Alfāẓ (sing. lafẓ, lit. ‘utterances’), is a term for an integral part of the principles of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), which concerns questions of language as an introduction to deducing legal rules from the proofs (adilla, sing. dalīl) provided by the Qurʾān and sunna. The chapter on alfāẓ is always placed at the beginning of works on uṣūl al-fiqh, and includes …