Abstract
The purpose of the following essay is to sketch the outer contours of the epistemological universe in which the science of legal theory and methodology, or usul al-fiqh, was elaborated in classical Sunni Islam. This task will be accomplished by scrutinizing arguments both for and against two crucial components of that theory - namely, qiyas and ta'liln1 - as presented by two major jurists of the 5th century of the Hijra. The jurists in question, who represent opposite ends of the Islamic theological spectrum, are the Hanafite Mu'tazilite jurist Abu 'l-Husayn al-Basri (d. 436/1044) and the Zahirite Abu Muhammad 'Ali ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (d. 456/1064). By analyzing the treatises on usul al-fiqh of authors with such widely divergent theological orientations, we shall seek to draw out and map the very crucial epistemological considerations which lie at the base of each author's stance. The juridical methods of qiyas and ta'lil lend themselves particularly well to such an endeavor. Being neither strictly textual nor purely rational methods of deriving the law, they represent the delicate relationship between the incontrovertible and in some ways inscrutable - but nonetheless finite - dictates of Divine command, and the urgently felt need among jurists to somehow capture the essence of that command rationally and methodologically, so as to extrapolate therefrom moral and legal principles of a general nature which could then, in turn, be applied to all the multifarious details of human life. Ta'lil is perhaps the most central component of qiyas...