Ahkam (rulings and judgments; the five qualifications)

Ahkam is the plural of hukm, judgment or decision. In religious law it is the set of rulings that qualify every human act, and in a wider sense the rules of any subject.

In the Qur'an hukm occurs only in the singular, and is used of God, the prophets and other men. Of God it denotes individual commands and His whole dispensation. Final judgment belongs to God alone, but He gave His prophets authority to decide, and the authority of Muhammad is set against the rule of paganism. So hukm came to mean both the authority of the Islamic government and a qadi's judgment in a case. ¹

From the judicial sense come the logical judgment, the status predicated of a thing or a person, and a rule in religious law, grammar and other sciences, and in all these senses the plural is common. The "five qualifications" (al-ahkam al-khamsa: obligatory, recommended, indifferent, reprehensible, forbidden) classify every human act in religious law (see Shari'a). In a broader sense ahkam means the rules on a given subject, as in the titles al-Ahkam al-awqaf (on waqf), al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya (on government), Ahkam al-akhira (on the next world) and Ahkam al-nujum (astrology). In religious law, ahkam is a synonym of furu', the positive law as opposed to legal theory (see fiqh), and it is used more specifically for applying legal rules to concrete cases. ¹