Investigating the position of reason in Zaydi jurisprudence during the first five centuries

Although Shi’a School is often regarded as the Imami school and Twelve-Imam Shi’ite; it cannot be ignored that the Shi’a School is not limited to Twelve-Imam Shi’ite; because besides it, there are other sects such as Zeydi, Isma’ili, etc., which are considered to be Shi’a sects. The existence of abundance commonalities in beliefs, goals, juridical rulings, and also common enemies, points to the very important and strategic issue of Shi’a sects’ convergence. One of the most important requirements for the realization of this convergence is the study of common bases and principles.The juridical rulings in the Imami juridical knowledge, the other Shi’a sects as well as all Islamic schools, are deduced from sources of deduction. Most Shi’a and Sunni scholars believe that sources of deduction of juridical rulings are based on four sources: the Book, tradition, reason, and consensus (ijma’). In this regard, one issue deserving research is the sources of the deduction of juridical rulings. Since Zaydiyah has tended to the Schism (E’tezal)  thought in some issues on discourse; and because of the distance from Household of the Prophet (ahl-al-bayt) jurisprudence, it has tended to Hanafi jurisprudence. Several issues are seriously raised, such as: the position of reason in Zaydi jurisprudence, grounds for reason’s reasonableness and the extent of the effectiveness of reason in jurisprudence.It is not unclear to the researchers that the era of the foundation and formation of Zaydi’s thought was in the first five centuries; hence, the study and examination of the topic of the research is limited to the issue at these five centuries. The data collection method of the current study is the library research and it has benefitted from the guidance of the experts. The research method of this paper is descriptive-analytical. With research and examination, it was discovered that no other work or study has been done on reason based on Zaydi’s point of view. Therefore, the research that has been conducted in the current thesis is new and innovative of itself, since it has explained the aforementioned issues in Zaydi jurisprudence.