Stage Four: The Flowering Stage

Muawiyah’s descendents were overthrown by the Abbasid family, and this new dynasty was set up in the middle of the 8^th Century. This period lasted for hundreds of years; however the first 200 will be the years of focus.

In the early part (the period of the great Imams), the general level of flexibility that was held by the early generations was upheld. Towards the end of this period, after the death of the great Imams, we find a period in which certain rigidity begins.

750CE to 850CE

Factors which encouraged the flowering of Fiqh during this era:

 1)   State support for Scholars

This is the opposite of what happened during the Umayyad Dynasty. The Abbasids gained the Caliphate on a call to return to the legitimate interpretation of the Shari’ah. Once they came in on that note, they invited the scholars into their inner circle, and put their children to study under them. One of the leading caliphs of the early period, Harun Ar-Rasheed ruled for some 23 years, one of the longest rules.  He himself was a Faqeeh.

Imam Malik was invited by Caliph Al-Mansour to compile a compendium of Islamic law based on Hadiths. After he compiled it and gave it to the Caliph, the Caliph asked his permission to implement it as law, but Imam Malik refused, because he knew that what he compiled was based on the Fiqh of Hijaz, where he was. He didn’t travel outside of Madinah except for Hajj.

Although on one hand there was strong support, you did have some caliphs who were very reactionary if scholars ruled against any of their positions.

2)  There was an increase in learning centers

 Naturally with state support, you would have a number of centers developing.

Although the Umayyad dynasty was destroyed in the East, One of the descendants, AbdulRahman ibn Muawiyah escaped the massacre which took place in Baghdad and made it across North Africa to Spain. The Umayyad Dynasty continued in Spain. So for a stretch of time you had two Caliphates. In Baghdad, there was no attempt to try and take on the situation in Spain because it was too far away and it didn’t affect their rule.

Spain became one of the centers of learning and scholarship spread there too. Throughout the Muslim realm, we find scholars encircled, and the students of these scholars began travelling. This is the period of the journeying of the scholars.

E.g. A student of Abu Hanifa travelled to Madinah and studied under Imam Malik. Imam Shafi’i, a student of Imam Malik, travelled to Iraq, Egypt, combined the Fiqh of Hijaz and developed his own approach.  This was like a cross-fertilization of knowledge.

3)     There was a spread of debates and discussion.

This resulted in clarification of important issues and the weeding out of mistaken rulings by Islamic scholars.

E.g. Imam Abu Hanifa took the literal meaning of Khamr and ruled that it only covered the product of fermented grape juice. This meant that intoxicating drinks from other substances were allowed, so long as its drinker didn’t become drunk. His students Abu Yusuf, Muhamed ibn Al-Hasan, and Zafar, later rejected this after they came across authentic Hadiths of the Prophet which clearly indicated that it covered all intoxicants. Also in their time, more than 50% of the rulings of Abu Hanifa were overturned. The Abu Hanifa Math’hab cannot really be attributed to Abu Hanifa.

850CE to 950CE

After the leading Imams passed away, there was a change. A tendency towards rigidity occurred.

The factors behind this:

1)  The compilation of Fiqh

The Hadiths were systematically compiled. This development was supportive and encouraged further flowering in the earlier part of this century. It gave scholars of law more opportunity to work on deduction and comprehension.

We find Imam Ash-Shafi’i compiling whereas Ahmed ibn Hanbal didn’t compile, but his students did. Imam Malik compiled for his students, and his students compiled what we now know as his Madh’hab. This is why we find differences between his works and that of his students.

There were three main types of compilation:

1)     The early books of Fiqh were usually a mixture of legal rulings, hadiths, opinions of the companions and their students.

E.g. Al-Muwatta by Imam Malik    

2)     Books of Fiqh written about the basic principles, with hadiths mentioned as evidence to prove the authors deductions.

E.g. Al-Umm by Imam Ash-Shafi (who is considered the father of Usool-AlFiqh 

 3)     Books of Fiqh concentrating on the application of Fiqh principles, with little reference to Hadiths. These tended to be organized according to issues that arose. It would only bring in Hadiths to clarify various issues.

E.g. Al-Mudawwanah by Imam ibn Al-Qasim 

Because of the little reference to hadith, the Math’hab became the most important consideration. Gradually, the opinions of the Math’habs were given precedence to one of the primary sources of Islamic law, the Sunnah. Later on during this period, however, there existed some scholars who reversed this by reintroducing the practice of quoting sources and commenting on hadith accuracy.

2)     Court Debates

The quality of the court had changed. The Caliph would have court scholars who would be willing to come and would debate Fiqh issues for his intellectual entertainment. Naturally, after some years of doing this, practical Fiqh ran out and a brand of hypothetical Fiqh which reached the absurd came about. You find books written in this period ruling about things which haven’t been made.

E.g. A book which has been translated from this era talking about Fiqh relaed to Wudhoo, there were issues discussing whether it would be broken if he had sex with a fish.

There would be a scholar representing the Hanafi school and another representing the Shafi’I school (because these schools were dominating at the time) and they would debate. Whoever won the debate would be given a prize, and that spawned Madh’hab fanaticism, because if you lost the debate you lost face. When you lost face, you lost face for your Math’hab. Then the idea of my-math’hab-right-or-wrong developed. This is where Madh’hab rigidity began.

3)  As a reverse trend to what was happening in court debates Hadiths were compiled.

The initiator of this trend was Ahmed ibn Hanbal, who made the largest compilation of Hadiths, containing more than 30,000 Hadiths.

Its important to note that Imam Bukhari and Muslim weren’t just hadith scholars. They were Islamic scholars who took it back to its evidences. This was the way of the earlier generation. Although they may have been trained in a particular Math’hab, they would study Hadiths and the evidence in it would be the deciding factor for them.

4)   The Organization of Fiqh

As the Islamic realm began absorbing the various civilizations it conquered new approaches to reasoning and deduction arose. Greek reasoning and logic took over Fiqh and what it did was provide a means of argumentation in those court debates in which you could never pin a scholar down. There was always a loophole found so that you wouldn’t lose the debate.

This approach tainted and corrupted Usool AlFiqh. If you try to read some of the books during this period you’ll find that it contains a lot of Greek logic. You can hardly understand the expressions used.

Fiqh was divided into two elements during this period:

1)     Fundamentals

2)     Secondary Principles

The different schools, depending on the fundamentals, developed their secondary principles. This led to more rigidity in the Math’habs.

Now although the process of classification and organization of the rulings in terms of Math’habs was fundamentally positive, with the court debates and the tendency towards factionalism, it became a factor in rigidity.

E.g. You find terminological differences became the basis for major disagreements amongst the Math’habs, where if you looked at the root of it, you’ll find they were talking about the exact same thing in different names.

The 6 Sources of Islamic Law recognized during this period

1)     The Qur’an

2)     The Sunnah

3)     The Opinion of the Sahabah

a)      Ijmaa. If they all agreed on it they could take it as a ruling

b)     When the Sahabah didn’t agree they considered them personal opinions and the scholars were free to choose what was more applicable.

4)     Qiyas

When scholars couldn’t find anything from the above sources they were required to deduce rulings by themselves. This is analogical deduction where you compare similarities and then apply rulings.

I.e. You have a case in front of you and you want to come to a ruling concerning it. The ruling isn’t found in the Qur’an and Sunnah. However, there is another case mentioned which has similarities; a variation of the same issue. You then take the ruling and apply it to the one not found in the Qur’an and Sunnah.

The degree to which the situations are similar will determine how accurate the transfer of ruling is.

E.g. If you make a ruling on an apple and an orange because they’re both round you’ll find that the end result might be quite different. Apple juice is sweet but the orange juice is sour, although they’re both round. This is an analogy which contains a flaw, because there is a sufficient difference to make the transfer of the ruling invalid.

In Qiyas you find big differences developing because scholars had different ways of looking at things.

E.g.  The Prophet said:

5)     Legal Preference

Qiyas might come up with conclusions which are not practical, because the law is fundamentally text. Deduction may be valid and it may be invalid, and that’s why there were differences. It is not a sure method at arriving at the intended law.

What developed in all these schools was a preference for what may be more practical. A ruling that was deduced by Qiyas may be impractical based on human need. They would say that based on that need we would give it precedence over the ruling we deduced by Qiyas. This was given different names by different schools. (e.g. In the Hanafi School it was called Istihsan)  

E.g. The Prophet said:

We know that there are circumstances where selling something you don’t possess is a norm in society. The need is that money be given in advance. By Qiyas it is Haraam, but precedence is given to human need.

6)   Custom

The difference between this and the previous point is that in the latter is an untenable ruling for Qiyas, and there’s a need for an overrule, whereas custom just deals with the common practice.

E.g. The Prophet said the man should give the Mahr to the woman. In Egypt they developed a practice where the Mahr was divided into two parts. You gave a certain amount in the beginning and a delayed amount which was saved in case of death or divorce. This doesn’t go against the Shari’ah. This custom was given validity and accepted in the legal system in those areas. Of course this only applies when the custom doesn’t break Islamic principles.