Resources for ITIS

Official biography with links to the Dar al-Rayyan online learning portal and the instructor's other series.

The instructor introduces the three core disciplines (creed, law, spirituality and ethics) and how they fit together; the closest free video analogue to this course's orientation.

Collected talks by the instructor including the Theology/Law/Ethics workshop and his Ghazali-based classes.

About 9 hours in 3 modules by the instructor: essentials of creedal theology, law, and spirituality, with attention to modern challenges. Paid access.

The instructor's current biweekly podcast on education, history, religion, and the loss of sacred knowledge in the modern age.

Series on spiritual development, Ghazali's Ihya and Ibn Ata'illah's Hikam; useful for the tasawwuf strand of the course.

192-page accessible English commentary on al-Dardir's short creed with the instructor's foreword. For purchase; may be out of stock.

Free 14-page English rendering of al-Dardir's 71-line creedal poem, the standard Azhari primer discussed in the book.

Free 12-lesson course explaining al-Dardir's Kharida line by line, with downloadable English translation, Arabic text, and commentaries.

Short biography and list of works. Companion page on the poem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kharida_al-Bahiyya

Beginner map of the Islamic sciences organized by their methodological foundations, and why qualified scholarly disagreement exists.

Quick enumeration of the religious sciences with the Arabic terms; a first orientation and vocabulary list.

Classic essay explaining why the schools of law exist and the roles of ijtihad and taqlid; directly relevant to al-Dardir's Maliki work.

Explains tasawwuf as one of the sacred-law sciences alongside fiqh and creed; background for the book's chapter on al-Dardir's synthesis.

14-page paper on how Islamic jurisprudence historically harmonized sacred law with local culture.

Introductory lecture on what hadith are, how they were collected and graded.

Lecture arguing that the chain of transmission is the backbone of normative Islam and explaining what its modern breakdown means for religious authority.

Discussion of Zaytuna's series of translated primers; a good orientation to how the primer-plus-commentary texts are taught today.

Overview of the license to transmit and teach, its origins in hadith transmission, and types.

Annotated reading list covering the classic scholarship on madrasa education (Makdisi, Rosenthal, al-Zarnuji, Ibn Jama'a).

Concise open-access chapter tracing al-Azhar from Fatimid mosque to major Sunni university.

Large A-Z glossary of Arabic terms across creed, law, hadith and tasawwuf with Arabic script and brief definitions.

Compact teaching glossary focused on fiqh and usul al-fiqh vocabulary, built for English-speaking law students.

Accessible account of chain criticism, narrator evaluation and corroboration; the best free written primer on the hadith sciences.

Open-access article on the ijaza as a personal certificate, its types, and its role in the madrasa system.

Short essay showing how synopsis, commentary and gloss complement one another to preserve and renew a school's tradition.

Interview about how print culture reshaped the canon of classical Islamic texts; a natural 'what came after' companion to Islam Before Modernity.

Official publisher page with the full table of contents of the assigned text.

The freely downloadable doctoral thesis from which the assigned book was developed, with the same five-chapter structure. Direct PDF: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/ndownloader/files/56750843

Scholarly survey of kalam and falsafa positions on God's existence, creation, prophecy and divine attributes.

Key Maliki-focused article explaining why post-classical jurists adopted taqlid and the synopsis genre; essential context for Khalil's Mukhtasar and al-Dardir's commentaries.

Open-access chapter on how Azhar scholars resisted Ottoman innovations, illustrating the mediating role the book highlights in al-Dardir's career.