Faqīh

A faqih (Arabic: فقيه, pl. فقهاء; faqīh, pl. fuqahāʔ‎) is an Islamic jurist, an expert in fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic law.

Islamic jurisprudence or fiqh is the human understanding of Sharia, which is believed by Muslims to represent divine law as revealed in the Quran and sunnah (the practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad). Sharia is expanded and developed by interpretation (ijtihad) of the Quran and sunnah by Islamic jurists (ulama) and implemented by the rulings (fatwas) of jurists on questions presented to them.

Fiqh deals with the observance of rituals, morals and social legislation in Islam. In the modern era there are four prominent schools (madhhab) of fiqh within Sunni practice and two (or three) within Shia practice.

The historian Ibn Khaldun describes fiqh as "knowledge of the rules of God which concern the actions of persons who own themselves bound to obey the law respecting what is required (wajib), sinful (haram), recommended (mandub), disapproved (makruh) or neutral (mubah)". This definition is consistent amongst the jurists.

Methods of derivation are laid out in the books of usul al-fiqh (principles of fiqh), and the types of evidence which are deemed valid for deriving rulings from are many in number. Four of them are agreed upon by the vast majority of jurists. They are:

These four types of evidence are seen as acceptable by the vast majority of jurists from both the schools of Sunni jurists (the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali and sometimes the Zahiriyah), as well as Shia jurists. However, Zahiriyah or Literalists do not see qiyas as valid.

While Twelver Shia see edicts of the Twelve Imams as holding the same weight as the Quran and sunnah, this is not accepted by Sunni jurists.

A faqih is one who has fulfilled the conditions for ijtihad either in their entirety or piecemeal. In the Sunni view it is generally held that there are no or very few jurists that have reached the level of Mujtahid Mutlaq (see below) in our day and age. In the Twelver Shia view, each of the Marja' have reached this level.