyad of the historical Murabitun movement of North Africa and Spain which revived Islam there after it had become decadent and the Muslims had fallen into internecine conflict.

The Foundations of Islam is the translation by Aisha Bewley of Qadi ‘Iyad's al-I‘lam bi Qawa‘id al-Islam, which summarises the essential knowledge of the five pillars of Islam in an easy memorable form. It is transmitted here from the practice of the People of Madinah by Qadi ‘Iyad who is one of the pillars of scholarship whose works on hadith and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, are relied upon by Muslims in both the east and the west.

Handbook on Islam, Iman, Ihsan

Shaykh Uthman dan Fodio

The very title of this book is illuminating, for this is the three-dimensional Islam that emerged from Madinah and was the light for the whole of the west, from the Bilad as-Sudan, including Nigeria, right up to Andalus, modern-day Spain, an Islam that holds law, spirituality and a clear intellectual tradition in balance.

This book then is another manual, a handbook on the practice of Islam, on the parameters of what needs to be known about Allah and His Messengers, and on the Sufic path of purification of the heart and self from the qualities that obscure their luminous reality and which veil them from Allah.