ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Principle of Ijtihad in Islam Ijtihad Permitted By the Shari'a The word ijtihad was used until the fifth hijri century with this particular meaning, i.e., with the meaning of qiyas and ijtihad al­ra'y, a kind of ijtihad which is prohibited in the eyes of the Shi`a.

Up to that time, the Shi`i `ulama included a chapter on ijtihad in their books only because they wanted to refute it, to emphasize that it was null and void, and to proscribe it, as did the Shaykh al­Tusi in some of his works. But the meaning of this word gradually extended beyond this specific meaning, and the Sunni `ulama themselves began not to use 'ijtihad' in the specific sense of ijtihad al­ra'y, [as a source] which was on the same level as the Book and the Sunna.

[Such a shift in the meaning of the word can be seen with] Ibn Hajib [^15] in his "Mukhtasar al­usul", on which `Adud al­Din al­Iji wrote a commentary known as al­`Adudi, and which has been till recently, and maybe still is, the authoritatively approved book on [Sunni] usul, and before him with al­Ghazali [^16] in his famous work "al­Mustasfa".

It then became used rather in the unqualified sense of effort or exertion to arrive at the rulings of the shari`a, and was defined as "the maximum employment of effort and exertion in deducing the rulings of the shari`a from the valid proofs (adilla, sing. dalil, see below ). However, it is another matter to decide what the valid proofs of the shari`a are: whether qiyas, istihsan, and so forth, are among them or not.

From this time onwards, the Shi`i `ulama also adopted this word because they accepted this [general] meaning. This kind of ijtihad was a kind approved by the shari`a. Although the word had originally been one to be avoided among the Shi`a, after its meaning and the concept it denoted had undergone this change, their `ulama, discarded their prejudice and subsequently had no reservations about using it.

It seems that in many instances the Shi`i `ulama, were careful to consider unity of method and conformity among Muslims as a whole. For example, the Sunnis came to recognize ijma` (consensus of opinion among the `ulama) as a proof leading to certainty, and, in practice, they also held it to be fundamental and substantive (mawdu`i) just like qiyas, whereas the Shi`a did not accept it. However, to protect the unity of method, they gave the name ijma` to a principle which they did accept [^17].