Book excerpt: Bidayat al-Abid wa Kifayat al-Zahid is a concise manual restricted to the acts of worship based on the jurisprudence of the highly regarded Imam Abu Abdullah Ahmad b. Hanbal. This publication offers the reader what is considered the first rung on the ladder to studying the Hanbali school in a side-by-side dual-language format with both original Arabic text and English translation. Topics include tahara, salat, zakat, siyam, hajj, and jihad.