اصولِ فقہ اور فقہ کی رائج تعریفات

ایک تنقیدی جائزہ

Abstract

Under the influence of the Shafi‘i jurists, definitions of fiqh in most of the manuals since 6th Century AH till the present times contain the condition of adillah tafsiliyyah (pl. of dalil tafisili, variously translated as detailed argument/specific evidence). This condition has resulted in excluding qawa‘id fiqhiyyah (general principles of law) from the scope of law. As opposed to this, the manuals of the Hanafi jurists written before 6th Century AH do not mention this condition and it is also well-known that the Hanafi jurists extensively applied the general principles of law for developing their great corpus juris. Faced with this challenge, some of the contemporary scholars tried to find place for the general principles of law in the Shafi‘i methodology by arguing that their definition of usul al-fiqh mentions adillah ijmaliyyah (pl. of dalil ijmali=variously translated as general source/general evidence). The present paper analyzes this position and after analyzing the works of some renowned Shafi‘i jurists concludes, first, that such definitions do not explain the methodology of the School, but rather mention the subject-matter of the discipline of usul al-fiqh; and, second, that the phrase adillah ijmaliyyah in this context denotes qawa‘id usuliyyah (sometimes translated as ‘principles of interpretation’, but a better translation is ‘legislative presumptions’), not qawa‘id fiqhiyyah. Moreover, after analyzing the debate about the meaning and purpose of the phrase adillah tafsiliyyah in the definition of fiqh, the paper concludes that by confining fiqh to the knowledge of legal rules derived from adillah tafsiliyyah, the qawa‘id fiqhiyyah become irrelevant for issuing verdicts and rulings on specific cases because they cannot be considered adillah tafsiliyyah.