Legal Rulings and Maliki Jurisprudence

Ash-Shinqiti brought a Maliki jurisprudential background to Adwa al-Bayan, and this affiliation shapes his treatment of legal verses. However, his approach to fiqh in the tafsir is more Salafi than strictly Maliki in its methodology: he follows the evidence (dalil) wherever it leads rather than mechanically applying any single school's positions.

For verses dealing with ritual worship, ash-Shinqiti begins by establishing the Quranic basis of each ruling and then examines how the Sunnah elaborates it. His cross-Quranic method applies here too — he gathers all verses bearing on a given act of worship before assessing what the combined Quranic testimony establishes and where the Sunnah fills in the details.

His treatment of the purity (tahara) verses illustrates this well. Rather than simply stating Maliki positions on the conditions and procedure of ablution, ash-Shinqiti works through each element of the Quranic command (5:6), examining what the Arabic verbs and their objects determine about the nature and extent of washing and wiping required. He then brings in the relevant Sunnah to establish what the Quran leaves unspecified.

On the contentious issue of touching women nullifying ablution — a point of difference between the Shafi'i position (which holds that any touching nullifies) and the Hanbali/Maliki position (which requires lustful intent) — ash-Shinqiti examines the Arabic phrase in the ablution verse that refers to 'touching women,' surveying the range of early scholarly interpretations and the hadith evidence before presenting what he considers the most defensible position.

For the verse on the direction of prayer, ash-Shinqiti applies his characteristic method: he assembles all Quranic passages related to the qiblah, documents the change in direction from Jerusalem to Makkah as described in the Quran itself, and then examines what this reveals about the conditions under which divine legislation can develop and be revised within the Quranic framework.