as recorded in the hadith. By the ninth century,
Muslim jurists had developed a coherent Islamic
legal tradition that was held to be applicable
to matters of worship as well as more worldly
affairs, especially in towns and cities. Out of
numerous local legal traditions, four major fiqh
schools (sing. madhhab) came to be recognized as
authoritative among Sunni Muslims: the hanaFi
legal school, the maliki legal school, shaFii
legal school, and the hanbali legal school.
The Hanafis began in Kufa (Iraq), the Malikis in
medina, the Shafiis in Fustat (Egypt), and the
Hanbalis in baghdad. Several Shii legal schools
also arose, but the principal one is the Jaafari
Legal School of tWelve-imam shiism.
All of these traditions of fiqh continue to be
followed today by Muslims, especially in matters
of worship, personal status, and family law. The
Hanafi School now prevails among Muslims in
tUrkey, iraq, Central Asia, aFghanistan, china,
pakistan, and india. The Maliki School is followed
mainly in North Africa, the sUdan, West and Cen-
tral aFrica, and Kuwait. The chief legal school in
egypt, syria, east aFrica, South India, Sri Lanka,
Southeast Asia, and the philippines is that of the
Shafiis. The Hanbali School prevails in saUdi ara-
bia and Qatar, and it has had a significant influ-
ence on many Muslims around the world. The
Jaafari tradition of fiqh is followed by the Shia of
iran, southern Iraq, southern lebanon, and parts
of India and Pakistan.
The different legal schools have come to
agree that there are four fundamental sources, or
“roots,” of fiqh. Ranked in order of importance,
they are the Quran, the sunna, consensus (ijmaa),
and analogical reasoning (qiyas). This ordering
of the sources for law was developed by the great
jurist mUhammad idris al-shaFii (d. 820). In the
Quran itself, there are only a few dozen legislative
commands, found mostly in the Medina chapters
(for example, Q 2, 3, 4, and 5). Much of the law is
drawn from the hadith, which contains accounts
of what Muhammad said and did. The sunna, or
normative practice, is derived from these accounts.
Not all hadith were considered to be authentic,
however. Muslims had to decide which ones were
valid, based on who had transmitted them and
whether they conformed to the Quran. During
the ninth century, hadith regarded as the most
authentic were arranged by subject and collected
into books, which made them more available for
study and consultation by students, scholars, and
legal experts throughout Muslim lands. The two
leading hadith collections for Sunnis are those of
al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875).
Al-Shafii and other jurists recognized that the
Quran and hadith did not address all of the legal
issues Muslims faced in the widespread Islamicate
empire, so they accepted laws based on communal
consensus to supplement those based on revela-
tion. This, the third root of fiqh, was endorsed by a
hadith ascribed to Muhammad, which stated, “My
community will never agree on error.” Eventually,
the consensus was understood to be that of the
jurists themselves, not of the community at large.
The fourth root, qiyas, allowed for the limited use
of personal reasoning by qualified jurists, but it
was subordinated to revelation, the hadith, and
communal tradition. Analogical reasoning helped
jurists make rulings concerning such issues as
determining the direction of prayer, the minimum
amount of money a groom owed to his bride’s
family at marriage, and varieties of food and drink
not mentioned in the Quran and hadith that were
forbidden to Muslims. A more inclusive form of
legal reasoning, known as ijtihad, also played a
significant role in the development of the Islamic
legal tradition, although it met with considerable
resistance from conservative jurists who were
concerned that too much independent reason-
ing, or personal opinion, would cause Muslims to
stray from the sharia.
Most areas of life were thought to be governed
by fiqh, at least in theory. These included worship
(ritual purity, prayer, almsgiving, Fasting, and the
haJJ), social life (marriage, divorce, inheritance,
and business transactions), and crimes (adUltery,
theft, use of alcohol, brigandage, and apostasy).fiqh 239 J