Tashrīʿ is God’s instituting of rulings for His servants: to institute (sharaʿa) a thing is to make it a path and a way. What is so instituted is the sharʿ — the sharīʿa, the path in religion, the following of which orders this life and the next. In the uṣūlīs’ usage tashrīʿī, “legislative”, is set against takwīnī — said of the will and of instituting (jaʿl).
Reader note. This entry concerns God's institution of religious rulings and the contrast between legislative and creative or ontological ordering. It does not define every use of sharʿ or sharīʿa.
In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works
For Ṭabāṭabāʾī, tashrīʿ is the instituting and making of religious rulings and social laws, not the instituted sharīʿa itself. God legislates religion to rectify human acts, character, settled dispositions, and society; legislating the rulings attends to human happiness and good in this world and the next, and divine purification is its end. In the selected contrast, tashrīʿ names the legislative side, distinct from takwīnī coming-to-be and existence. Verbal sharaʿa where it merely means ‘began’ is outside this identity.
Source: al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
Read in context
Open a passage in the edition where this term is linked.