Fikih methodology in Ebu'l-Hasen el-Maverdi's work titled el-Hâvi'l-Kebir

One of the most important figures in the history of Islamic fiqh is undoubtedly Ebu'l-Hasen al-Mawardi, who was born in Basra in 364/974 AH, grew up in Baghdad and died there in 450/1058 AH. Although he is known by the society as a theorist of politics, ethics and education, he is actually both a good commentator and a distinguished Shafi'i jurist. As a matter of fact, his fürû fiqh work named al-Hâvi'l-Kebîr is the most obvious proof of this. el-Hâvi'l-Kebîr, commentary on Muzeni's work al-Muhtasar; al-Muhtasar is a kind of summary of Imam Shafii's work called al-Umm. In this respect, al-Hâvi'l-Kebîr is an annotation of Shafii's al-Umm, but it is not an annotation in the classical sense; On the contrary, it is one of the important studies showing the fiqh culture and understanding of the period. One of the most important features of this work is that it contains Mawardi's views and thoughts on the science of methodology. In this context, knowing Mawardi's methodology is important in terms of showing the level of the methodology after Shafi'i. In this study, it has been tried to reveal the understanding of method by considering al-Hâvi'l-Kebîr's work and other works of Mawardi. On the other hand, the approaches of Shirazi, Juwayni, Sem'ani and Ghazali, who were Shafi'i methodists who lived in the same time period, especially Shafi'i, were included in terms of comparison. In the study, it was seen that the scholars were in full agreement on the fact that the shari'a sources were books, sunnah ijma and qiyas, but when the subjects were elaborated, scholars disagreed on almost every issue. Mawardi states that if the sâz recitation is sound, it will be considered as news-i vahid; He argued that the news would be divided as mutafiz, mutawatir and ahad, and the validity of silent consensus for the Companions. He opposed the general approach that Shafii equated qiyas and ijtihad. Companions kavli, istishâb, umûmu'l-belvâ accepted that one can act with istihsan based on evidence, that ijtihâd is necessary, that it is not appropriate for a mujtahid to imitate another mujtahid, and that abrogation has also taken place. Mawardi, who is one of the people of choice among the scholars, is mostly within the sect; It can be said that he rarely made non-sectarian preferences. Most of the time, Mawardi adopted the understanding of method introduced by Shafi'i; As far as we can determine, he opposed Shafi'i in only five or six issues. Keywords: Evidence, Elfâz, el-Hâvi'l-Kebîr, Mawardi, Preference.