Ghazali’s Juristic Treatment of the Shari‘ah Rules in al-Mustasfa

Abstract

Introduction
Ghazali's approach to usul al-fiqh, as articulated in his last and greatest
work of Law, al-Mustasfa is based on the premise that, in essence, this science
is knowledge of how to extract ahkam (rules) from the Shari'ah sources.
(As for the science of fiqh, it concerns itself particularly with the Shari'ah
rules themselves which have been established in order to qualify the acts of
the locus of obligation, man.) Accordingly, Ghazali views it as imperative
that any discourse on usul focus on three essentail elements: the ahkam; the
adilla (sources); and the means by which rules are extracted from these sources,
which ultimately includes examination of the qualifications of the extractor,
namely, the mujtahid. This paper lays out Ghazali's treatment in al-Mustasfa
of the first of these elements, the ahkam.
Hukm (The Shari’ah Address)
Linguistically, hukm is the verbal noun of hakama, which signifies “withholding,
restraint, prevention; and judgment, jurisdiction, rule, dominion,
authority, or governinglq The technical meaning, however, varies according
to its usages in the terminologies of philosophy, Arabic grammar, usul, and fiqh.
Ghazali defines hukm as the Shan‘irh address ( khitab al-Shar’) in relation
to the acts of the loci of obligation, the address being Allah’s revelation
to His Messenger. It is divided into two categories: revelation for recitation
(wahi matluww), that is, the Qur”an; and revelation not for recitation (wahi
ghayr lww matu), namely, the Sunnah.