حنفی فقہ میں احکام کے درجات و مراتب کی تعیین کا منہج ............................................................... The Methodology of Determining the Hierarchical Order of Shari’ahRulings in Fiqh-i Hanafi

Abstract

Injunctions of Islamic Shari’ahare arranged in a hierarchical order in terms of the degree of emphasis attached to each and every injunction. Typically, these are termed as wujub (obligation to perform an act), nadb (recommendation of an act), hurmah (obligation to refrain from an act), karahah (reprehensibility of an act) and ibahah (permissibility of an act). Hanafi jurists have further divided the acts belonging to wujub into fard and wajib, and those belonging to the karahah into makruh tahrimi and makruh tanzihi. This division is based on nuanced differences in the textual evidences and the legal effects. Determining the place of any injunction in the said hierarchy is one of the main concerns of the jurists. While the great bulk of cases enjoy the consensus of the mainstream legal schools, there is considerable room for disagreement among them in a significant number of instances in which the textual evidence is not definitive and lends itself to multiple interpretations. To deal with such cases, different legal schools have devised their own sets of hermeneutical principles. The present paper investigates the principles laid down by Hanafi jurists as well as sheds light on their important aspects that are discernible in their discussions on contested legal issues. The paper concludes that in order to determine the status of any particular injunction, Hanafi jurists generally take into account: (i) the coherent view of all the available evidences; (ii) the omission of the matter at hand in the primary source text; (iii) general principles of law and analogical evidence; (iv) definitiveness or probability of the evidence in terms of reliability; and (v) the ambivalence or mutual contradiction of the evidences.