and if they seek diversion through speech, let that speech likewise benefit their intellect and their religion—namely, the science of inheritance (farāʾiḍ).
The science of farāʾiḍ is of two kinds: (1) legal rulings and (2) calculation.
The legal rulings are themselves three tiers:
- Knowledge of the rulings according to the doctrine of a particular school of jurists—this is the first level.
- Knowledge of the statements of the Companions and later scholars regarding points on which they differed.
- Knowledge of the proofs for those rulings drawn from the Qur’an and the Sunnah.
As for the arithmetic of farāʾiḍ, it comprises identifying the basic denominators of estate problems, adjusting them, handling successive inheritances (munāsakhāt), and distributing the estate shares. The discipline has a well-established methodology for that, set out in specialized works. This entire second branch is an intelligible science grasped by reason, just as the math of commercial transactions and other practical calculations is grasped by reason.
They have also mentioned the reckoning of unknown quantities, known as “algebra and restoration” (al-jabr wa’l-muqābalah). The science itself is ancient, but the earliest person known to have applied it to wills, cyclical estate questions, and the like was Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazmī. Some people claim that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—may Allah be pleased with him—spoke on the subject and learned further aspects of it from a Jew; this is a false accusation against ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him.