The Majalla Maxims and Their Relevance to Modern Islamic Law

Az-Zarqa's Sharh al-Qawa'id al-Fiqhiyyah occupies a pivotal position in the history of Islamic legal thought: it is at once a commentary on a classical tradition of legal maxims and a text that shaped the application of Islamic law in the modern legal systems of the Arab world. Understanding this dual character is essential for appreciating its significance.

The ninety-nine maxims of the Majalla were themselves a selective codification of the Hanafi maxims tradition, drawn primarily from Ibn Nujaym's Ashbah wan-Naza'ir and related works. The Ottoman legal reformers who drafted the Majalla between 1869 and 1876 chose to open the code with these maxims because they provided a principled foundation for the specific rules that followed. Az-Zarqa's commentary gave these maxims the scholarly depth that the Majalla's necessarily concise formulations could not provide.

In the twentieth century, as Arab states developed modern legal systems, many retained elements of Islamic private law — particularly in personal status (family law, inheritance, and endowments). The legal maxims tradition, especially as systematized by az-Zarqa, provided a bridge between the classical fiqh that governed personal status and the modern civil law frameworks adopted for commercial and procedural matters. Courts and legal scholars could appeal to the maxims as a shared vocabulary between the two traditions.

Az-Zarqa's son, Mustafa Ahmad az-Zarqa, extended his father's work in two important directions. His Al-Madkhal al-Fiqhi al-'Amm (General Introduction to Fiqh) became the standard introduction to Islamic law for law school students across the Arab world, heavily drawing on the maxims framework. His contributions to Islamic finance — particularly his analysis of the permissibility of contemporary financial instruments — relied on the maxims of necessity, custom, and removal of harm that his father had explicated.

The contemporary relevance of Sharh al-Qawa'id extends to Islamic finance, dispute resolution, and bioethics. Financial institutions offering Islamic products cite the maxims of necessity and custom to justify instruments that might otherwise be contested. Medical ethicists draw on the principles of harm removal and necessity to navigate complex questions in biomedical ethics. In each domain, az-Zarqa's commentary provides a methodologically sound starting point for applying classical principles to novel circumstances.

The enduring value of Sharh al-Qawa'id al-Fiqhiyyah lies in its demonstration that Islamic law is not a fixed set of rules but a principled system capable of generating coherent answers to new questions when its underlying logic is correctly understood and applied. Az-Zarqa understood this, and his work remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how Islamic jurisprudence functions as a living legal tradition.