Maxim of Abuse of Right: A Study of Zain ud Din Ibn Nujaim and Herbert Broom’s Juristico Legal Applications

Abstract

Qawa’id al-fiqhiyyah (legal maxims) encapsulates concepts and precepts that facilitate a person to deliver an appropriate ruling where no explicit law exists previously. The definitive meanings were developed from the knowledge and application of the injunctions and the rules of the Shari’ah. The word injunction signifies the prescriptive and the prohibitive injunctions of the Qu’ran and the Sunnah. These rules are the systemic expositions of the fortitude of the legal text (nass) which are intended to guide man in diverse situations in society. They provide broad contours within which policy conception can be pursued and its legitimacy judged. Legal maxims, in contrast, are amenable to trade-offs and substitutions. Both Zainuddin Ibn Nujaim (d. 970 HJ) and Herbert Broom (d. 1882 CE) are famous for the arrangement, interpretations and for sound applications of juristico-legal maxims and rules in Muslim and western world of law and jurisprudence respectively. The al-Ashbah wa-Al-Nazair of Ibn Nujaim and Broom’s Legal Maxims of Herbert Broom speak of their deep approach to the concerned discipline. This  research will provide a general analysis of the juristico-legal interpretations regarding the elementary maxims of Abuse of Rights  as made by Ibn Nujaim (d.970 HJ) and Herbert Broom(d.1882 CE) in their aforesaid books.