القواعد الفقهية
al-Qawāʿid al-Fiqhiyya
Topic
The general maxims that jurists follow in the legal process, each stating a principle that runs through many cases.
What it means
Al-qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya are short legal maxims that sum up a principle found across many chapters of fiqh. Five are widely taught: “matters are judged by their purposes”, “certainty is not removed by doubt”, “hardship brings ease”, “harm is to be removed” and “custom is a basis of judgment”. Jurists use the maxims to organise the law and to reason about new cases. Each maxim draws on the Quran, the hadith and the experience of generations of scholars, and none of them replaces the texts.
Often misunderstood as
The maxims are mistaken for a list of fixed rulings, whereas they are guiding principles from which jurists decide cases.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 54, listed as AL QAWĀ'ID AL FIQHIYYAH. The definition is restated here.