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Usul al-fiqh is concerned with the sources of Islamic law, their order of priority, and the methods by which legal rules may be deduced from the source materials of the Shari'ah. It is also concerned with regulating the exercise of ijtihad. The sources of the Shari'ah are of two kinds: revealed and non-revealed. Whereas the former provide the basic evidence and indications from which detailed rules may be derived, the latter provide the methodology and procedural guidelines to ensure correct utilisation of the source evidence. Usul al-fiqh, or the roots of Islamic law, thus expound the indications and methodology by which the rules of fiqh are deduced from their source evidence. The rules of fiqh are thereby derived from the Qur'an and Sunnah in conformity with a body of principles and methods which are collectively known as usul al-fiqh.
Some writers have described usul al-fiqh as the methodology of law, a description which is accurate but incomplete. Although methods of interpretation and deduction are of primary concern to usul al-fiqh, the latter is not exclusively devoted to methodology. To say that usul al-fiqh is the science of the sources and methodology of the law is accurate in the sense that the Qur'an and Sunnah constitute the sources as well as the subject-matter to which the methodology of usul al-fiqh is applied. The Qur'an and Sunnah contain both specific injunctions and general guidelines on law and religion, but it is the broad and general directives which occupy the larger part of the legal content of these sources. The general directives that are found in the Qur'an and Sunnah are concerned not so much with methodology as with substantive law and they provide indications which can be used as raw material in the development of law. The methodology of usul al-fiqh refers mainly to methods of reasoning such as analogy (qiyas), juristic preference (istihsan), presumption of continuity (istishab) and the rules of interpretation and deduction. These are all designed to serve as an aid to the correct understanding of the sources of Shari'ah and ijtihad. While the clear directives of the Qur'an and the Sunnah command permanent validity, the methodology of usul does not, for it was developed after the revelation of the Qur'an and Sunnah came to an end, and most of it consists of juristic propositions and ijtihad advanced by scholars and 'ulama' of different periods. As an instrument of legal construction and ijtihad, the methodology of usul al-fiqh must therefore remain open to further adaptation and refinement in order to respond to the changing needs of society and civilisation.
To deduce the rules of fiqh from the indications that are provided in the sources is the expressed purpose of usul al-fiqh. Fiqh as such is the end product of usul al-fiqh; and yet the two are separate disciplines. The main difference between fiqh and usul al-fiqh is that the former is concerned with the knowledge of the detailed rules of Islamic law in its various branches, and the latter with the methods that are applied in the deduction of such rules from their sources. Fiqh, in other words, is the law itself, whereas usul al-fiqh is the methodology of the law. The relationship between the two disciplines resembles that of the rules of grammar to the language. Usul al-fiqh in this sense provides standard criteria for the correct deduction of the rules of fiqh from the sources of Shari'ah. An adequate knowledge of fiqh necessitates close familiarity with its sources. This is borne out in the definition of fiqh,which is 'knowledge of the practical rules of Shari'ah acquired from the detailed evidence in the sources'. The knowledge of the rules of fiqh, in other words, must be acquired directly from the sources, a requirement which implies that the faqih must be in contact with the sources of fiqh. Consequently, a person who learns fiqh in isolation from its sources is not a faqih. The faqih must know not only the rule that misappropriating the property of others is forbidden, but also the detailed evidence for it in the source, that is, the Qur'anic ayah (2:188) which states: 'Devour not each other’s property in defiance of the law.'
