Reasoning by analogy (qiyās) , a form of legal argumentation found in virtually all developed legal traditions, takes on special importance in Islamic jurisprudence by its role as one of the four sources of law. It is most commonly ranked as the fourth source of Islamic law, following the Qurʾān, the Sunna, and consensus (ijmāʿ) . Its importance lies in its utility as a method of assessing the status of particular human acts in the light of the normative categories that make up the law, that is, the sharīʿa . For those who