أصول الفقه
Uṣūl al-Fiqh
The sources of Islamic law: the Quran, the Sunnah, consensus and analogy, together with the principles for using them
What it means
Uṣūl al-fiqh means the roots of the law. The agreed sources are the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the consensus of qualified scholars (ijmāʿ) and analogy (qiyās). Jurists also discuss further principles, such as public interest, custom and presumption of continuity, on which the schools differ. The distinction between the two terms is one of level. Fiqh is the body of rulings, and uṣūl al-fiqh is the set of sources and rules from which the rulings are drawn. Al-Shāfiʿī’s Risālah is the earliest surviving systematic treatment.
Often misunderstood as
That it is the same as fiqh, when it names the sources from which fiqh is derived.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 51, listed as UṢŪL AL FIQH. The definition is restated here.