A Study of Istiḥsān in Ahl al-Sunnah versus the Taste of Sharīʿa in Imami Jurisprudence

One of concerns of Imami jurists over the past many centuries has been to derive rules using various legal ways and methods. They have sometimes used specific arguments and other times general arguments to infer and deduce Islamic laws. However, they do not seem to have contented themselves with these two methods of deduction inasmuch as they have used the Legislator's characteristics, methods and behaviors to attain a principle which transcends the rules; it is a principle that allows them to prove or disprove a ruling in a definite way. They have taken those principles not from single propositions, but from a collection of rulings and have chosen the "taste of Sharīʿa" as a title for it. In Sunni jurisprudence, however, Istiḥsān (juristic preference) has been proposed as one of the ways to discover the rules of Sharia, a method that is not regarded as a valid tool of derivation of Islamic laws in Shiite jurisprudence. Although the Shiite School of jurisprudence has opposed it, it has agreed with Ahl-e Sunnah about the manifestations. Those instances are not mentioned as istiḥsān, yet they can be considered as another manifestation of some definitions of Sunni juristic discretion (istiḥsān) —i.e., the use of a jurist's own judgment to determine the best solution to a religious problem that cannot be solved by simply citing sacred texts. Comparing the two terms of istiḥsān and taste (madhāq) of Shari'a, the present study has reached the conclusion that although these two terms have commonalities, they are different in many ways that make the taste of Shari'a authoritative and a valid instrument used by prominent Imami jurists in jurisprudential arguments.