Author’s Introduction In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. “Whomever Allah intends good for, He grants him understanding of the religion.” In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. To proceed: after praising Allah with every form of praise, and invoking blessings and peace upon Muhammad, His Messenger, together with his family and Companions, my purpose in this book is to set down—by way of reminder—the juristic questions whose rulings are agreed upon and those about which there is disagreement, along with their evidences, and to draw attention to the fine points of difference between them. I wish to arrange them so that they function as principles and maxims for the mujtahid when he faces issues that the Sharia has left unspoken. For the most part these questions are explicitly mentioned in the revealed texts or closely connected to what is mentioned. They are matters over which consensus has been reached or over which disagreement has become well known among Muslim jurists from the time of the Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—until the era when blind imitation spread. Before beginning, let us state—briefly as possible—how many kinds of sources the legal rulings are taken from, how many categories of legal rulings there are, and how many causes have produced disagreement. We say: The ways by which rulings were received from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—are, in general, three: statement, action, and tacit approval. As for the rulings concerning which the Lawgiver has remained silent, the majority hold that the way to discover them is qiyas (analogical reasoning). The Zahiris, on the other hand, maintain that qiyas has no validity in the Sharia and that whatever the Lawgiver has not addressed carries no ruling. Sound reason, they argue, supports this, for the events that arise among human beings are without limit, whereas the texts, actions, and approvals are finite, and it is impossible to match what is limitless with what is limited. The kinds of wording from which rulings are derived in the revealed sources are four: three agreed upon and a fourth disputed. The three agreed upon are: a general expression taken in its full generality; a specific expression taken in its particularity; and a general expression intended for a specific meaning, or a specific expression intended for a general meaning. Under this falls