Fiqh-us-Sunnah was written by Sayyid Saabiq (1915-2000 C.E.), may Allaah have mercy on him. The following information is taken from his obituary in the March 2, 2000 Daily News of IANA Radionet.
"...Sabiq's most famous book was the three-volume Fiqh As-Sunnah, which in the first writing of its kind brought the four major madhahib together, in a comprehensive treatment of Fiqh matters. The book has since been translated into dozens of languages and is used by Muslims throughout the world. Sabiq wrote Fiqh As-Sunnah in the 1940s when he was only 30 years old. He wrote the book at the request of Ustadh Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Every Fiqh ruling in the book goes back to the Qur'an and Sunnah and Sabiq dealt with all four madhahib objectively, with no preferential treatment to any. Sabiq also wrote the book, "Islamic Theology," along the same lines: simplification and avoidance of overphilosophization or getting involved in disputes on arcane topics. Besides his academic work, Sabiq was a noted Islamic activist. After writing Fiqh As-Sunnah, Sabiq spent some time fighting along with the Mujahideen in Palestine in the late 1940's and he later visited most countries in the world and lectured in their mosques. He was the first graduate of Azhar to visit the Soviet Union and check on the conditions of Muslims there. Sabiq was born in 1915 in the Egyptian village, Istanha. He received his education at Al-Azhar and after his graduation worked as the Director of Mosques and Islamic Education in the Egyptian Islamic Affairs Ministry. He also taught at Al-Azhar, and later moved to Saudi Arabia, where he headed the Shari'a Graduate Studies Department in Um Al-Qura University. After moving back to Egypt, he spent years teaching students in a Mosque in Cairo..."
In the early 1990's, Fiqh-us-Sunnah was translated into English by a group of people commissioned by American Trust Publications. The translators included Muhammad Sa'eed Dabas, Jamal al-Din M. Zarabozo, Abdul-Majid Khokhar, and M. S. Kayani. This group published Fiqh-us-Sunnah in five volumes which form the basis for this online edition. MSA-USC obtained the "raw" electronic data from the Al Muhaddith project, and converted this data into Web-ready format. A similar effort may be found at Islamic Resources Repository (IRR) by the DEED group at the International Islamic University, Malaysia.
As stated above, the English translation of Fiqh-us-Sunnah published by ATP is divided into five volumes, each of which has several chapters and sections. Unfortunately, the electronic version of this work was missing hierarchical information (i.e. chapter, subchapter, heading, etc.). Instead, what was provided was simply volume and page information. It is this information that was used to organize the online version found here at MSA-USC's Islamic Server. Using a copy of the printed edition, MSA-USC has been able to manually reconstruct a table of contents at least.
MSA-USC has placed anchors (hyperlinks) for important sections in the translation presented here. Prospective developers of Islamic sites may find it useful to refer to these anchors. For example, one could use the anchors to create an 'active' subject index into Fiqh-us-Sunnah.
The format of the anchor names for the sections in Fiqh-us-Sunnah is very simple:
D.D[D][D][a]
where D stands for a digit, [D] stands for an optional digit, and [a] means an optional lowercase letter. The first digit is the volume number and hence is always between 1 and 5 inclusive. The next three digits represent a page, e.g. 1, 12, or 105. The last (optional) letter represents an ordering within the page, e.g. 10a indicates text near the top of page 10 whereas 10c might mean the bottom of page 10. Not all pages are subdivided in this way.
The format of the file names (one per section identified in the table of contents) is as follows:
fusD_DD.html
The first digit represents the volume, and the last two digits represent a section number, going from 1 to 79.
As an example, the following snippet of HTML should take you to volume 2, section 14,
page 22:
<a href="fus2_14.html#2.22">SAMPLE</a>
We have taken some pains to remove typos, and scanning/format errors from these files, but it is more than likely that quite a few still remain. PLEASE SEND US ANY CORRECTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS!
This collection may absolutely NOT be copied or used for commercial gain.
Direct your comments to msa@usc.edu.
Enjoy!