Texts of Islam

Development of Muslim Theology: Part II. Development of Jurisprudence: Chapter II

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This is a chapter from a Western academic work on Islamic legal history, written in the tradition of early 20th-century comparative religious scholarship. It traces how the Abbasid revolution (750 CE) reshaped the relationship between canon lawyers and the state, arguing that the new dynasty offered religious legitimacy to jurists willing to be "pliable and dexterous" — producing a permanent split between accommodationist and irreconcilable factions of Islamic law that persists to the author's day. The chapter then surveys the founding figures of the major legal schools — Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, ash-Shafi'i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and others — explaining how each school's distinctive jurisprudential method (legal fiction, istihsan, analogy, tradition) emerged from this tension between religious idealism and political reality. A notably distinctive feature is the author's sustained analogy between the Abbasid settlement and the Scottish Revolution of 1688, framing the Muslim canonists' disappointment as structurally identical to the Covenanters' failure to make the Kirk the law of the land. The work ultimately charts how six competing schools narrowed to four recognized sources (Quran, tradition, agreement, analogy) and four surviving schools of equal authority — treating this consolidation as the resolution of a centuries-long jurisprudential conflict rather than a natural or inevitable development.

Development of Muslim Theology: Part II. Development of Jurisprudence: Chapter II

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