Over the past few months, Dr Haidar Hobballah has published a series of important works that continue to enrich Islamic intellectual and legal discourse. These publications highlight his commitment to exploring pressing questions in Islamic law, Qur’anic studies, and modern religious thought.
Expanding the Boundaries of Sharīʿa – Volumes One & Two
Drawing on around 120 advanced seminary lectures (bahth al-khārij) delivered in Qom during the 2017–2018 academic year, Dr Hobballah’s exploration of the scope of Sharīʿa has now been compiled into a three-volume Persian series by his students, Shaykh Saeed Noora and Shaykh Mostafa Mahdavi Arjamand.
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Volume One (397 pages) critically examines the foundations and evidence of the “maximalist” approach to Sharīʿa.
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Volume Two (281 pages), released in June 2025, tests this approach against lived realities, assessing the effectiveness of jurisprudential strategies when navigating social and legal change.
Both volumes were published by the Taha Institute Publishing House, with the third expected soon.
Analytical Commentary on Minhāj al-Ṣāliḥīn
In July 2025, Dr Haidar Hobballah released the first two volumes of al-Taʿlīqa ʿalā Minhāj al-Ṣāliḥīn, a critical commentary on the renowned legal manual of Sayyid Abū al-Qāsim al-Khūʾī. Spanning nearly 1,200 pages, these volumes represent a major scholarly contribution to contemporary Shīʿī jurisprudence. Volume One (634 pages) and Volume Two (596 pages) cover the chapters on ijtihād and taqlīd, ṭahārah (purity), and the opening sections of ṣalāh (prayer), with subsequent volumes set to continue from the rulings on congregational prayer.
Written in a seminary style, the work goes beyond simply explicating al-Khūʾī’s arguments by critically engaging with broader jurisprudential assumptions. Among the issues revisited are the “third testimony” in the adhān and iqāmah, burial practices in Najaf, definitions of ritual purity and impurity, the qualifications required for issuing fatwas, and the traditional classification of certain items as impure. Together, these volumes highlight Dr Hobballah’s rigorous and often independent legal reasoning, situating his work as both a continuation of and a challenge to dominant currents within Shīʿī legal thought.
Qur’anic Language and the Layers of Meaning
Another recent publication is Qur’anic Language: Between Conventionality and Transcendence, and the Notion of the Layers of Meaning in the Qur’an. Edited and transcribed by Dr Mohammad Khalil Tarraf, this 128-page volume captures Dr Hobballah’s academic lectures on the language of the Qur’an.
The work asks whether the Qur’an’s language is symbolic, rooted in the conventions of 7th-century Arabic, or distinct in its own linguistic system. It also delves deeply into the concept of buṭūn al-Qurʾān (inner layers of meaning), surveying hadith reports and analysing ten major scholarly theories on how these layers should be understood.
Published in Beirut by the Islamic Cultural Centre (Imamain al-Hasanayn Complex), the book provides both a historical overview and a fresh critical perspective.
Questions and Dialogues with Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah
In June 2025, Dr Haidar Hoballah published Questions and Religious Inquiries with the Eminent Religious Authority, Allama Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah.
The book compiles written dialogues between Dr Hobballah and Sayyed Fadlallah (d. 2010), conducted over five years in the 1990s. These exchanges cover belief, Qur’anic exegesis, history, hadith, jurisprudence, and uṣūl al-fiqh.
Reflecting the concerns of youth and intellectuals of the time, Hobballah’s questions were met with bold and precise responses from Fadlallah, making this book a rich record of contemporary Shīʿī intellectual engagement. A foreword by Dr Sayyed Jaʿfar Fadlallah introduces the work, which was published in Beirut by Dār al-Maḥajjah al-Bayḍāʾ.
