because those particulars are subsumed under the universal principles, and what strikes others as conflicting falls into orderly harmony for him.

The juristic maxims were not all coined at one time; rather, their texts gradually took shape during the flourishing periods of Islamic law, fashioned by the leading scholars of the various schools as they inferred them from the general legislative texts and from the effective causes of rulings.

No single jurist can be named as the author of any given maxim—except in the rare case where the maxim is itself the wording of a prophetic ḥadīth, such as the rule "There shall be neither harm nor reciprocating harm." Most maxims acquired their present form through continual circulation and refinement in the jurists’ processes of reasoning and proof-giving; legal reasoning has been the greatest source for formulating these rules.

Perhaps the earliest scholar to collect the principal maxims was the eminent Ḥanafī jurist Abū Ṭāhir al-Dabbās, who compiled seventeen of them. After him, al-Karkhī authored a dedicated treatise containing thirty-seven maxims, and the chain continued until al-Subkī produced his work Al-Ashbāh wa’l-Naẓāʾir, in which he expanded and elaborated the discussion.

Al-Zarkashī later wrote Al-Manthūr fī Tartīb al-Qawāʿid al-Fiqhiyyah, and al-Khādimī followed with a compendium that gathered a large number of the maxims. Many scholars of the different schools authored works on the subject: al-Suyūṭī the Shāfiʿī in his Al-Ashbāh wa’l-Naẓāʾir, al-Qarāfī the Mālikī in Al-Furūq, and Ibn Rajab the Ḥanbalī in Al-Qawāʿid al-Fiqhiyyah.

Shaykh Muṣṭafā al-Zarqāʾ observed: “The maxims of the Majalla are comprehensive rules cast in a highly technical form, though some of them overlap or duplicate one another.” His father, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Zarqāʾ, taught these maxims with great dedication, researching them thoroughly and exhaustively. The outcome was his valuable book Sharḥ al-Qawāʿid al-Fiqhiyyah, in which he refined those one hundred maxims and provided an all-encompassing commentary that spares any serious student from needing other works on the subject. And Allah is the One who grants success.