Hanefi Usûl-ı Fıkhı’nın Müşterek ve Müşkil Dil Kategorilerinin Bir Mukayesesi

The linguistic categories (aqsām al-lafẓ) of Islamic Jurisprudence (Uṣūl al-Fiqh) have recently become a source of interest to both Arabic linguists as well as scholars of Islamic Law. There seems to be a widespread tendency, however, among contemporary scholars to approach to them without any concern to highlight aspects where they are similar to, or different from, each other, unless such a comparison was already made in classical manuals of Islamic Jurisprudence, even where the occasion demands the otherwise. One such occasion concerns muštarak and muškil, the two linguistic categories that fall under the first and the second linguistic categorizations respectively. While uṣūlīs compare muštarak with its co-subcategories (e.g. khāṣṣ) and muškil with its co-subcategories (e.g. khafī), they do not compare muštarak and muškil with each other despite the striking similarities between them. These similarities might compromise the integrity of the linguistic categorization due to the seeming existence of two separate categories for what appears to be the same concept. Therefore, there is a need to analyze the two categories in a comparative way to establish the nature of the relationship between the two, which is an issue, to the best of my knowledge, that has never been addressed in the previous literature, thus constituting an important gap that needs to be filled. The need to fill this gap becomes more urgent as the contemporary works that discuss muštarak and muškil define these two categories almost identical, sometimes even providing the same examples for each one of them, without noting the nature of the difference between them, which epitomizes the degree of misunderstanding which this gap in the classical literature can lead to today. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper provides, for the first time, a comparative analysis of muštarak and muškil. Falling back upon classical manuals of Islamic Jurisprudences within the Ḥanafī school, the present work argues that the difference between muštarak and muškil is that in the case of muškil, the assigned meanings of a given ambiguous expression has not yet thought through and requires two types of inquiries, namely ṭalab, which is to list the assigned meanings in use, and taʾammul, which is to determine which one of the assigned meanings of the ambiguous expression is meant on a given speech/writing occasion. However, in the case of muštarak, the assigned meanings of a given ambiguous expression have already been worked out and therefore are already known by the addressee(s) on a given speech/writing occasion, thus requiring only the inquiry of taʾammul. Therefore, this paper further argues that after its meanings in use are determined through taʾammul, muškil turns into muštarak. In this regard, muškil expression can be said to be an earlier version of muštarak, just as muštarak can be referred to be an earlier version of muʾawwal after one of its assigned meanings are preponderated upon through taʾwīl.