98 DESTINY DISRUPTED
The four schools of Sunni law are named for the scholars who gave
them final shape. Thus, the Hanafi school was founded by Abu Hanifa,
from the Mghanistan area {though he taught in Kufa, Iraq); the Maliki
school, by the Moroccan jurist Ibn Malik {though he worked and taught
in Medina); and the Shafi'i school, by Imam al-Shafi'i of Mecca {though
he settled finally in Egypt.) The last to crystallize was the Hanbali school,
founded by the rigidly uncompromising Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, about whom
I will say more later in this chapter.
The schools promote slightly different methods of deriving rulings,
which has led to minor variations in the details of their laws, but ever since
Abbasid times all four have been considered equally orthodox: a Muslim
can subscribe to any of them without taint of heresy. Developing and ap-
plying this code in all its versions was itself a gigantic social enterprise that
spawned and employed an entire social class of scholars known as the
ulama-the title is simply the plural of alim, which means "learned one."
If you had a reputation for religious scholarship-if you were, that is, a
member of the ulama-you might be invited to participate in the admin-
istration of a waqf. You might teach students, or even run a school. You
might work as a judge, and not just one who heard particular cases, but a
judge who issued rulings on broad social issues. In the khalifate, your
scholarly status might well lead powerful officials to seek your advice, even
though the government and the ulama tended to butt heads, being sepa-
rate {sometimes even competing) loci of power. The ulama defined the
law, controlled the courts, ran the educational system, and permeated
Muslim social institutions. They had tremendous social power throughout
the civilized world, the power to muster and direct the approval and dis-
approval of the community against particular people or behaviors. I em-
phasize social power, because in Muslim society, which is so community
oriented, social pressure-the power of shaming-might be the most pow-
erful of all forces, as opposed to political power, which operates through
procedural rules, control of money, monopoly control of the instruments
of force, and so on.
Let me emphasize that the ulama were not {and are not) appointed by
anyone. Islam has no pope and no official clerical apparatus. How, then,
did someone get to be a member of the ulama? By gaining the respect of
people who were already established ulama. It was a gradual process. There