Uṣūl al-fiqh (الفقه أصول‎), that is, the science of Islamic jurisprudence, is deeply rooted on the notion of rational knowledge and understanding. Indeed, fiqh constitutes the body of knowledge and methods of reasoning that the Islamic jurists extract from the juridical understanding of the sources in order to provide solutions to legal problems. The point...Read More

Scholars of Islamic law point to the absence of any extant work of legal theory between the Risāla of al-Shāfiʿī and the Fuṣūl of al-Jaṣṣāṣ as a major barrier to reconstructing the history of Islamic legal thought. However, careful analysis of three major works of the Ḥanafī jurist al-Ṭaḥāwī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, Sharḥ maʿānī al-āthār and...Read More

This essay provides a brief introduction to legal maxims, an evidently important chapter of the juristic literature of Islam, that is particularly useful in depicting a general picture of the nature, goals and objectives of the Shari‘ah. Yet, for reasons that will presently be explained, legal maxims represent a latent development in the history of...Read More

Al-qawāʿid al-fiqhīyah or legal maxims of Islamic Law are the general rules of fiqh that portray the goals and objectives of the Sharīʿah. They are applied in various cases that come under the common rulings and play a very important role in deducing many rules of fiqh since they provide a guideline to come up...Read More