The University of Basrah Organizes a Workshop on Language and Imami Jurisprudence
The Basrah and Arabian Gulf Studies Center at the University of Basrah organized a workshop entitled “The Role of Language in Ijtihad and the Derivation of Legal Rulings.”
The workshop aimed to highlight the central role of the Arabic language as a fundamental tool for understanding religious texts and deriving legal rulings, through the application of linguistic sciences such as grammar, morphology, rhetoric, and semantics in the analysis of Qur’anic verses and narrations.
The workshop included a lecture delivered by researcher Abbas Jassim Nasser, who addressed the importance of the linguistic dimension in shaping juristic reasoning. He presented applied examples from the fields of purification, prayer, fasting, transactions, and penal rulings, illustrating how linguistic variations influence the determination of legal judgments, including the semantic implications of terms such as al-sa‘īd, al-dulūk, and al-khayṭ al-abyaḍ.
The workshop emphasized the role of narrations transmitted from Ahl al-Bayt in guiding and prioritizing linguistic meanings, highlighting the deep interaction between language and the principles of jurisprudence. It concluded that a precise understanding of language constitutes a fundamental prerequisite for arriving at sound legal rulings.
Department of Media and Government Communication