From around the mid 8th century, scholars discussed the variations and what if anything was required to be done about them. The 2nd Abbasid Caliph, al-Mansur, considered some codification in order to promote more uniformity in the law but was persuaded to accept the status quo on the basis that Islam importantly accepts and promotes diversity and independence of thought and ideas. This same principle led to the acceptance of differing mutually respectful schools of jurisprudence. Various schools were formed under the influence of respected scholars and later ceased. By the end of the 10th century there had been around 10 major schools.
One example of schools arriving at their own diverse positions that dealt with new situations is the case of tobacco products. Tobacco was not widely known in Arabia until around the 16th Century. There is still disagreement among scholars today (based to an extent on the schools to which the scholars adhere) as to whether consumption of tobacco products is acceptable but disapproved or actually forbidden (in an Islamic legal sense) . Incidentally coffee, which became popular at around the same time (well after the death of Muhammad), has generally been found to be an acceptable dietary item by all schools. These debates occurred well before modern times and bespeak some prescience particularly concerning tobacco's attributes vis a vis coffee's given the current state of scientific knowledge. The general Islamic concept appears to be that stimulants generally don't fall within prohibitions to the extent that items with narcotic properties similar to those of alcohol do (such as heroin or marijuana (by analogy with alcohol's prohibition)). Incidentally, music has also been considered by some especially puritan scholars (Ibn Hanbal was one (see below)) to have similar narcotic effects to alcohol thus making it potentially subject to regulation and certainly suspicion.
The idea arose that a consensus of the major scholars applying the original sources could raise the status of an opinion from an opinion to a law. There are four major Sunni schools today and one major Shi'a school but there have been several others that have contributed to Islamic law in the past, as I've mentioned. The Shi'a schools have required that Hadith be transmitted solely by members of Muhammad’s family in order to be considered valid as legal sources and have also included acts of senior members of his family as valid sources of law.
I will now briefly discuss the five major schools that exist today in the order in which they came to prominence. Note that today there are two other significant Shi'a schools and one significant Khawarij school active in a few regions. It has been common for serious scholars to learn the methods of all or several of these five major schools rather than merely a single school’s methods.
The Maliki School
Malik Ibn Anas (713 – 795) developed a system for 750s Medina of searching the sources for solutions to then-current issues. The school is now mainly prevalent in the western part of the Arab world (typically from Libya West). Malik gave particular weight to the consensus of the earliest jurists of Medina and the principle of the common good of the community as principles of legal decision-making. His major work is called al-Muwatta’ (also the earliest comprehensive book of Islamic jurisprudence) and was evidently written over around a 40 year period. It thus provides a model for later works and typically combines ideas concerning things such as grooming regulations and religious duties with everything from international laws of war and peace to division of estates upon divorce, penal law, contracts and the freeing of slaves. Malik was the only one of the five major school founders who produced such a major work himself. The other four appear to have left that role to one or more of their disciples.
The Hanafi School
Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man (c. 699 – 767) championed Greek logical methods in Islamic legal philosophy in Iraq. The 'Abbasid dynasty centred in Iraq first took on his philosophy when a disciple of Hanifa’s was appointed head judge and it remains prominent in Iraq and the North and East of the Arab world today. The Seljuk and Ottoman Turks and Indian Mughals thus came to prefer it and the Ottomans later popularised it in much of the rest of the Arab world with the exception of Egypt by means of their Ottoman Empire. It persists especially in the East of the Middle Eastern Islamic world.
The Ja’fari School (The Major Shi'a School)
The sixth Imam of the Twelver Shi’a (I will discuss the Twelver Shi’a further later) Ja’far al-Sadiq (c. 700 – 765) knew of and respected the above two scholars (i.e. the putative founders of the Maliki and Hanafi Schools). These first three scholars lived more or less contemporaneously and were in contact with and respected each other. The Ja'fari School is now prevalent especially in Iran (where Twelver Shi'ism is the major religion) and in southern Iraq and Lebanon (the areas that Condoleezza Rice used to menacingly refer to as the Shi'a Crescent that threatened peace when she wanted to scare Sunni Arab rulers into doing what she wanted).
The Shafi’i School
Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafi’i (767 – 820) was born in Gaza and was a disciple of Malik. He made use of the principle of precedent and thus a kind of judge-made law as a reaction against the kind of relatively arbitrary speculation promoted by the relatively logic-based Hanafi School. Shafi'i law is most commonly used today in Egypt and in South East Asia.
The Hanbali School
I will turn to Sufism in the next post.
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