The treatise on the science of the principles of jurisprudence

Author's name: Imam Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i

The book "Al-Risalah" by Imam Al-Shafi'i is the first book written on the science of Islamic jurisprudence (Usul al-Fiqh). Al-Shafi'i, may God have mercy on him, intended, through writing this book, to establish the guidelines that a jurist or scholar must adhere to in determining the legal rulings for every new and emerging issue in every era. It is among the books that Al-Rabi' narrated from Al-Shafi'i. The book of the treatise is in one volume in which Al-Shafi’i dealt with fundamental issues such as the hadith of a single narrator and the proof thereof, the conditions of the soundness of the hadith and the integrity of the narrators, the rejection of the mursal and munqati’ report and other issues of fundamentals and preference. The long introduction to the treatise (one hundred pages) constitutes a large part of its material. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi says about Al-Shafi’i’s pioneering role in establishing the science of the principles of jurisprudence: “Before Imam Al-Shafi’i, they used to talk about issues of the principles of jurisprudence, and they would give evidence and object, but they did not have a comprehensive law to which they could refer in knowing the proofs of the Shari’ah, and in how to oppose them and give preference to them. So Al-Shafi’i deduced the science of the principles of jurisprudence, and he established for people a comprehensive law to which they could refer in knowing the levels of the proofs of the Shari’ah. Thus it was established that Al-Shafi’i’s relation to the science of the Shari’ah is like Aristotle’s relation to the science of reason.”