The Fundamentals Of Jurisprudence is a mixture of two pronunciations, and in the additional mean: «Legitimate evidence, on which the science of jurisprudence depends, and derive its provisions».
And “Fundamentals Of Jurisprudence” in the mean of the collective, namely: the total compound, ie: the science called: “the fundamentals of jurisprudence” is: «knowledge of the rules that were developed to reach the extraction of the Shari’a rulings of its detailed evidence»
In other words, Fundamentals Of Jurisprudence is a science that establishes fundamentalist rules to derive Shari’a rulings from their correct evidence. Or it is «Science which studies the evidence of jurisprudence, and what make it able to the evidence and ways to derive the provisions of the legitimacy of evidence, diligence and reasoning». So it is called: «method of reasoning jurisprudence»,
And it’s subject: the evidence of the total jurisprudence, and what makes it able to reach the evidence.
And searching in how to derive, its rules and conditions.
Or it is: «Science which examines the evidence of the total jurisprudence and how to benefit from it, and the condition of the beneficiary (diligent)», and shows how to derive the ruling from the evidence, as derived from the explicit text of the Quranic verse, or the Hadith, or from their concept, or from the measurement on them, or The fundamentals of jurisprudence examine the evidence in its totality, the characteristics of each type and how its types are related, and the rules and conditions that show the jurist the way that he must commit to extracting the rulings from the evidence.
The origins of jurisprudence were present in the minds of the scholars of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him; صلى الله عليه وسلم ) and the followers in The first chest period, where they did not need the knowledge of the rules of inference that most of them( rules ) had taken from them( Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him; صلى الله عليه وسلم ) and the first followers The first chest period )because they are the owners of a Linguistic Queen and their experience in knowing the transfer of Shari’a and the approach of the era.
After the end of the period of the first chest and the emergence of the age of codification of science the jurists and the diligents needed to collect the laws of deriving and rules to take advantage of the provisions of the evidence, they wrote it in an art presided by a head and named it fundamentals of jurisprudence.
Ibn Khaldun said: “The first one to write in it was al-Shaafa’i (may Allaah be pleased with him), in which he dictated his famous message in which he spoke about the commands, prohibitions, the statement, the news, the copies, and the ruling on what is prescribed from the analogy, then the jurists of the Hanafis wrote in it and achieved those rules and expanded the words on it , and the speakers also wrote as well ».
In other sources, it was said that the first to be categorized in the fundamentals of jurisprudence and setting the rules: Abu Yusuf, Muhammad, which are student of Abu Hanifa, it was said: but Abu Yusuf alone, it was said: it is Abu Hanifa Noman, where he wrote a book called the book of opinion, but nothing reached from it, which is famous for both ancient and modern times: Al-Shaafa’i was the first to write in the science of fundamentals of jurisprudence, and he wrote it independently in his famous book Al-Resalah – a book which is a rolling and printed book .
This was stated by the majority of jurists like Ibn Khalkan and Ibn Khaldun.
And the evidence of the total jurisprudence: the book and the Sunnah and the consensus and measurement, and this four evidence are the basic principles agreed by the majority of jurists, and other evidence in different details of the reasoning, not in denial altogether, including: the acquisition of the case, and approbation, interests sent,and custom, and the work of the people of the city at the Maalikis, and the words of the companions.