A Genealogical Analysis of the Concept and Development of Maqashid Syarī‘ah

Maqāshid shsyarī‘ah has a tremendous urgency to the process of Islamic law’s adaptability and modernization, especially in response to the increasingly complicated and crucial human problems where the treasures of classical fiqh are no longer capable to answer them. This paper studies a genealogical analysis to answer the question about the origin of the concept of maqāshid syarī‘ah by uncovering its embryo and genes of this completely new concept. It was library research employing discourse analysis. Primary and secondary sources of works from previous and contemporary Muslim scholars discussing maqāshid were studied and analyzed using Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The study found that from the historical perspective, maqāshid syarī‘ah did not just emerge at the time of al-Syathibi, but, based on empirical data, it had been present long before his time. The literature analysis on ushūl fiqh concluded that the figures before al-Syathibi had developed some works that were actually in the area of the essential and substantial values of maqāshid syarī‘ah, however, they presented them using other words and terms so that they were considered as not of maqāshid syarī‘ah