Principles in Hanafi criminal law

This study which aims to identify the fundamentals of Hanafi criminal law through specific works consists of two sections excluding the introduction and conclusion. The first section examines in detail the early usage of the concepts "principal" and "essential"and other terms associated with these concepts, listing numerous examples. The second section attempts to identify and analyze the fundamentals of Hanafi criminal law, sometimes through comparative analysis. The analyses reveal the historical development of the concepts "essential" and "principal" and their function in fiqh. It demonstrates that the concept of "principal" became more widespread in later periods and that the science of qawaid became more systematic. This study examines the texts of early jurists and scholars of the Usul to determine the position of qawaid not only as a set of rules but also within semantic fields such as evidence, operational criterion, comparison, and istiḥsan. In particular, al-Jassas's more intensive use of the fundamentals compared to others and his contributions to this field demonstrate that the science of qawaid began to acquire a systematic structure with his time. While many sources appear to be directly based on verses and hadiths, it has also been observed that elements of language and rhetoric play a decisive role in their formation. In this context, it has been determined that the concept of "principle", which generally represents the fundamental basis of a ruling, applies to each of the elements such as evidence, principle, and istihsan, and that these elements are considered "principle" in the relevant case.