Page 213 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

1032 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

and being replaced by new urban social structures.Thus, pore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka adhere to
only the guilty party was responsible for paying the the Shafi‘i school.The last school to form, the Hanbali,
compensation. The Hanafi school in Al-Kufa respected is only practiced in Saudi Arabia.
the Quran and Sunna, but was more open to outside Islamic law in Shia Islam is different. The Quran and
influences such as Roman law and the use of reason. the Sunna are still the most important sources of law.
Ash-Shafi‘i, seeing these differences, thought that the However, Sunnis and Shiites differ on other sources of
methods used to produce Islamic laws should be the law in several significant ways. First, the traditions that
same from place to place and ruler to ruler because the form the Sunna for Shiite Muslims are different than
sharia, as God’s law, must itself be uniform.The suprem- those for Sunni Muslims. Second, for Shiites the legal
acy of the four sources and yet another school of law, the opinions of the imams are also binding, for they were
Shafi‘i, developed out of his work. So influential was ash- guided by God. And third, for Imami (or Twelver) Shiite
Shafi‘i and his emphasis on the Sunna that both the Muslims (whose imam is hidden) consensus has no legal
Maliki and Hanafi schools eventually largely adopted his force, but the use of reason by the top jurists, who are
four-sources model for themselves. thought to be under the influence of the hidden imam,
The last of the four schools of law that have survived is encouraged.Today, this school of law continues to be
until today in Sunni Islam is that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal practiced in Iran.
(780–855 CE).Ash-Shafi‘i, despite his focus on the Quran
and the Sunna as sources of law, represents a compro- The Use of Reason
mise between those who used reason as a source and Each of the different law schools had a different approach
those who rejected it. Ibn Hanbal belonged to this latter to the use of reason. For some, the use of reason in mat-
group. Each and every law must be rooted in either the ters of law was not much different than the scholar’s opin-
Quran or the Sunna. Ibn Hanbal took this principle so ion. But this approach was eventually rejected by almost
seriously that it is said that he refused to eat watermelon all and the common view was that a jurist had no right to
because it was not mentioned in the Quran, nor did he produce law on the basis of what he supposed to be right.
know of a tradition from the Sunna that indicated that Instead, opinion had to backed by a source such as the
Muhammad had eaten it. (This is hardly surprising, Quran or the Sunna.The problem was that if each jurist
since watermelon would not have grown in any of the used his own opinion, the law would not only vary from
regions in which Muhammad had lived.) region to region, but from person to person. And, more
There were several other schools of law in Sunni importantly,law based on human opinion was not divine
Islam, but only the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali law. This use of opinion was strongly opposed by the
survive.The Abbasid dynasty adopted the Hanafi school. Shafi‘i and Hanbali schools.However,in the early Maliki
It spread to India and from there to east Africa and and Hanafi schools opinion in the form of reason was
Southeast Asia. The Ottomans also adopted it and so used, although many of their conclusions were later sup-
today it is the law followed by Muslims of Bosnia and ported by use of the four sources of Islamic law.
Herzegovina,Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and portions of Opinion or judgment was still used in analogy and
Eqypt and North Africa. The Maliki school spread west consensus.That is, the jurist had to determine what was
from his home in Medina to Africa. The Sudan, Eritrea, common between a previous case and a new case when
Somalia, Libya,Tunisia, Algeria, and parts of Egypt and an analogy was adduced. (In the example above, it was
Nigeria practice Maliki law.The Shafi‘i school spread in the impairment caused by both wine and narcotics.)
opposite direction. It began in Egypt but moved to South Likewise, consensus as a source of law implies consensus
Arabia, then east along trade routes to the Indian coast of opinion. However, because of the diversity of Mus-
and Southeast Asia. Most Muslims of Malaysia, Singa- lims, the use of this method was impractical in all but the