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Glossary · مصطلحات · Technical terms (each defined once; other nodes use the term without re-translating)

• adāʾ / qaḍāʾ (أداء / قضاء): performance hands over the very thing owed, by its cause, to the one entitled; make-up discharges the duty with a like, owed, on the sounder view, by the same cause that made performance owed once it is missed (v1/44, 46) → B2.10 / B2.11
• ʿadāla (عدالة): uprightness in a narrator or witness; one whose religion outweighs his desire, so he abstains from what he believes forbidden and does not persist in minor sins (v1/350-351) → B9c.04
• ahliyyat al-adāʾ (أهلية الأداء): capacity for performance; limited capacity (bodily strength with the root of reason) makes an act valid, complete capacity (sound-minded adulthood) makes it owed (v2/340-341) → B19.03
• ahliyyat al-wujūb (أهلية الوجوب): capacity for obligation, resting on having a dhimma fit to be the seat of a duty (v2/332-333) → B19.01
• ʿalāma (علامة): a sign; what makes a ruling known without itself causing it, like a boundary marker (v2/303-304) → B18.03
• ʿaks (عكس): inversion; returning a cause and its ruling back along their path, like a mirror reflecting the sun; supports a cause when the ruling reverses with it, but a weaker move when it only states a contrary ruling (v2/241) → B15.04
• ʿāmm (عام): the general; every expression that gathers a group of named things, by its wording or its meaning (v1/125) → B4.01
• amr (أمر): the command; the imperative form addressed to an equal or inferior, one of the divisions of speech along with the statement and the question (v1/11) → B2.01
• aṣl (أصل): the root; a case whose ruling is fixed by text, from which qiyās extends that ruling to a branch (farʿ) with no text of its own (v2/118) → B13a.01
• athar (أثر): effect; what shows a cause is upright and fit to argue from, once it is seen operating in the roots, not by mere co-occurrence (v2/177) → B13e.02
• āya (آية): a sign; used absolutely in the law it means what yields certainty, such as the prophets' miracles (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• ʿazīma (عزيمة): the original ruling of the law, legislated from the start and not tied to an incidental cause (v1/117) → B3.07
• bayān (بيان): explanation; making a meaning plain to the addressee, not merely the knowledge that results; it may come by the Prophet's act as well as his word (v2/26-27) → B10.01
• bayān ḍarūra (بيان ضرورة): explanation by necessity; reached by something not originally made to explain, in four ways (as if stated, from the speaker's state, to prevent deception, or from the wording's own indication) (v2/50) → B10.08
• bayān tabdīl (بيان تبديل): replacing explanation; hanging a ruling on a condition, valid only when connected to the original speech (v2/35) → B10.04
• bayān tafsīr (بيان تفسير): interpreting explanation; making plain a mujmal or a shared (mushtarak) word, valid whether connected or separate from the original speech (v2/28) → B10.02
• bayān taghyīr (بيان تغيير): altering explanation, i.e. exception (istithnāʾ); valid only when connected to the original speech (v2/35) → B10.04
• bayān taqrīr (بيان تقرير): confirming explanation; cutting off a word's possible figurative or narrower sense, valid whether connected or separate (v2/27-28) → B10.02
• bayyina (بينة): from bayān; what makes a proof's binding force plain to the heart, whether it yields certain knowledge or less (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• burhān (برهان): a proof, used like ḥujja (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• ḍabṭ (ضبط): accuracy in a narrator; taking a report firmly, hearing it fully, understanding its meaning, memorising it and holding to it until relating it; outer (the wording) and inner (its legal sense) (v1/348) → B9c.03
• dalāla (دلالة): the implied meaning of a text; what follows from the wording's meaning in language, not what is drawn out by juristic reasoning, so it can establish even punishments and expiations (v1/241) → B7.04
• dalīl (دليل): "one who guides"; in the law, a proof that brings out what was hidden (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• dhimma (ذمة): in language, the covenant; in law, the seat (maḥall) of obligation (v2/333) → B19.01
• faqīh (فقيه): here, a Companion known for legal understanding and ijtihād (v1/338) → B9b.01
• farḍ (فرض): what the law fixed by definitive evidence, admitting neither increase nor decrease and certain; denying it is unbelief (v1/110) → B3.06
• farʿ (فرع): the branch; a case like the root (aṣl) in meaning but with no text of its own, to which the root's ruling is extended by qiyās (v2/149-151) → B13d.01
• fasād al-waḍʿ (فساد الوضع): wrong construction; a cause built so as to yield the opposite of what its own nature would give, like faulty delivery in testimony (v2/276) → B17.03
• fāsid / bāṭil (فاسد / باطل) (bāṭil is not Sarakhsī's word here; he says "not legitimate at all", and uses buṭlān of the carrion sale at v1/91): what is bad in itself is not legitimate at all, like sodomy or prayer without purity; what is bad only for a meaning joined to it as a description remains legitimate in principle, and the servant's performance, when he does it, becomes merely defective (fāsid), unless unlawfulness and the act's survival cannot coexist (v1/80, 82) → B3.02 / B3.03
• fawr / tarākhī (فور / تراخي): immediate performance versus delay; the sound view of our scholars is that the unqualified command allows delay (tarākhī), not immediate performance (fawr) (v1/26) → B2.06
• ghālib al-raʾy (غالب الرأي): preponderant opinion; the kind of knowledge a single report yields, on which the duty to act is built, short of certainty (v1/339) → B9b.02
• gharīb (غريب): an isolated single report (v1/366) → B9d.03
• ḥaqīqa (حقيقة): the literal; every word coined originally for a known thing (v1/170) → B5.03
• ḥaqq Allāh / ḥuqūq al-ʿibād (حق الله / حقوق العباد): God's pure rights (worship, penalties and the like) as against people's pure rights; rulings may also be mixed, with one right dominant (v2/289-290) → B18.01
• ḥujja (حجة): proof; from "he overcame", or from returning to it, since one must return to it in practice (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• ḥusn li-ʿaynihi / li-ghayrihi (حسن لعينه / لغيره): good in itself, whether it can never fall away or can fall away in some states, versus good for a meaning in something else, achieved by the act or apart from it; on Sarakhsī's sounder view (against some of our shaykhs, who say only the lower grade), the unqualified command establishes the highest grade, good in itself, by the law (v1/60-63) → B2.12
• ʿibāra (عبارة): the wording of a text; what the passage was brought for, known before reflection to be covered by the text's surface sense (v1/236) → B7.01
• iḥṣān (إحصان): a sign, not itself the cause, that shows zinā has occurred (so that stoning follows), distinct from the cause itself (v2/327-330) → B18.06
• ijāza / munāwala (إجازة / مناولة): two concessionary ways of transmitting a report (granting permission to relate it, and handing over a text), valid only when the content is known to and understood by the recipient (v1/377) → B9e.02
• ijmāʿ (إجماع): the consensus of the community, which yields certain knowledge as an honour given to it for the religion, not because a large number cannot err (v1/295) → B8.06
• ijmāʿ sukūtī (إجماع سكوتي) (later name; Sarakhsī calls it the concession form, rukhṣa, of the pillar): the concessionary pillar of consensus; a view spreads among some scholars of the age and the rest stay silent, neither voicing dissent nor refuting it, once the fatwā has reached them and time to reflect has passed; consensus is established by it, in our view (v1/303, 308) → B8.08
• ijtihād (اجتهاد): preponderant opinion; against the Muʿtazila's "every mujtahid hits the truth", ijtihād yields only preponderant opinion, not certainty (v1/127) → B4.01; also, figuratively, another name for qiyās, also called naẓar (v2/143) → B13b.01
• ikhāla (إخالة): "suggestiveness"; a feature merely striking the heart as sound, which Sarakhsī calls mere conjecture and not proof of a cause (v2/185) → B13e.03
• ʿilla (علة): the effective cause; what changes a state by occurring in it; in law, a meaning in the texts known by inference, yet made a cause by God, not by the reasoner's own opinion, since there is no cause of obligation but God (v2/301-302) → B18.03
• ʿilla lā tataʿaddā (علة لا تتعدى): a non-extending cause, one that does not reach beyond the text; our doctrine: reasoning from a text by it is not allowed at all, since reasoning yields only action in a branch; al-Shāfiʿī allows it but says it is then not a qiyās (v2/158-160) → B13d.04; an opposing cause of this kind in the root is also unsound (v2/244) → B15.05
• ʿilm ḍarūrī (علم ضروري): immediate knowledge, the kind a mass-transmitted (mutawātir) report yields, like what is seen (v1/291) → B8.04
• inqiṭāʿ ṣūrī / maʿnawī (انقطاع صورة / معنى): a visible break in the chain (the mursal) versus a break in meaning, where a report is cut off by a contrary proof or a defective narrator (v1/359, 364) → B9d.S1 / B9d.01
• insidād bāb al-raʾy (انسداد باب الرأي): "the door of raʾy is closed"; glossed by the report's contradicting sound qiyās, so qiyās may then be preferred to a non-faqīh narrator's report; its exact scope is left open (v1/341-342) → B9b.03
• intiqāl (انتقال): legitimate shifting in debate to a new cause, either to prove the first cause, or to a second ruling by the same or another cause; distinguished from being cut off (v2/286-287) → B17.05
• iqtiḍāʾ (اقتضاء): the presupposed; an addition to what is stated which must be put first for the wording to make sense or take effect; it has no generality (v1/248) → B7.08
• ishāra (إشارة): the indication of a text; what the passage was not brought for, but is known by reflecting on the meaning of the words, with nothing added or removed (v1/236) → B7.01
• istiḥsān (استحسان): in language, finding a thing good; for the jurists, either judging by ijtihād amounts the law left to opinion, or acting on the proof that opposes the obvious qiyās once fuller reflection shows it stronger (v2/199-201) → B13g.01
• istiṣḥāb (استصحاب): continuing the prior state; sound only with certain knowledge that nothing changed it; after searching it only excuses and defends; before searching it is ignorance; used to establish a new ruling it is pure error (v2/223-226) → B14.03
• istithnāʾ (استثناء): exception, i.e. "altering explanation" (bayān taghyīr); makes the speech an expression for what lies outside the excepted part, valid only when connected to the original speech (v2/35-36) → B10.04
• iʿtibār (اعتبار): "taking heed"; in language, returning a thing's ruling to its like, which is qiyās (v2/125) → B13a.03
• jarḥ (جرح): invalidating criticism of a narrator; vague criticism is not jarḥ for the jurists, since uprightness holds by outward religion (v2/9) → B9f.03
• khabar al-wāḥid (خبر الواحد): the single report; from an upright narrator, a proof for acting on in religion, though it does not establish certain knowledge (v1/321) → B9a.01
• khafī (خفي): the hidden; a meaning hidden by something incidental to the wording's form, needing search (v1/167) → B5.02
• khalaf (خلف): a substitute; owed by the same cause that makes the original owed, and only once that cause has first met its proper object (v2/297-300) → B18.02
• khāṣṣ (خاص): the specific; every expression coined for one known meaning on its own (v1/124) → B4.01
• kināya (كناية): the allusive; wording that hides its intent until shown by proof, such as pronouns (v1/187-188) → B5.07
• mafhūm al-mukhālafa (مفهوم المخالفة) (later name for the positions of B7.11–13): the claim that a ruling denies itself where a name (laqab) or number (ʿadad), a description (ṣifa), or a condition (sharṭ) is absent; Sarakhsī rejects it in every case: naming a thing, even with a number, does not deny the ruling elsewhere, since elsewhere it may still rest on the ʿilla (v1/255-256) → B7.11; an effective description does not deny the ruling when absent, working like an ʿilla (v1/256-259) → B7.12; a condition establishes the ruling when met but does not deny it before, since the hanging acts on the cause itself, not on its effect (v1/260-265) → B7.13
• maʿrūf / majhūl (معروف / مجهول): a Companion-narrator known for long companionship, versus one known only by one or two reports (v1/338, 342) → B9b.01 / B9b.04
• majāz (مجاز): the figurative; every word borrowed for something other than what it was coined for (v1/170) → B5.03
• mashhūr (مشهور): a report single at its root and mass-transmitted after it; on reflection a doubt remains at the root, so it yields reassurance, not certainty, and its denier is not declared an unbeliever; even so, it may add to the Kitāb, since the scholars' acceptance of it is itself a binding proof; three grades, by ʿĪsā b. Abān: its denier is misguided but not an unbeliever; its denier is wrong and feared for in sin; its denier is wrong but not in sin (v1/291-294) → B8.05
• mastūr (مستور): a person whose probity has not been examined (v1/344-345) → B9b.04
• muʿāraḍa (معارضة): a counter-cause; an opposing effective cause set against the reasoner's, sound when it states an opposing ruling for the branch or confirms it by a change; opposition in the root's own cause is always unsound (v2/242-244) → B15.05
• muʾaththir / taʾthīr (مؤثر / تأثير): an effective cause, as against a mere ṭard (bare concomitant) one; shown to be a cause by suitability, then by its effect (athar) appearing in the roots, not by bare co-occurrence; a cause's uprightness is known by its effect (v2/176-177, 232-233) → B13e.02 / B15.01
• muʾawwal (مؤول): the interpreted; making clear one of the equivocal's possible meanings by preponderant opinion and ijtihād (v1/127) → B4.01
• mufāraqa (مفارقة): distinguishing root from branch; sound fiqh elsewhere, but no valid objection to an effective cause, since qiyās reasons from some of the root's features, not all, and naming a feature of the root absent from the branch only proves what is settled, while absence in the branch causes nothing (v2/234-235) → B15.01
• mufassar (مفسر): the explained; a name for the uncovered, whose meaning is known so plainly that no possibility of interpretation remains, though abrogation is still possible (v1/165) → B5.01
• muḥkam (محكم): the firm; a meaning beyond the mufassar, admitting neither interpretation nor abrogation (v1/165-166) → B5.01
• mūjib (موجب): what a form of wording requires as its ruling; e.g. the unqualified command's mūjib is obligation, unless evidence shows otherwise (v1/15) → B2.03
• mujmal (مجمل): the summary; a meaning known only by the speaker's own explanation (v1/168-169) → B5.02
• mukhīl (مخيل): "suggestive"; a feature that strikes the heart as a sound cause, on some of al-Shāfiʿī's followers' account, which Sarakhsī reduces to mere conjecture (v2/177, 183) → B13e.02
• mumānaʿa (ممانعة): denial; the root of objection to an effective cause, where the questioner need only ask the claimant for proof, of the cause itself, the feature, the condition, or the effect (v2/235) → B15.02
• munāqaḍa (مناقضة): the counter-case; an unsound objection pointing to an instance where the ruling fails though the feature is present, answered by showing the feature was in fact absent there (v2/232-233) → B15.01
• mursal (مرسل): a report cut off in form (inqiṭāʿ ṣūrī), as against a break in meaning; the Companions' mursal is proof by agreement, and so, on our scholars' view, is that of the second and third generations, against al-Shāfiʿī (v1/359-364) → B9d.S1 / B9d.S2 / B9d.S3
• mushkil (مشكل): the problematic; a meaning mixed in with similar cases, needing a separating proof or deep reflection (v1/168) → B5.02
• mushtarak (مشترك): the equivocal; several meanings sharing one word, not gathered together but each possibly meant alone (v1/126) → B4.01
• musnad (مسند): a report with a connected chain, contrasted with the mursal; ʿĪsā b. Abān: "the mursal is stronger than the musnad" (v1/361) → B9d.S2
• mutashābih (متشابه): the ambiguous; a name for what one cannot hope to know the meaning of; its ruling is belief in its truth and surrender, without searching (v1/169) → B5.02
• mutawātir (متواتر): mass-transmitted; what reaches us from the Prophet through a group so large and widespread that their agreeing on a lie cannot be imagined, yielding certain knowledge (v1/282-283) → B8.04
• muthbit / nāfī (مثبت / نافي): the affirming report against the denying one; a denial resting on evidence conflicts with an affirmation, but a denial resting only on the absence of affirming evidence does not (v2/21-24) → B9g.04
• muṭlaq / muqayyad (مطلق / مقيد): the unqualified and the qualified text each keep their own ruling; the unqualified may not be carried onto the qualified to give it the qualified ruling, against al-Shāfiʿī, since that needs equality of both ruling and cause between the two cases (v1/267-269) → B7.15
• nafl (نفل): a voluntary addition to the legislated duties, "for us, not against us" (v1/115) → B3.06
• nahy (نهي): the prohibition; what it requires by the law is the duty to refrain from the prohibited thing, being the opposite of the command (v1/78) → B3.01
• nakira (نكرة): the indefinite noun; specific in an affirmative statement, general only under negation, with the article, or with a general description (v1/158) → B4.05
• naql bi-l-maʿnā (النقل بالمعنى): relating a report by its sense rather than its exact wording; allowed, for the majority, after good accuracy, though keeping the wording is better (v1/355) → B9c.07
• naskh (نسخ): abrogation; for the Lawgiver, pure explanation of a ruling's term; for us, replacement (tabdīl) of that ruling by another (v2/53-54) → B11.01
• naṣṣ (نص): the text; a meaning made clearer through the context of the passage, i.e. what it was spoken for (v1/164) → B5.01
• qalb (قلب): reversal; turning a thing upside down, e.g. making the caused into the cause, which voids a reasoning from ruling to ruling unless the two are true equals (v2/238) → B15.03
• qawl al-ṣaḥābī (قول الصحابي): a Companion's opinion, when he says something and no other Companion is known to differ from it (v2/105) → B12.06
• qawl bi-mūjib al-ʿilla (القول بموجب العلة): conceding the cause's requirement; granting what the reasoner's cause proves while showing it does not reach the actual point in dispute (v2/266) → B17.01
• qiyās (قياس): analogy; extending a text's ruling by opinion from the roots whose rulings are fixed by text to new branches; valid and a form of worship, but unfit to establish a ruling from the start (v2/118) → B13a.01
• qiyās ṣaḥīḥ (القياس الصحيح): analogy that is sound and rests on the Kitāb, the Sunna and ijmāʿ (v1/341) → B9b.03
• qubḥ (قبح): badness, of three grades: bad in itself, never legitimate; bad for a meaning adjacent to the act, which stays legitimate despite the prohibition; bad for a meaning joined to it as a description (v1/80-81) → B3.02
• rukhṣa (رخصة): a concession; what rests on an excuse of the servants, made permissible for the excuse while the prohibiting evidence remains, in four graded kinds (v1/117) → B3.07
• sabab (سبب): the cause; what is a way to reach the sought ruling without itself effecting it, like the road to Mecca (v2/301) → B18.03
• shādhdh / mustafīḍ (شاذ / مستفيض): shādhdh is the rare report, outweighed in preference by the mashhūr's greater number of transmitters (v2/251) → B16.01; mustafīḍ ranks with the mutawātir and the agreed-upon Sunna, certain like the Kitāb (v1/366) → B9d.03
• shāhid (شاهد): like dalīl, a proof, certain or not; witnesses in court (v1/277-279) → B8.01
• sharāʾiʿ man qablanā (شرائع من قبلنا): what is established by the Book of God, or by the Messenger's own statement, as the law of those before us binds us as our own Prophet's law until abrogated; not what the People of the Book merely transmit, since their books are known to have been altered (v2/99) → B12.05
• sharṭ (شرط): the condition; what a ruling is ascribed to as existing at it, not as caused by it (v2/302-303) → B18.03
• ṣāḥib al-hawā (صاحب الهوى): the heretic; his testimony is accepted, but his narration in religion is not relied on or made proof, since partisanship may drive him to corrupt the way of truth (v1/373-374) → B9d.08
• ṣarīḥ (صريح): the explicit; every word whose meaning and intent are exposed, literal or figurative, taking effect by itself without need of intention (v1/187-188) → B5.07
• sunna (سنة): the path followed in the religion, set by the Prophet and, in our view, by the Companions after him (v1/113) → B3.06
• taʿlīl (تعليل): reasoning a text by identifying its operative cause; allowed only once a proof shows this particular text to be caused here and now (v2/144) → B13c.01
• taʿāruḍ (تعارض): conflict between proofs; mutual blocking between two equal proofs requiring opposite rulings for one time and one subject, each able to abrogate the other (v2/12-13) → B9g.01
• tadlīs (تدليس): saying "so-and-so said" of someone met but not actually heard from; blameworthy only when done to fake a higher chain, not merely to shorten or assert firmly (v1/379-380) → B9e.03
• takhṣīṣ (تخصيص): narrowing a general word to less than it covers; per most of our shaykhs, a general not yet specified may not be narrowed by a single report or by qiyās (v1/132-133) → B4.03; once specified, it remains proof for the rest, but no longer with certainty (v1/144) → B4.04; a specifying proof joined to the general is explanation (bayān), while one that comes later is not explanation but abrogation (v2/29) → B10.03
• takhṣīṣ al-ʿilla (تخصيص العلة): "specifying" a legal cause, i.e. claiming a case where the cause's own ruling fails is merely blocked by an obstacle; Sarakhsī calls allowing this a great error (v2/208) → B13h.01
• talaqqī bi'l-qabūl (تلقي الأمة بالقبول): the umma's receiving a report with acceptance (v1/341) → B9b.03
• tarjīḥ (ترجيح): preference; showing extra weight on one side, as a quality added, not as an independent proof; what could ground a ruling on its own cannot be used to tip a balance (v2/249-250) → B16.01
• tazkiya (تزكية): endorsement of a witness's uprightness (v1/335) → B9a.05
• ṭard (طرد): mere concomitance; a feature's bare co-occurrence with a ruling, with no understood meaning, rejected as proof of a cause (v2/176) → B13e.02
• ṭumaʾnīna (طمأنينة): reassurance of the heart, short of certain knowledge (v1/329) → B9a.03
• ʿumūm al-balwā (عموم البلوى): a matter of general need, which elite and commoner alike must know to act on (v1/368) → B9d.04
• waqf (وقف): stopping; suspending the search for a meaning and simply believing it, without pursuing it further, as with the mutashābih (v1/169) → B5.02
• wājib (واجب): binding in practice, established by evidence that obliges action but not certain knowledge, e.g. a single report; denying it is not unbelief (v1/111-113) → B3.06
• wilāya (ولاية): authority to impose one's word on another, which is why testimony, unlike a mere report, requires conditions a report does not (v1/353-354) → B9c.06
• ẓāhir (ظاهر): the apparent; what is understood by merely hearing it, without reflection (v1/163) → B5.01
• ẓarf / miʿyār (ظرف / معيار): time as the mere container of performance, as with prayer, versus time as its measure, filling it entirely so that no other like act fits within it, as with Ramaḍān's fast (v1/30, 36) → B2.07 / B2.08
• zayf (زيف): counterfeit; Sarakhsī applies the word to filters 3 and 4 against a single report (a matter of general need, and a question the Companions disputed without citing it) and to the two opposite errors: making the single report the base and reading the certain (Kitāb, mashhūr) by it, and denying single reports and resorting to qiyās or istiṣḥāb (v1/367-368) → B9d.04 / B9d.05
• ziyāda ʿalā al-naṣṣ (زيادة على النص): addition to a text; explanation in form but abrogation in meaning, so it cannot come by a single report or qiyās (v2/82) → B11.08

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