The Abbasid revolution; the compromise; the problem of the Abbasids; the two classes of canon lawyers and theologians; the rise of legal schools; Abu Hanifa; his application of Legal Fiction; istihsan: the Qadi Abu Yusuf; Muhammad ibn al-Hasan; Sufyan ath-Thawri; al-Awza‘i; Malik ibn Anas; the Usage of al-Madina; istislah; the doctrine of Agreement; the beginning of controversy; traditionalists or historical lawyers versus rationalists or philosophical lawyers; ash-Shafi‘i, a mediator and systematizer; the Agreement of the Muslim people a formal source; "My People will never agree in an error;" the resultant four sources, Qur’an, Usage, Analogy, Agreement; the traditionalist revolt; Da’ud az-Zahiri and literalism; Ahmad ibn Hanbal; the four abiding schools; the Agreement of Islam; the Disagreement of Islam; iurare in verba magistri; the degrees of authority; the canon and the civil codes in Islam; their respective spheres; distribution of schools at present day; Shi‘ite law; Ibadite law. THAT great revolution which brought the Abbasid dynasty to power seemed at first to the pious theologians and lawyers to be a return of the old days. They dreamt of entering again into their rights; that the canon law would be the full law of the land. It was only slowly that their eyes were opened, and many gave up the vain contest and contented themselves with compromise. This had been rare under the Umayyads; the one or two canon lawyers who had thrown in their lot with them had been marked men. Az-Zuhri (d. 124), a man of the highest moral and theological reputation who played a very important This method, as we shall see later, was vehemently attacked by his opponents, as wads his system in general. Yet that system by its philosophical perfection--due to its theoretical origin--and perfection in detail--due to generations of practical workers--has survived all attack and can now be said to be the leading one of the four existing schools. No legal writings of Abu Hanifa have reached us, nor does he seem to have, himself, cast his system into a finished code. That was done by his immediate pupils, and especially by two, the Qadi Abu Yusuf, who died in 182, and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, who died in 189. The first was consulting lawyer and chief Qadi to the But ash-Shafi‘i found that even the addition of agreement to Qur’an and Prophetic usage did not give him basis enough for his system. Opinion he utterly rejected; the preference of Abu Hanifa and the conception of the common welfare of Malik ibn Anas were alike to him. It is true also that both had beer practically saved under agreement. But Such then are the four sources or bases (asls) of jurisprudence as accepted and defined by ash-Shafi‘i--Qur’an, prophetic usage, analogy, agreement. The But the extreme traditionists were little satisfied with this compromise. They objected to analogy and they objected to agreement; nothing but the pure law of God and the Prophet would satisfy them. And their numbers were undoubtedly large. The common people always heard traditions gladly, and it was easy to turn to ridicule the subtleties of the professional lawyers. How much simpler, it struck the average mind, it would be to follow some clear and unambiguous saying of the Prophet; then one could feel secure. This desire of the plain man to take traditions and interpret them strictly and liter-ally was met by the school of Da’ud az-Zahiri, David the literalist. He was born three or four years before the death of ash-Shafi‘i, which occurred in 204. He was trained as a Shafi‘ite and that, too, of the narrower, more traditional type; but it was not traditional It is evident that here we have to do with an impossible man and school, and so the Muslim world found. Most said roundly that it was illegal to permit a Zahirite to act as judge, on much the same grounds, that objection to circumstantial evidence will throw out a man now as juror. If they had been using modern language, they would have said that it was because he was a hopeless crank. Yet the Zahirite school lasted for centuries and drew long consequences, historical and theological, for which there is no space here. It never held rank as an acknowledged school of Muslim law. We now come to the last of the four schools, and it, strange as its origin was, need not detain us long. The Zahirite reaction had failed through its very extremeness. It was left to a dead man and a devoted Shafi‘ite to head the last attack upon the school of his master. Ahmad ibn Hanbal was a theologian of the first rank; he made no claim to be a constructive lawyer. His Musnad has already been dealt with. It is an immense collection of some thirty thousand traditions, but these are not even arranged for le gal purposes. He suffered terribly for the orthodox faith in the rationalist persecution under the Khalifa al-Ma’mun, and his sufferings gained him the position of a saint. But he never dreamed' of forming a But there is a third principle at work which we cannot view with the same favor. As said above, every Muslim must attach himself to a legal school, and may choose any one of these four. But once he has chosen his school he is absolutely bound by the decisions and rules of that school. This is the principle against which the Zahirites protested, but their protest, the only bit of sense they ever showed, was in vain. The result of its working throughout centuries has been that now no one--except from a spirit of historical curiosity--ever dreams of going back from the text-books of the present day to the works of the older masters. Further, such an attempt to get behind the later commentaries would not be permitted. We have comment upon comment upon comment, abstract of this and expansion of that; but each hangs by his predecessor and dares not go another step backward. The great masters of the four schools settled the broad principles; they were authorities of the first degree (mujtahidun mutlaq), second to Muhammad in virtue of his inspiration only. Second,--one the masters who had authority within the separate
