In any case...

In any case, for further information of the respected reader on the details of the research performed concerning the problems of children's rights in Islamic jurisprudence, the following explanations need to be made.

Research Methodology Since I wished to make perfect and comprehensive information available to the reader, I spent a whole year with much perseverance undertaking the following steps respectively: Studying Legal Texts To this end, I consulted most of the Shiʿi legal texts extant from 1st/7th century up to the present, in which the issues about children were implicitly or independently discussed and their subjects have been topically catalogued and classified.

Since the core of discussion in the present book is the status of children's rights in Islamic jurisprudence with a focus on the Shiʿa school, the detailed study of the legal opinions of other Islamic schools was ruled out; however, in order to avoid ruining the inclusiveness of the research, the views of the Sunni jurists have been briefly and selectively extracted from the main legal texts of each of the Sunni schools and occasionally from the texts of the latter periods and put to discussion within the related discourses.

Studying the Exegetic Texts Of all the verses of the Qur’an, in only four verses such topics as pregnancy, breastfeeding and the related issues have been brought up and talked about.[^1] In order to attain a correct understanding of the meaning of these verses and thereby obtain appropriate legal rulings from them, it is essential to become acquainted with the viewpoints of the interpreters and whatever presented in their exegetical texts concerning them.

Therefore, I devlved into almost all the Shiʿi exegetical texts regardless of the language – either Persian or Arabic – and the major Sunni exegetical sources irrespective of their religious approach. It goes without saying that the probabilities existing in exegetical books are too diverse and numerous to be trusted, particularly when most of them – without having any historical or narrative foundation – are the products of their devisers' thinking.

Thus, it was not deemed sufficient to merely quote the probabilities set forth; rather, it was undertaken to critically review and assess them as well, and only one out of all the existing probabilities was selected according to the reasons and evidences explained in the book.