Our method
What this site is, where its rulings come from, and what it does not claim.
What Tibyān is
An encyclopedia that gives, for every question, the ruling of each of the four schools — Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī — with its references, in five languages.
Its aim is that every reader finds the school they follow and reads its ruling as its own jurists settled it — not that readers weigh the schools against each other to pick a winner. All four are sound, and a layperson follows a school rather than choosing between opinions on their own.
Where the rulings come from
Every ruling is attributed to one of the school's recognised reference works — al-Mudawwanah and Mawāhib al-Jalīl for the Mālikīs, al-Hidāyah and Radd al-Muḥtār for the Ḥanafīs, al-Majmūʿ and Minhāj al-Ṭālibīn for the Shāfiʿīs, al-Mughnī and Kashshāf al-Qināʿ for the Ḥanbalīs, among others. The full list is on the Sources page.
The list is closed: nothing outside it is cited, and no book is attributed to a school it does not belong to. What is shown for each school is its authoritative position — not a minority view and not an individual opinion.
What the badges mean
Beside a school's name you may see the ruling's grade — obligatory (farḍ), required (wājib), sunnah, recommended, permissible, disliked, forbidden — or its structural role: pillar, condition, cause, impediment. Tapping it shows the definition as that particular school uses it, because one term can mean different things in different schools.
Many questions carry no badge on purpose: when ʿaṣr begins, how much water counts as "a lot", who counts as a resident — these have no normative grade, and a badge on them would mislead.
How entries are written and reviewed
Every entry is written in Arabic first, from the school's books, then reviewed for juristic accuracy, then translated into English, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian, each translation checked by a native speaker. No entry is published with any of the five languages missing.
If a ruling is corrected or a reference replaced after publication, the entry shows a "revised" badge for three days, with the reason. Spelling and translation fixes carry no badge.
Not a fatwa service
Tibyān presents what a school has settled on a question in its general form. Your own situation may carry a detail that changes the ruling. Ask a scholar you trust where you live about what concerns you, and bring what you read here to that conversation.
If you spot a mistake — in a ruling, an attribution or a translation — every entry has a report link at the bottom, and every report is looked into.