The treatise preserved in this manuscript, <em>Al-Luma‘al-yasīra fī ‘ilm al-hisāb </em>(The little sparkles on the science of calculation), deals with Muslim inheritance. Of the social innovations that came with the Islamic conquest, the introduction of the system of <em>fara'id </em>(shares) for inheritances was one of the most radical and socially advanced. The fourth <em>surah</em> of the Qur'an, verses 11–12, criticizes the traditional pre-Islamic system of agnatic succession, under which only men could inherit property, and provides for a proportional division among all the heirs, women included. The exact reckoning of the shares of inheritance became a delicate and complex subject within Islamic law, and Muslim intellectuals devised mathematical tools to simplify the calculations implied in the <em>‘ilm al-fara'id </em>(the science of the shares). This work, written in the last years of the 14th century, is a contribution on this subject by Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ha’im (1356–1412). The treatise is not confined to problems of inheritance: Ibn al-Ha’im introduces his arguments with extensive passages on numbers, their types and different features, and devotes most of the work to discussing multiplication (<em>darb</em>) and division (<em>qisma</em>).
<br>Arabic manuscripts; Inheritance and succession; Islamic law; Islamic manuscripts; Mathematics, Arab
Ibn al-Hāʼim, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, around 1356-1412
between 1390 and 1399 <div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1390-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1390-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1399-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
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