Sharh al-Wiqaya is a commentary on the text Wiqaya al-Riwaya li Masa’il al-Hidaya by the maternal grandfather, Shaykh Mahmud b. Ahmad al-Mahbubi. The Wiqaya is one of the four main primers in the Hanafi school that function as a means to preserve the narrated positions of Imam Abu Hanifa. It was written as a summary of the rulings discussed in the Hidaya, which itself is a commentary of Bidaya al-Mubtabi, a text penned by al-Marghinani to summarise Mukhtasar al-Quduri and Imam Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Shaybani’s al-Jami’ al-Saghir.

Sharh al-Wiqaya, therefore, is a very valuable text in the sense that it follows the stream of rulings that work up from the Matan of al-Quduri to al-Hidaya and its commentaries. The text doesn’t do much to decipher the matan it is based off, but the conclusions and points is presents based on the matan are very valuable. Indeed, the Ottomans considered master of this text sufficient qualification for someone to be appointed as a judge.

It has a large number of supercommentaries, some of which are in print today. The most useful and available of which is ‘Umda al-Ri’aya by Shaykh ‘Abd al-Hayy al-Laknawi, which clarifies the text and expands its discussions to include key explanations, reasoning, and alternative stances in the Hanafi school.

This text was a main part of many curricula, being placed after one of the basic primers and before the study of al-Hidaya. Therefore, it is the perfect entry point to the higher texts of the Hanafi school.