An Unexpected Member of the Mālikī muḫtaṣars list: Tuḥfat al-ḥukkām by Abū Bakr Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀṣim (Granada 760/1359-829/1426)

Abstract This article addresses a work titled Tuḥfat al-ḥukkām fī nukat al-ʿuqūd wa-l-aḥkām (“A gift for judges”, book on delicate details of legal documents and judgments). Also known as al-ʿĀṣimiyya , this is a compilation of Mālikī legal maxims condensed in 1698 verses in raǧaz metre by the Andalusi scholar Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀṣim (Granada 760/1359-829/1426). Apart from arguing why I think the Tuḥfa can be treated as a muḫtaṣar my aim is to expand our present understanding of the historical and intellectual context of its emergence in Nasrid Granada and its reproduction in the form of commentaries and super-commentaries elsewhere in the Islamic realm. By paying attention to the information provided by library catalogs about preserved copies of the Tuḥfa I’ll try to reconstruct where possible the different routes of its transmission over space and time. Context and content are examined to elucidate the reasons for the Tuḥfa ’s extraordinary success and its canonization as one if not the foremost Mālikī compilation on judicial practice and procedural rulings. Resorting to two commentaries of the Tuḥfa , that by the author’s son, Abū Yaḥyā Ibn ʿĀṣim (d. 857/1453) and that by the famous scholar from Fez known as Mayyāra (d. 1072/1662), I’ll also provide keys to assess the contribution of the Tuḥfa to the tendency towards the standardization and codification of Islamic legal doctrine. In the Appendix I provide the English translation of a section of the Tuḥfa dealing with the crime of rape. This is followed by examples of how this text relates to some earlier Mālikī treatments of rape, on the one hand, and of how some later commentators of the Tuḥfa addressed the import of this section.