I like you to show its right intention to serve the...

I like you to show its right intention to serve the intellect because the real motives of research in this field may be unclear for many readers and that many biased persons may distort them and make them dangerous against the unity of the Ummah and may destroy the relations between its people”. Then he ordered me again and again to write a suitable introduction for the book. I got ready to undertake this task.

I pondered on the subject, determined its headlines and explained the summary of its content orally one evening to my father, who became pleased with it and admired it at that day. Then many distresses happened that prevented me from writing the introduction. The bitterest of those distresses was the loss of my father, the author, besides many other distresses that everywhere of Lebanon was afflicted with their corruption.

The country faced many crises in morals, economics and politics that history had never faced evil and corruption before. Our matter in this concern was the bitter loss of the author, to whom and to his likes of the true leaders we were in urgent need; those leaders, towards whom hearts and hopes would turn in the moments of terror. After three years I went out[^2] to find that my father was no longer there, alas!

But I found that the book had been published with a rich and judicious introduction written by Allama Sayyid Muhammad Taqiy al-Hakeem. I found in the research of Sayyid al-Hakeem a full satisfaction that might make me curious if I tried to (show its right intention to serve the intellect…) because Sayyid al-Hakeem had clarified, in his bright and clear style, the bases and principles of the book in their scientific and Islamic course.

Although the research of Sayyid al-Hakeem had left no chance to anyone to misunderstand or to fabricate the real intentions of the book, I found that I had to be sincere to the will of my father, when he had ordered me to put an introduction for the book. If I succeeded in this word, it would be a bit of service, and if not, it would just carry out an obligation from among many obligations I had towards my father. Nass and ijtihad are two idioms from among the idioms of the Islamic jurisprudence.

Sayyid al-Hakeem has explained them in details in the light of Usool . They both are two bases, on which legal verdicts, whether traditional or derivational, depend.