economic thought in the qur"àn and sunnah 35Imam Abù-Dawood (d. 888 A.C.), Sunan Abi-Dawood,
Imam al-Tirmizi (d. 892 A.C.), al-Jàmi", Sunan al-Tarmazi
Imam ibn Màjah (d. 886 A.C.), Sunan ibn Màjah, and
Imam al-Nasà"i (d. 915 A.C.), Sunan al-Nasà"i.
Of these, two are widely used, flaœìœal-Bùkhari and flaœìœMuslim.
These books are available to all Muslims and represent, after the
Qur"àn, the second source of the Sharì"ah.
The Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the product of changes in the Islamic society after
the Prophet’s death. As the Islamic state expanded rapidly Muslims
faced new situations that did not exist during the Prophet’s lifetime
which necessitated taking certain actions not covered in the Qur"àn
or the Sunnah. Early Muslim leaders, therefore, had to derive new
rules from the Qur"ànic and the Traditional texts to accommodate
the new situations. Hence, the word jurisprudence indicates in Arabic
the effort made in order to form one’s own judgment, ra"y (Khallaf,
1942). The religious legitimacy of this emanates from a situation
when the Prophet sent one of his companions, Mu"az ibn Jabal, to
al-Yemen as a judge. In guiding Mu"az, the Prophet approved the
use of the power of reasoning to reach a ruling in the absence of
a clear rule in the Qur"àn and Sunnah (ibid.).
Jurisprudence, therefore, relies on various sources and uses cer-
tain principles in deriving the required rules. The first of these is
the Qur"àn and the Sunnah. Wherever there are explicit rules in
the Qur"àn and the Sunnah, there is no room for self-judgment. But
when either is void of an explicit rule, the general understanding of
the Qur"ànic verses and their purposes and the interpretation of
the Aœàdìth and their intention, the spirit of the law as we may
say, should be used to guide the jurists in arriving at the required
rule. No violation to the spirit of the Sharì"ah should be commit-
ted. The core of jurisprudence, therefore, is the Qur"àn and the
Sunnah. It is important to realise that at this stage because many
socio-economic issues in the Islamic economic thought emerged from
jurisprudence.
The other bases on which Islamic Jurisprudence is established are:
consensus of opinions, judicial reasoning, derivation, public interest
and custom and usage.