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Start here · ابدأ هنا · How to use this map, and the book in one page

1. How to read this map
2. What uṣūl al-fiqh is, and the words used everywhere [Overview]
3. Sarakhsī and why he wrote this book
4. The book in one page [Overview]
5. Ten big ideas, chosen by the editors [Overview]
6. Who is who

How to read this map

• This is the overview version of a study map of Sarakhsī's Uṣūl, written for a student with a basic grounding in the Islamic sciences who has not yet studied uṣūl.
• Open a chapter to see "In short", "Why it matters" and its topics. Open a topic for the question, the answer, one example, who disagrees, and where to read more.
• ⚑ marks a disagreement inside the Ḥanafī school. [Overview] marks our own summary, not the book's words. "Deeper: v1 B4.02" names the same topic in the full debate map, where every point is cited to the page and quoted in Arabic.
• The map records Sarakhsī's presentation, including what he reports of others. It does not check those reports, and it does not say where the Ḥanafī school later settled. Page references are to the al-Afghānī edition (Hyderabad), volume/page.
• Reading version: a plain copy of this map for e-ink readers and slow devices.

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What uṣūl al-fiqh is, and the words used everywhere [Overview]

• Fiqh gives rulings on actions: this prayer is valid, that sale is void. Uṣūl al-fiqh studies the rules behind those rulings: which sources count as proof, how to read their words, how to weigh a report, and when qiyās works. This book gives the Ḥanafī answers as Sarakhsī saw them, and argues with other views, most often al-Shāfiʿī's.
  • ʿāmm (general word): a word that gathers a group, like "whoever" or a plural. → B4.01
  • khāṣṣ (specific word): a word made for one known meaning, like "man" or "Zayd". → B4.01
  • mujmal (unclear word): a word whose meaning is known only from the speaker's own explanation. → B5.02
  • takhṣīṣ (narrowing): cutting part out of what a general word covers. → B4.03
  • naskh (abrogation): for God, making clear when a ruling's term ends; for us, one ruling replaced by another. → B11.01
  • mutawātir (mass-transmitted): reached us through so many people that their agreeing on a lie is unthinkable; it gives certain knowledge. → B8.04
  • mashhūr (well-known report): single at its root, then widely received; on the sounder view it gives reassurance, not certainty. → B8.05
  • khabar al-wāḥid (single report): a report not mass-transmitted; from an upright narrator it binds action, but does not give certain knowledge. → B9a.01
  • mursal: a report whose chain skips a link. → B9d.S1
  • qiyās: extending a text's ruling to a new case with the same cause; it cannot found a ruling from nothing. → B13a.01
  • ʿilla (effective cause): the feature in a text that the ruling is tied to; God makes it effective, the one reasoning only picks it out. → B13a.06, B18.03
  • farḍ: fixed by certain proof; denying it is unbelief. wājib: binding in practice, proven by evidence that binds action but is not certain, such as a single report; denying it is not unbelief. → B3.06
  • ṣaḥīḥ / fāsid / bāṭil (valid / defective / void): an act forbidden for a description joined to it stays legitimate in its root but defective (fāsid); one bad in itself is not legitimate at all. → B3.02, B3.03
  • istiḥsān: either judging amounts the law leaves to opinion, or leaving the obvious qiyās for a stronger proof. → B13g.01
  • istiṣḥāb: assuming things continue as they were; for Sarakhsī it defends, but never establishes a new ruling. → B14.03
  • ⚑: a disagreement inside the Ḥanafī school.

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Sarakhsī and why he wrote this book

• Sarakhsī (d. 483 AH, the one date in this map that comes from outside the book) dictated this book "in a corner of the fortress of Uzjand", on the last day of Shawwāl 479. [B1.01]
• He had already dictated his commentary on the books of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, Abū Ḥanīfa's student. He wrote this book to set out the principles he built that commentary on, so that knowing them helps a student see what is true in the detailed rulings. [B1.01]
• He says complete fiqh needs three things: knowing the rulings, mastering them through the texts and their meanings, and acting on them. [B1.01]
• He starts with command and prohibition "because most of the test lies in them". [B1.01]

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The book in one page [Overview]

• How rulings are addressed to us: command (B2) and prohibition, with the grades of rulings, farḍ, wājib, sunna, and the difference between the strict rule and a concession (B3).
• How words carry meaning: what a word covers (B4); how clear it is, literal or figurative, explicit or allusive (B5); the small particles like "and", "or", "if" (B6); four ways a text gives rulings without qiyās, and the inferences Sarakhsī rejects (B7).
• Which proofs bind: the Qurʾān, mass-transmitted and well-known reports, and consensus (B8); single reports, where they bind, which narrators count, and how reports are tested (B9).
• How texts relate to each other: explanation (B10), abrogation (B11), and the Prophet's acts, earlier prophets' law, and the opinions of Companions and Followers (B12).
• Reasoning beyond the texts: qiyās and istiḥsān (B13).
• Debating a cause: arguments that are not proof (B14), objections to an effective cause (B15), preferring one proof over another (B16), objections to weaker causes and being "cut off" in debate (B17).
• The rulings themselves and who bears them: kinds of rulings, causes, conditions and signs (B18); legal capacity (B19).

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Ten big ideas, chosen by the editors [Overview]

• The ranking is our judgment; each idea keeps the book's own condition and names its topics.
  1. Proofs come in ranks: the Qurʾān and mass-transmitted reports give certainty; a well-known report, on the sounder view, gives reassurance and can still add to the Qurʾān; a single report from an upright narrator binds action, not certainty. → B8.03, B8.04, B8.05, B9a.01
  2. A general word is certain until something is narrowed out of it: so, most Ḥanafī shaykhs say, a single report or qiyās cannot be the first to narrow it; once narrowed, it is still proof, but no longer certain. → B4.03, B4.04
  3. Adding a condition to a clear text is abrogation in effect, where the text concerns God's right or any right that cannot be split: so a single report cannot make something a condition of validity for a Qurʾānic command, though it can make it wājib. → B4.02, B11.08, B3.06
  4. A single report is tested: against the Qurʾān, against the well-known Sunna, against matters everyone needed to know, and against the Companions' silence when they disputed the very question. → B9d.02 to B9d.05
  5. A jurist Companion's report beats qiyās: a reliable Companion who was not a jurist yields to sound qiyās only when his report contradicts it in every respect, the community did not accept the report, and, in his own phrase, "the door of reasoned opinion (raʾy) is closed". → B9b.02, B9b.03
  6. A report with a missing link (mursal) can be proof: from the first three generations, unless the narrator is known to relate from unreliable people; after them, on the soundest view, only from one known to relate solely from the upright. → B9d.S1 to B9d.S3
  7. Naming, numbering, describing or setting a condition does not deny the ruling elsewhere: and what a text plainly implies counts as the text itself, not qiyās, so it can establish a punishment. → B7.04, B7.11 to B7.13
  8. Qiyās extends a ruling; it never founds one: and a legal cause has no exceptions: where the ruling fails, the cause was not there. → B13a.01, B13f.01, B13f.02, B13h.01
  9. Istiḥsān is leaving the obvious qiyās for a stronger proof: a text, consensus, necessity, or a hidden qiyās with a stronger effect; only the last kind can be extended to other cases. → B13g.01 to B13g.03
  10. A lone Companion's opinion, when no Companion is known to differ, is proof where qiyās cannot reach: all agree on that; on the sounder view (⚑ al-Bardaʿī, against al-Karkhī) it also outranks qiyās. → B12.06

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Who is who

• Only what the book itself tells us about each; no outside dates.
  • Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yūsuf, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, Zufar: the founder of the school and his students (Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad together are "the Ṣāḥibān", the two companions); Sarakhsī records their disagreements (marked ⚑).
  • al-Karkhī: a Ḥanafī shaykh whose views Sarakhsī reports and sometimes rejects (B4.04, B12.06).
  • al-Jaṣṣāṣ (Abū Bakr al-Rāzī): a Ḥanafī shaykh; Sarakhsī sometimes calls his view the sound one (B9d.S3, B12.01) and sometimes corrects him (B4.01).
  • ʿĪsā b. Abān: a Ḥanafī whose views on reports Sarakhsī discusses; on the well-known report Sarakhsī calls his view the sound one (B8.05, B9d.S2, B9d.S3).
  • al-Bardaʿī: a Ḥanafī whose view on Companions' opinions Sarakhsī prefers.
  • al-Shāfiʿī: founder of the Shāfiʿī school, the opponent Sarakhsī answers most often.
  • The Muʿtazila: a theological school whose principles Sarakhsī rejects (B4.01, B13h.01).
  • The Wāqifiyya ("those who wait"): later people who wait for explanation before applying a general word.
  • Ibn Jarīr: a scholar who held that a consensus giving certainty cannot rest on a single report or qiyās; Sarakhsī rejects this (B8.07).
  • al-Naẓẓām: a theologian who, with some Imāmīs, denied that consensus gives knowledge, and who attacked the early generations for using qiyās (B8.06, B13a.01).
  • The Khaṭṭābiyya: a Rāfiḍī group whose testimony is not accepted, since they testify for whoever swears to them (B9d.08).
  • Shuʿba: a ḥadīth scholar who abhorred tadlīs (B9e.03).

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