"the guidance", also spelled Hedaya[1]), is a 12th-century legal manual by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani, which is considered to be one of the most influential compendium of Hanafi jurisprudence (fiqh).
[4] Al-Hidayah is a concise commentary on al-Marghinani's own compendium al-Bidayat al-mubtadi, which was in turn based on Mukhtasar by al-Quduri and al-Shaybani's al-Jami‘ al-saghir.
Since the Hanafite school was predominant on the Indian sub-continent, the book was influential there as a substrate for commentaries, and — supplemented by professorial exposition — as a textbook for law colleges (madrasas).
[4] The translation enabled British colonial judges to adjudicate in the name of sharia, which amounted to an unprecedented codification of Hanafi law, severed from its Arabic-language interpretative tradition.
[4] This served to accomplish two goals, which had been long pursued by the British in India: firstly, it limited the judicial discretion of the qadis and the influence of muftis in the sharia system, reducing their earlier role as "middlemen" between the Islamic legal tradition and the colonial administration; and, secondly, it replaced the interpretative mechanisms of fiqh by those of English common law.