Обсуждение:Право

Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE / Fiqh, faqīh, fuqahāʾ

The term fiqh refers commonly to religious knowledge, especially knowledge of Islamic law derived through legal reasoning (ijtihād) (al-Shīrāzī, 1:157), and the term faqīh (pl. fuqahāʾ ) to someone who possesses such knowledge. Etymologically, the root f-q-h denotes subtle and penetrating discernment and comprehension, particularly of speech (al-Azharī, Tahdhīb al-lugha, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 15 vols., Cairo 1964–7, s.v. f-q-h; al-ʿAskarī, al-Furūq al-lughawiyya, ed. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Salīm, Cairo 1998, 87–8; al-Shīrāzī, 1:157). The connection between the root f-q-h and religious expertise is already evidenced in the Qurʾān (9:122), which advises that a group of Muslims should dedicate themselves “to gaining understanding of religion” (li-yatafaqqahū fī l-dīn). Similarly, an early and widely narrated ḥadīth attributes to the prophet Muḥammad the statement “To him to whom God wishes to show favour He gives understanding of religion (yufaqqihhu fī l-dīn).” This sense of understanding came to be juxtaposed with mastery of transmitted material (ʿilm, riwāya) (e.g., Ibn Saʿd, 7:397, 620).

The great scholars of Medina belonging to the generation of the “followers” (tābiʿūn) in the late first/seventh century were variously described as the seven, ten, or twelve fuqahāʾ (Umar F. Abd-Allah, Mālik in Medina, Leiden 2013, 43), and their legal opinions had a formative influence on the Mālikī school of law. In the early period, however, fiqh did not yet seem to apply exclusively to law, because two theological texts attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) include the word fiqh in their titles (al-Fiqh al-akbar and al-Fiqh al-awsaṭ).

From the late second/eighth through the fourth/tenth century, a legal-methodological dispute pitted the proponents of reasoned opinion (ahl al-raʾy), who were engaged in a particular form of legal reasoning that favoured consistency (El Shamsy, The canonization of Islamic law, New York 2013, 22–34), against the proponents of Prophetic traditions (ahl al-ḥadīth), who focused on collecting and evaluating Prophetic and early Islamic traditions and were opposed to raʾy because, in their view, it produced results that contravened transmitted texts. In this polemical atmosphere, the relatively neutral terms fiqh and faqīh fared better than raʾy, avoiding the opprobrium directed at the latter (e.g., Ibn Qutayba, 256), but they nonetheless retained an intimation of neglect of ḥadīth for the ahl al-ḥadīth (see, e.g., al-Khaṭṭābī, 2–3, on ahl al-fiqh wa-l-naẓar in the fourth/tenth century). On the other hand, for jurists and theologians fiqh stood for critical analysis and insight, as opposed to superficial literalism (al-Khaṭṭābī, 2–3). An important intervention to bridge this gulf was al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s (d. 463/1071) spirited defense of fiqh, in al-Faqīh wa-l-mutafaqqih (see esp. his introduction), to his fellow ḥadīth scholars, but ḥadīth scholars continued to criticise the fuqahāʾ for perpetuating and defending their schools’ doctrines, even in the face of contrary ḥadīth evidence (e.g., al-Bayhaqī, Risālat al-imām Abī Bakr al-Bayhaqī ilā l-imām Abī Muḥammad al-Juwaynī, Beirut 2007, 57).

The primary socio-religious occupations open to a faqīh were those of judge (qāḍī), teacher (mudarris, ustādh), and jurisconsult (muftī). In the judiciary and legal education, particularly in madrasas, fiqh and faqīh became established as neutral, technical designations, respectively, for the discipline dealing with the details of positive law and for someone learned in this discipline. The dominance and eventual de facto monopoly of the four schools of Sunnī law meant that the discipline and practice of fiqh came commonly to be qualified by an association with one of the four schools (e.g., fiqh according to the school of al-Shāfiʿī), which exerted various degrees of authority over the legal reasoning of their members (Calder).

Among the myriad literary genres related to fiqh, the standard texts that expounded the rules of a particular school followed an almost universal pattern: they began with ritual law (ʿibādāt) and then covered contract law (muʿāmalāt), penal law (jināyāt), and judicial procedure (qaḍāʾ). These basic texts attracted commentaries (sharḥ, pl, shurūḥ), glosses (ḥāshiya, plural ḥawāshī), and tertiary notes (taqrīr, plural taqārīr); the latter two genres are characteristic of the tenth/sixteenth to thirteenth/nineteenth centuries (El Shamsy, Ḥāshiya). In the post-Mongol era, each school developed its own relatively stable curriculum of teaching texts for use in training jurists (Robinson).

An indigenous historiography dedicated to the fuqahāʾ emerged in the third/ninth century, first as lists (e.g., al-Nasāʾī’s Tasmiyat fuqahāʾ al-amṣār) and then as full-scale biographical dictionaries (e.g., al-Shīrāzī’s Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ and Ibn Abī Yaʿlā’s Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila). While early jurists were classified by region, from the generation of the school eponyms (late second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries) onwards they were organised according to their adherence to a school of law. This historical self-consciousness of the fuqahāʾ was motivated by a need to situate scholars and their opinions within the growing body of each school’s literature (see al-Nawawī’s introduction to Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ al-shāfiʿiyya, ed. Muḥyī l-Dīn Najīb, 2 vols., Beirut 1992).

While the term faqīh denoted a person educated in Islamic law, exceptional talent in legal interpretation acquired its own specific descriptor, fiqh al-nafs (and faqīh al-nafs). This refers to a natural disposition (gharīza; al-Ghazālī, al-Mankhūl, ed. Ḥasan Hītū, Beirut 1998, 573) to analyse a legal problem (Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, 48) and to understand the rationale underpinning statements of revelation (al-Bannānī, Ḥāshiyat al-Imām al-Bannānī ʿalā Sharḥ al-Maḥallī ʿalā matn Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, 2 vols., Cairo 1937, 2:382). Fiqh al-nafs is thus distinguished from simple book learning (al-Juwaynī, al-Burhān fī uṣūl al-fiqh, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Dīb, 2 vols., Cairo 1400/1980, 2:1332).

In the realm of law, the term fiqh retained its original connotations of insight and seeing below the surface, but when juxtaposed with Ṣūfism, it came to denote preoccupation with the external form of religion, as opposed to the internal reality claimed by Ṣūfism (see, e.g., Cornell).

The study of Arabic language (lugha) also adopted the term fiqh to indicate close analysis, but the resulting compound term, fiqh al-lugha, appears never to have referred to a uniform or distinctive genre. The phrase appears in the titles of works ranging from philosophical treatments of the origin of language (Ibn Fāris, al-Ṣāḥibī fī fiqh al-lugha, ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr, Cairo 1977) to treatises on lexicography and grammar (al-Thaʿālibī, Fiqh al-lugha, ed. Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, and ʿAbd al-Ḥafīz Shalabī, Cairo 1938).

At least from the eleventh/seventeenth century onwards, the term faqīh—or, more precisely, faqīh al-rīf/faqīh al-balad—came to denote a religious functionary in the Egyptian countryside (where faqīh was pronounced locally as fiqī/figī/fiʾī). Such a person’s remit could include teaching the Qurʾān, answering legal questions, leading communal prayers, and drafting documents such as wills and marriage contracts (Baer, 20–1). Similarly, in Morocco the term faqīh (pronounced fqīh) denoted a Qurʾān teacher (Eickelman, 493), who would also be called upon to carry out exorcisms (Emilio Spadola, Writing cures. Religious and communicative authority in late modern Morocco, Journal of North African Studies 14/2, 2009, 155–168).

The semantic field of the root f-q-h has historically been concerned with legal qualification rather than office, and the term has thus remained largely apolitical. Sunnī modernism has preferred to refer to Islamic law with the term sharīʿa, as a symbol of the unified divine law that goes beyond the minutiae of fiqh; it has also sought to develop a new, unified project of fiqh beyond the schools of law. A prominent example is al-Sayyid Sābiq’s influential work Fiqh al-sunna (14 vols., Cairo 1946–72), written originally as an educational tool for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Among Shīʿīs, by contrast, Khomeini’s theorisation of the guardianship of the jurist (wilāyat al-faqīh) invested political legitimacy not in any particular figure in the Shīʿī religious hierarchy but in the sense of legal qualification expressed by the term faqīh (Amanat).

Ahmed El Shamsy

Bibliography

Sources

Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth, ed. Muḥammad al-Aṣfar, Beirut 1999

Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar, 11 vols., Cairo 2001

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Adab al-fatwā, ed. Rifʿat Fawzī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Cairo 1992

al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Faqīh wa-l-mutafaqqih, ed. ʿĀdil al-ʿAzzāzī, 2 vols., Dammam 1996

Abū Sulaymān al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-sunan, ed. Muḥammad al-Ṭabbākh, 4 vols. in 3, Aleppo 1932–4

Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, Sharḥ al-Lumaʿ, ed. ʿAbd al-Majīd Turkī, 2 vols., Beirut 1988

Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Beirut 1970.

Studies

Abbas Amanat, From ijtihād to wilāyat-i faqīh. The evolution of the Shiʿite authority to political power, in Abbas Amanat and Frank Griffel (eds.), Sharīʿa. Islamic law in the contemporary context (Stanford 2007), 120–36

Gabriel Baer, Fellah and townsman in the Middle East. Studies in social history, London 1982

Norman Calder, Al-Nawawi’s typology of muftis and its significance for a general theory of Islamic law, ILS 3/2 (1996), 137–64

Vincent J. Cornell, Faqīh versus faqīr in Marinid Morocco, in Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (eds.), Islamic mysticism contested. Thirteen centuries of controversies and polemics (Leiden 1999), 207–24

Dale F. Eickelman, The art of memory. Islamic education and its social reproduction, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20/4 (1978), 485–516

George Makdisi, The rise of colleges. Institutions of learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh 1981

Francis Robinson, Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals. Shared knowledge and connective systems, JIS 8/2 (1997), 151–84

Ahmed El Shamsy, The ḥāshiya in Islamic law: A sketch of the Shāfiʿī literature, Oriens 41/3–4 (2013), 289–315

Devin Stewart, Al-Ṭabarī’s Kitāb marātib al-ʿulamāʾ and the significance of biographical works devoted to “the classes of jurists,” Der Islam 90/2 (2013), 347–75.

Cite this page

El Shamsy, Ahmed, “Fiqh, faqīh, fuqahāʾ”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_27135>

Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition / Fiḳh

(a.), originally “understanding, knowledge, intelligence”, and applied to any branch of knowledge (as in fiḳh al-lug̲h̲a , the science of lexicography), has become the technical term for jurisprudence, the science of religious law in Islam. It is, like the iurisprudentia of the Romans, rerum divinarum atque humanarum notifia and in its widest sense covers all aspects of religious, political and civil life. In addition to the laws regulating ritual and religious observances ( ʿibādāt ), containing orders and prohibitions, it includes the whole field of family law, the law of inheritance, of property and of contracts and obligations, in a word provisions for all the legal questions that arise in social life ( muʿāmalāt ); it also includes criminal law and procedure, and finally constitutional law and laws regulating the administration of the state and the conduct of war.

All aspects of public and private life and business should be regulated by laws based on religion; the science of these laws is fiḳh .

In older theological language the word did not have this comprehensive meaning; it was rather used in opposition to ʿilm . While the latter denotes, beside the Ḳurʾān and its interpretation, the accurate knowledge of the legal decisions handed down from the Prophet and his Companions (Ibn Saʿd, ii/2, 127, 16: al-riwāyāt wa ’l-ʿilm , as synonyms), the term fiḳh is applied to the independent exercise of the intelligence, the decision of legal points by one’s own judgment in the absence or ignorance of a traditional ruling bearing on the case in question. The result of such independent consideration is raʾy (opinion, opinio prudentium), with which it is also sometimes used synonymously. In this sense ʿilm and fiḳh are regarded as distinct qualities of the theologian (Nawawī, Tahd̲h̲īb , ed. Wüstenfeld, 703, 2); also fiḳh wa-riwāya (Ibn Saʿd, v, 327, 10). The sum total of all wisdom is defined by Mud̲j̲āhid (in explanation of Süra ii, 269: man yuʾta ’l-ḥikma ) as composed of the following elements: al-Ḳurʾān wa ’l-ʿilm wa ’l-fiḳh (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr , iii, 56, 2), and, similarly, the Jewish Karaitic expositor of the Bible, Jepheth b. ʿAlī (910-80 a.d.), translates tiftāyē in Daniel, iii, 2 (ed. D. S. Margoliouth, Aneedota Oxoniensa , 1889, 33, 7) by ahl l-ʿilm wa ’l-fiḳh. Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd instructs his governor Hart̲h̲ama to consult the uli ’l-fiḳh fī dīn Allāh and the uli ’l-ʿilm bi-kitāb Allāh in doubtful cases (Ṭabarī, iii, 717, 10). Further passages are quoted in Goldziher, Muh . Stud ., ii, 176, n. 6.

In this sense, ʿālim (plur. ʿulamāʾ ) is distinguished from faḳīh (plur. fuḳahāʾ ), or the combination of both sciences in one individual is expressed by the combination of these two ephitets or their synonyms. Ibn ʿUmar was d̲j̲ayyid al-ḥadīt̲h̲ but not d̲j̲ayyid al-fiḳh (Ibn Saʿd, ii/2, 125, 5); on the other hand Ibn ʿAbbās was aʿlam with reference to decisions handed down by Tradition and at the same time afḳah (or at̲h̲ḳafu raʾy in) in new cases that arose, for which no precedent could be found in Tradition and in which it was necessary to use one’s own judgment (ibid., 122, 124); the same is true of Zayd b. T̲h̲ābit (ibid., 116); cf. faḳīh fi ’l-dīn ʿālim fi ’l-sunna (ibid., iii/1, 110). Saʿīd b. al-Muṣayyib is faḳīh al-fuḳahāʾ on the one hand and ʿālim al-ʿulamāʾ (ibid., ii/2, 129, 130; v, 90) on the other. Among the tābiʿūn there were fuḳahāʾ wa-ʿulamāʾ , i.e., those who were authorities ¶ on the transmission of ḥadīt̲h̲ and āt̲h̲ār as well as those who were authorities on fiḳh and competent to give (independent) decisions, fatwā (ibid., ii/2, 128). Abū T̲h̲awr was aḥad aʾimmat al-dunyā fiḳhan wa-ʿilman (D̲h̲ahabī, Ṭabaḳāt al-ḥuffāẓ , viii, 106).

In the earliest period of the development of Islam the authorities entrusted with the administration of justice and the control of religious life had in most cases to fall back on the exercise of their own raʾy owing to the scarcity of legislative material in the Ḳurʾān and the dearth of ancient precedents. This was regarded as a matter of course by everyone, although they were naturally very pleased if the verdict could as far as possible be based on ʿilm. When ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 114/732) was giving a judgment, he was asked: “Is this ʿilm or raʾy?” If it was founded on a precedent ( at̲h̲ar ), he said it was ʿilm (Ibn Saʿd, v, 345). The raʾy was not, however, thereby discredited. It was considered an equally legitimate factor in the decision of a point of law and its results were destined in the near future to be regarded as the decisions of old authorities and in later times to be actually considered an element of ʿilm. From the very beginning one could have recourse to it as soon as ʿilm failed. According to an old story which certainly reflects the conditions of the Umayyad period, although it does not actually date from the time in which its scene is laid, Muʿāwiya finally applied to Zayd b. T̲h̲ābit on a legal question, on which neither he nor other Companions to whom he propounded it could quote any ancient evidence ( falam yūd̲j̲ad ʿindahū —or ʿindahum — fīhā ʿilm ); the latter gave a verdict based on this own independent raʾy (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ii, 250 ult ., on Sūra II, 228). The ḳāḍī of Egypt asked the advice of the Caliph ʿUmar II on a point not provided for in Tradition; the latter wrote to him: Nothing has reached me on this matter, therefore I leave the verdict to you to be given according to your opinion ( bi-raʾyik ) (Kindī, Governors and Judges of Egypt , ed. Guest, 334; ed. Gottheil, 29) [cf. id̲j̲tihād ].

This recognition of raʾy [q.v.] as an approved source of law found expression in the instructions attributed to the Prophet and the early Caliphs, which they gave to the officials sent to administer justice in the conquered provinces, and in their alleged approval of the principles of their decisions which the judges whom they had sent out submitted to them (Goldziher, Ẓâhiriten , 8 ff.; cf. Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, Usd al-g̲h̲āba , i, 314; Mubarrad, Kāmil , 9 ff.; Ibn Ḳutayba, ʿUyūn al-ak̲h̲bār , 87). In the more elaborate versions of these reports which were developed from their original, rudimentary forms we find already mentioned explicitly the principle of deduction from decisions of similar cases ( as̲h̲bāh , naẓāʾir cf. ʿUyūn al-ak̲h̲bār, 72), i.e., the use of analogy ( ḳiyās , [q.v.]) as a methodological regulator of raʾy. In the investigation of the ʿillat al-s̲h̲arʿ , the motive of law (ratio legis), and the resulting reduction of doubtful cases to a rational point of view, we find this principle given systematic validity. At the same time—there is evidence of it at a very early period— a kind of popular element entered the number of constitutive sources for the deduction of laws: the conception of the general usage of the community ( sunna , [q.v.]) which had been established by general agreement or consensus ( id̲j̲māʿ , [q.v.]) in wider circles of believers, independent of written (i.e., Ḳurʾānic), traditional, or inferred law.

This usage contained an appreciable amount of foreign elements. It was only natural that the ¶ legal, commercial, and administrative practices which prevailed in the conquered provinces should have survived under Islam, just as ancient Arab legal and commercial practices had survived, and should have been adopted by the Muslims as far as they were compatible with the demands of the new religious ideas. That the retention of pre-Islamic legal institutions was the normal procedure is shown by a passage in Balād̲h̲urī: “Abū Yūsuf held that if there exists in a country an ancient, non-Arab sunna which Islam has neither changed nor abolished, and people complain to the Caliph that it causes them hardship, he is not entitled to change it; but Mālik and S̲h̲āfiʿī held that he may change it even if it be ancient, because he ought to prohibit (in similar circumstances) any valid sunna which has been introduced by a Muslim, let alone those introduced by unbelievers” ( Futūḥ , 448). In this way, elements from Roman Byzantine (including Roman provincial) law, Talmudic law, the canon law of the Eastern churches, and Persian Sāsānian law entered Islamic law during its formative period. The influence of Talmudic law manifested itself above all in matters of ritual and worship. Influences of Persian Sāsānian law (and of the canon law of the Eastern churches) have been established in a few individual cases, but their full extent remains to be investigated. In the case of Roman and of Talmudic law, these influences extended not only to rules and institutions of positive law, but to legal concepts and maxims, to methods of reasoning ( ḳiyās , and conclusions a maiore ad minus and a minore ad maius), and even to fundamental ideas of legal science; for instance, the highly organized concept of the consensus of the scholars as formulated by the ancient schools of Islamic law (see below), seems to have been modelled on the concept of the opinio prudentium of Roman law (cf. Digest , i, 3, 38: In ambiguitatibus quae ex legibus proficiscunter, consuetudinem aut rerum perpetuo similiter iudicatarum auctoritatem vim legis obtinere debere; Institutes , i, 2, 9: Nam diutumi mores consensu utentium comprobati legem imitantur). Goldziher has repeatedly drawn attention to this and to the fact that parallels between Roman and Islamic law in the field of legal science are usually doubled by parallels in Talmudic law. (Goldziher has even suggested that the terms fiḳh and fuḳahāʾ , in their special technical reference to the sacred law and its practitioners, as well as the corresponding Jewish terms ḥok̲h̲mā and ḥak̲h̲āmīm , may have been influenced by the Latin terms ( iuris ) prudentia and (iuris)prudentes; in Die Kultur der Gegenwart 2, 3, I/iii/1, 103). Some of the borrowings from Roman law may, in fact, have been made through the medium of the Jews, as was first suggested by von Kremer ( Culturgeschichte des Orients , i, 535). This adoption of Roman (and other) legal concepts and maxims occurred not through direct influence of one legal system on another at the technical level, but through the medium of the cultured non-Arab converts to Islam, whose education in Hellenistic rhetoric had made them acquainted with the rudiments of law and who brought their familiar ideas with them into their new religion. When Islamic legal science came into being towards the end of the first century of Islam (early 8th century A.D.), the door of Islamic civilization had been opened wide to these potential transmitters. That the early jurists of Islam should consciously have adopted any principle of foreign law is out of the question. The subject remains, in the words of Goldziher, “one of the most attractive problems of this branch of Islamic studies”

¶ With the gradual recognition of Ḳurʾān, sunna, id̲j̲māʾ and ḳiyās as the four official “roots” or sources of legal knowledge, methodological principles from which legal rules might be legitimately derived [see uṣūl ], the terms fiḳh and fuḳahāʾ gradually lost their original limitation to deductions not based on tradition. Fiḳh came to mean the science which coordinated and included all the branches of knowledge derived from the four roots; similarly those who were masters of this science were called fuḳahāʾ, i.e., jurists. Or fiḳh was used for the result of deduction from the sources of positive law, the sum total of the deductions derived from them, e.g., wa-fī hād̲h̲a ’l-ḥadīt̲h̲ ḍurūb min al-fiḳh (Mubarrad, Kāmil , 529, cf. WZKM, iii, 84). The Arabic sources contain numerous reports about scholars who arranged the ʿilm or sunan in chapters and thence deduced the fiḳh inferences ( Muh . Stud ., ii, 211). Of ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak it is said: dawwan al-ʿilm fi ’l-abwāb wa ’l-fiḳh (D̲h̲ahabī, Tad̲h̲kirat al-ḥuffāẓ , i, 250); of Abū T̲h̲awr: ṣannaf al-kutub wa-farraʿ ʿala ’l-sunan (ibid., ii, 95). Little value can be attached to the statement ascribed to His̲h̲ām b. ʿUrwa that many kutub fiḳh of his father’s perished in the flames on the day of the battle of the Ḥarra ( Biographien , ed. Fischer, 41). At that ancient period (ʿUrwa died in 94/712, the socalled “year of the fuḳahāʾ” , when many fuḳahāʾ died; Ibn Saʿd, vi, 135) there could be no real kutub in existence; the report can therefore refer, at the utmost, to rough notes only. We might also mention the statement that Zuhrī’s fatwās were collected in three, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s in seven books ( asfār ) arranged in the order of the abwāb al-fiḳh (Ibn Ḳayyim al-Ḏj̲awzivva. Iʿlām , i, 26).

In a still wider meaning, fiḳh was used for religious science in general ( al-Ḳurʾān wa ’l-fiḳh in opposition to the study of poetry: Ag̲h̲ānī , vii, 55, 22; lay sa bihim rag̲h̲ba fi ’l-dīn wa-lā rag̲h̲ba fi ’l-fiḳh : Musnad of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, i, 155; cf. also the titles al-Fiḳh al-Akbar and al-Fiḳh al-Absaṭ and the text of these treatises, on which see abū ḥanīfa ). Fuḳahāʾ was correspondingly applied to students of religion, theologians (not only students of law) e.g., Ṭabarī, Tafsir , xii, 73, 13; fuḳahāʾunā wa-mas̲h̲āʾik̲h̲unā ; ibid., 112, 8, where Abū ʿUbayd al-Ḳāsim b. Sallām says with reference to an explanation by Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar of a word in the Ḳuiʾān contrary to the traditional explanation: al-fuḳahāʾ aʿlam bi ’l-taʾwīl minhu , “the fuḳahāʾ are more conversant with exegesis than he” (who is not a theologian but only a philologist); cf. also Ẓâhiriten , 19.

(I. Goldziher [J. Schacht]) The traditional opinion of the Muslim scholars projects the origins of Islamic jurisprudence back into the generation of the Companions of the Prophet. According to it, the Caliphs of Medina and a few specialists in religious law among the Companions started to draw conclusions from the Ḳurʾān and the words and acts of the Prophet as they remembered them or as they had been reported to them, by independent reasoning; their conclusions were approved, explicitly or silently, by the other Companions and became thereby binding on the community; their Successors continued this activity and the generation following the Successors saw the foundation of the schools of religious law.

Recent historical research, however, has shown that Islamic jurisprudence came into being towards the end of the first century of the hid̲j̲ra (early 8th century A.D.). During the greater part of the 1st/7th century, Islamic law, in the technical meaning of the term, and therefore Islamic jurisprudence ¶ did not as yet exist. As had been the case in the time of the Prophet, law as such fell outside the sphere of religion, and so far as there were no religious or moral objections to specific transactions or modes of behaviour, the technical aspects of law were a matter of indifference to the Muslims. Not only did Arab customary law, as modified and completed by the Ḳurʾān, survive to a considerable extent, but the Muslims did not hesitate to adopt the legal, commercial and administrative institutions and practices of the conquered territories, and even legal concepts and maxims, as far as they were compatible with the demands of the new religious ideas (see above). As supreme rulers and administrators, the Caliphs of Medina acted to a great extent as the lawgivers of the community, and they were followed in this by the Umayyad Caliphs and their governors; during the whole of the first century of Islam, the administrative and legislative activities of the Islamic government cannot be separated. The Umayyad governors also appointed the first ḳāḍīs who by their decisions laid the foundations of what was to become Islamic law. They gave judgment according to their own discretion or “sound opinion” ( raʾy ), basing themselves on customary practice and on administrative regulations, and taking the letter and the spirit of the Ḳurʾān and other recognized Islamic religious norms into account. Subsequent developments brought it about that the part played by the earliest ḳāḍīs in laying the foundations of Islamic law was not recognized by Islamic jurisprudence.

Towards the end of the first century of the hid̲j̲īa (early 8th century A.D.) only we encounter the first specialists in religious law whose activity can be regarded as historical, such as Ibrāhīm al-Nak̲h̲aʿī in Kūfa, and Saʿīd b. al-Musayyib and his contemporaries in Medina. They were pious persons whose interest in religion caused them to survey, either individually or in discussion with like-minded friends, all fields of contemporary activities, including the field of law, from an Islamic angle, to impregnate the sphere of law with religious and ethical ideas, and to elaborate, by individual reasoning (raʾy, istiḥsān , id̲j̲tihād [qq.v.]), an Islamic way of life. Their reasoning represents the beginnings of an Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic jurisprudence did not grow out of an existing Islamic law; it created Islamic law by endorsing, modifying or rejecting the popular and administrative practice of the Umayyad period. Members of this group, such as Rad̲j̲āʾ and Abū Ḳilāba, were among the familiars of the Umayyad Caliphs from the last decades of the 1st/7th century onwards, and the ḳāḍīs came increasingly to be recruited from them.

As the groups of pious specialists grew in numbers and in cohesion, they developed, in the first few decades of the 2nd/8th century, into the “ancient schools of law” of which those of Kūfa, of Medina and of Syria are known to us in some detail. The differences between them were caused in the first place by geographical factors, such as local variations in social conditions, customary law and practice, but they were not based on any noticeable disagreement on principles or methods. The great centre of nascent Islamic jurisprudence at the end of the 1st/7th and during the 2nd/8th century was ʿIrāḳ; influences of the doctrine of one school on that of another almost invariably proceeded from ʿIrāḳ to Ḥid̲j̲āz, and the doctrinal development of the school of Madīna often lagged behind that of the school of Kūfa. The ancient schools shared not only ¶ a considerable body of common doctrine but the essentials of a legal theory the central idea of which was that of the “living tradition of the school”. This idea dominated the development of Islamic jurisprudence during the whole of the 2nd/8th century. Retrospectively, it appears as sunna or “practice” ( ʿamal ), i.e., the ideal practice, the practice as it ought to be, or “well-established precedent” ( sunna māḍiya ) or “ancient practice” ( amr ḳadīm ). Synchronously, it is represented by the consensus ( id̲j̲māʿ , al-amr al-mud̲j̲tamaʿ ʿalayh ), the common doctrine of the majority of the representative religious scholars of each centre (cf. above). Originally, the living tradition of the ancient schools was anonymous; it was the average opinion of their representatives that counted, and not the individual doctrines of the most prominent scholars. From the first decades of the 2nd/8th century onwards, however, it began to be projected backwards and to be ascribed to some of the great figures of the past. The earliest specialists, such as Ibrāhīm al-Nak̲h̲aʿī had not done more than give opinions on questions of ritual and perhaps on kindred problems of directly religious concern, cases of conscience concerning alms-tax, marriage, divorce, and the like, and technical points of law appeared only at the stage of doctrine represented by the teaching of Hammād b. Abī Sulaymān (d. 120/738). By a literary convention which found particular favour in ʿIrāḳ, scholars used to put their own doctrines under the aegis of their masters. In this way, the main contents of the Kitāb al-Āt̲h̲ār of Abū Yūsuf and of the Kitāb al-Āt̲h̲ār of S̲h̲aybānī represent themselves as having been derived from Abū Ḥanīfa, “from” ( ʿan ) Ḥammād, “from” Ibrāhīm. The Medinese followed suit and projected their own teaching back to a number of ancient authorities who had died in the last years of the first or in the very first years of the second century, seven of whom were later singled out to form the group of the so-called “seven lawyers of Medina” ( fuḳahāʾ al-Madīna al-sabʿa : Saʿīd b. al-Musayyib, ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr, Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUtba, K̲h̲ārid̲j̲a b. Zayd b. T̲h̲ābit, Sulaymān b. Yasār, and al-Ḳāsim b. Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr). The transmission of legal doctrine in Ḥid̲j̲āz becomes ascertainable at about the same time as in ʿIrāḳ, with Zuhrī ([q.v.]; d. 124/742) and his younger contemporary Rabīʿa b. Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān for Medina, and with ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ for Mecca. At the same time at which the doctrine of the school of Kūfa was retrospectively attributed to Ibrāhīm al-Nak̲h̲aʿī, a similar body of doctrine was directly connected with the very beginnings of Islam in Kūfa by being attributed to Ibn Masʿūd [q.v.], a Companion of the Prophet who had come to live in that city, and Ibrāhīm al-Nak̲h̲aʿī became the main transmitter of that body of doctrine, too. In the same way, another Companion of the Prophet, Ibn ʿAbbās [q.v.], became the eponym of the school of Mecca, and the school of Medina claimed as its main authorities among the Companions of the Prophet the caliph ʿUmar [q.v.] and his son, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar. One further step in the search for a solid theoretical foundation of the doctrine of the ancient schools was taken in ʿIrāḳ, very early in the second century of Islam, by transferring the term “sunna of the Prophet” from its political and theological into a legal context and identifying it with the sunna, the ideal practice of the local community and the corresponding doctrine of its scholars. This term, which was taken over by the school of Syria, ¶ expressed the axiom that the practice of the Muslims continued the practice of the Prophet, but did not yet imply the existence of positive information in the form of “traditions” ( ḥadīt̲h̲ ) that the Prophet by his words or acts had in fact originated or approved that practice.

It was not long before there arose movements of opposition to the opinions held by the majorities in the ancient schools. In Kūfa, where Ibn Masʿūd had become the eponym of the school, the doctrines which were put forward in opposition to it and which do not embody the coherent teaching of any one group were regularly attributed to the caliph ʿAlī [q.v.], who had made Kūfa his headquarters, not indeed on account of any S̲h̲īʿī bias, which is absent from them, but because the name of ʿAlī represented an authority equal to and possibly even higher than that of Ibn Masʿūd. These opinions generally did not prevail in the school of Kūfa, but in Medina the corresponding doctrines succeeded in gaining recognition to a considerable extent. In contrast with the opposition in Kūfa, the opposition in Medina already reflected the activity of the Traditionists. The movement of the Traditionists ( ahl al-ḥadīt̲h̲ , [q.v.]) is the most important single event in the history of Islamic jurisprudence in the second century of the hid̲j̲ra; it opposed to the “living tradition” of the ancient schools, which was to a great extent based on raʾy , the authority of individual traditions ( ḥadīt̲h̲ , [q.v.]) from the Prophet which its adherents put into circulation in ever increasing numbers. According to the traditionists, fiḳh had to be based exclusively on traditions from the Prophet, whom they reported as having said: “Luck to the man who hears my words, remembers them, guards them and hands them on; many a transmitter of fiḳh is no faḳīh himself, and many a one transmits fiḳh to a person who is a better faḳīh than he is” (S̲h̲āfiʿī, Risāla , 55, 65). Traditionists existed in all great centres of Islam, where they formed groups in opposition to, but nevertheless in contact with, the local schools of law, and the polemics between them and the ancient schools occupied most of the second century. But the ancient schools had no real defence against the rising tide of traditions; they had to express thenown doctrines in traditions which allegedly went back to the Prophet and to take increasing notice of the traditions produced by their opponents, and finally the outlines and many details of Islamic jurisprudence were cast into the form of traditions from the Prophet. Later Muslim scholars, who in the nature of things were unable to acknowledge such a fundamental change in the bases of Islamic legal thought, represented this struggle as a struggle between the ahl al-ḥadīt̲h̲ and the imaginary group of the aṣḥāb al-raʾy [q.v.]. The Traditionists of the 3rd/9th century attacked the ʿIrāḳians and the school of Abū Ḥanīfa with particular venom, and castigated their use of the formula araʾayta “what do you think of ..., supposing ...” as typical of the casuistry of the aṣḥāb al-raʾy.

The literary productions of Islamic jurisprudence begin soon after the middle of the 2nd/8th century (the Mad̲j̲mūʿ al-fiḳh attributed to the S̲h̲īʿī pretender Zayd b. ʿAlī [q.v.], who died in 122/740, though of an early date, is not authentic; cf. Bergsträsser, in OLZ, 1922, 114-24; Strothmann, in Isl ., xiii (1923), 27-40, 49), and from then onwards its development can be followed step by step from scholar to scholar. For ʿIrāḳ, and Kūfa in particular, successive stages are represented, after Ḥammād ¶ (d. 120/738; see above), by the doctrines of Ibn Abī Laylā ([q.v.] d. 148/765), of Abū Ḥanīfa ([q.v.]; d. 150/767), of Abū Yūsuf ([q.v.]; d. 182/798), and of S̲h̲aybānī ([q.v.]; d. 189/805) respectively. Outside the line of doctrine represented by the isnād Abū Ḥanīfa— Ḥammād—Ibrāhīm stands another scholar of Kūfa, Sufyān al-T̲h̲awrī ([q.v.]’, d. 161/778); his doctrines are known to us through the Kitāb Ik̲h̲tilāf al-fuḳahāʾ of Ṭabarī ([q.v.]; d. 310/923), which also contains information on other early lawyers. The Syrian Awzāʿī ([q.v.]; d. 157/774) represents an archaic type of doctrine, which takes us very near to the beginnings of Islamic jurisprudence. Mālik b. Anas ([q.v.]; d. 179/795) in his Muwaṭṭaʾ aimed at expounding the average doctrine of the school of Medina in his time. Much information on the opinions of Mālik himself, of his disciple Ibn al-Ḳāsim ([q.v.]; d. 191/806), and of the older authorities of Medina is contained in the Mudawwana of Saḥnūn ([q.v.]; d. 240/854).

S̲h̲āfiʿī ([q.v.]; d. 204/820) belonged originally to the school of Medina, but he accepted the thesis of the Traditionists on the overriding authority of the traditions from the Prophet, identifying their contents with the sunna , defended it in vigorous polemics with the followers of the ancient schools, elaborated on its basis a new body of doctrine by which he cut himself off from the continuity of doctrine in the ancient schools, and composed in his Risāla the first treatise on the method of legal reasoning, becoming thereby the founder of the science of uṣūl al-fiḳh [see uṣūl ]. (In contrast with the uṣūl , the “roots” or sources of legal knowledge, the body of positive rules derived from them is called furūʿ , plural of farʿ , “branches”; the earliest existing work of pure furūʿ, presented in a didactic manner, is S̲h̲aybānī’s Kitāb al-Aṣl .) S̲h̲āfiʿī’s writings, which to a great extent are cast in the form of dialogues with unnamed opponents and most of which were brought together by his disciples in a collection which received the name of Kitāb al-Umm , are an important source for the history of Islamic jurisprudence in the second century. S̲h̲āfiʿī was not a mere Traditionist; on the contrary, he deplored their faulty reasoning, and himself accompanied his reliance on traditions from the Prophet by systematic legal thought ( ʿaḳl , maʿḳūl ) of exceptionally high quality, excluding raʾy and istiḥsān and insisting on strict ḳiyās . It happened, however, that some of his disciples, and in particular Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal ([q.v.]; d. 241/855), emphasized the traditionist element in his doctrine and derived their legal teaching exclusively from traditions, avoiding human reasoning as far as possible. This avoidance of drawing conclusions was erected into a principle by Dāwūd b. K̲h̲alaf ([q.v.]; d. 270/884), called al-Ẓāhirī because he relied exclusively on the literal meaning ( ẓāhir ) of Ḳurʾān and ḥadīt̲h̲ and rejected not only raʾy and istiḥsān but reasoning by ḳiyās as well.

About the middle of the 2nd/8th century, groups or circles within the ancient schools of law began to form themselves round individual masters, such as the “followers of Abū Ḥanīfa” within the school of Kūfa, and the “followers of Mālik” within the school of Medina. Several factors favoured this process, and by the middle of the 3rd/9th century the ancient schools of law had transformed themselves into “personal” schools, which perpetuated not the living tradition of a city but the doctrine of a master and of his disciples. In this way, the bulk of the ancient school of Kūfa transformed itself ¶ into the school of the Ḥanafīs, another group of scholars into the school of Sufyān al-T̲h̲awrī, the ancient school of Medina into the school of the Mālikīs, and the ancient school of Syria into that of Awzāʿī. Although S̲h̲āfiʿī had disclaimed any intention of founding a school, his disciples, being neither mere Traditionists nor members of another school, became his personal followers, and the doctrinal movement started by him has always been known as the S̲h̲āfiʿī school. The school of legal thought originated by Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, too, became known as the school of the Ḥanbalīs; this school never absorbed its parent movement, that of the Traditionists, as completely as the Ḥanafī and Mālikī schools absorbed theirs. The followers of Dāwūd b. K̲h̲alaf al-Ẓāhirī formed the only school of law whose name, Ẓāhiriyya [q.v.], is derived from a principle of legal theory. These and some other later schools of law (such as a short-lived one founded by Ṭabarī) are called mad̲h̲āhib (pl. of mad̲h̲hab , “way of thinking, persuasion”). Since about 700/1300 four of them only have survived in orthodox Islam, the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, S̲h̲āfiʿī and Hanbali schools (cf. ḥanābila , ḥanafiyya , mālikiyya , s̲h̲āfiʿiyya ); they are regarded, and regard one another, as alternative and equally valid interpretations of the religious law of Islam. Notwithstanding their divergent doctrinal roots, the orthodox schools of law share a common legal theory (cf. uṣūl ) which asserted itself in the 3rd/9th century, and which accepted S̲h̲āfiʿī’s (and the Traditionists’) principle of the overriding authority of the traditions from the Prophet as the only evidence of sunna but subordinated its practical application to the consensus of the scholars. The theory of the uṣūl al-fiḳh is therefore of little direct importance for the positive doctrines of the schools of law. From the middle of the 3rd/9th century, too, the idea began to gain ground that only the great scholars of the past had the right to independent reasoning in law ( id̲j̲tihād [q.v.]), and in the 4th/10th century a consensus gradually established itself in orthodox Islam to the effect that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all ( taḳlīd [q.v.]). This implied the obligation to join one of the existing schools. Even under the rule of taḳlīd, Islamic jurisprudence did not lack manifestations of original thought in which the several schools competed with and influenced one another. But this original thought could express itself freely in nothing more than abstract systematic constructions which affected neither the established doctrine of positive law nor the theory of the uṣūl al-fiḳh. New sets of facts, too, constantly arose in life, and they had to be decided by the specialists with the traditional tools of legal science; such a decision is called fatwā [q.v.], and the scholar who gives a fatwā is called muftī . Once recognized as correct by the common opinion of the scholars, the decisions of the muftīs became part of the doctrine of each school. The activity of the muftīs is essentially of the same kind, though carried out against a different background, as that of the first specialists in religious law.

The legal doctrines of the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs [q.v.] and of the S̲h̲īʿa [q.v.], which split from the orthodox or Sunnī majority on political grounds about the middle of the first century of Islam (ca. 660 A.D.), differ from those of the Sunnīs on the question of the leadership of the community [see imām ] and consequential questions of uṣūl, but on other ¶ questions they do not differ from those of the orthodox schools of law more widely than these last differ from one another. From this, it must not be concluded that the features common to K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ī. S̲h̲īʿa, and Sunnī law are older than the schisms which split the Islamic community within its first century. For a considerable period, and during the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries in particular, these ancient sects remained in a sufficiently close contact with the Sunnīs for them to adopt the doctrines which were being developed in the orthodox schools of law, introducing only such superficial modifications as were required by their particular political and dogmatic tenets. Certain doctrines which in themselves were not necessarily either S̲h̲īʿī or Sunnī became adventitiously distinctive for S̲h̲īʿa as against Sunnī law.

When the Umayyads were overthrown by the ʿAbbāsids in 132/750, Islamic jurisprudence, though still in its formative period, had acquired its essential features. For reasons of dynastic policy, and in order to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, the ʿAbbāsids posed as the protagonists of Islam, recognized Islamic law as it was being taught by the pious specialists as the only legitimate norm in Islam, and set out to translate their doctrines into practice. They regularly attracted specialists in religious law to their court and made a point of consulting them on problems that might come within their competence. At the request of the Caliph Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd, Abū Yūsuf wrote his Kitāb al-K̲h̲arād̲j̲ . a long treatise on public finance, taxation, criminal justice, and connected subjects. The ḳāḍīs , who under the Umayyads had been appointed by the governors, were now appointed by the caliph, they had to be specialists in religious law, and they had to apply nothing but the sacred Law, without interference from the government [see ḳāḍī ]. But this effort to translate into practice the ideal doctrine which was being elaborated by the specialists, was short-lived. The early specialists who had formulated their doctrine not on the basis of but in a certain opposition to Umayyad popular and administrative practice had been ahead of realities, and now the early ʿAbbāsids and their religious advisers were unable to carry the whole of society with them. The ḳāḍīs, theoretically independent though they were, had to rely on the political authorities for the execution of their judgments, and, being bound by the formal rules of the Islamic law of evidence, their inability to deal with criminal cases became apparent, so that the administration of the greater part of criminal justice was taken over by the police ( s̲h̲urṭa [q.v.]). The administrative “investigation of complaints” [see maẓālim ] very soon led to formal Courts of Complaints being set up, which by their very existence show the breakdown of a considerable part of the administration of civil justice by the ḳāḍīs as well. [See also siyāsa ]. In this way, a double administration of justice came into being, and it has prevailed in most Islamic countries, the competence of the ḳāḍīs’ tribunals being restricted to matters of family law, inheiitance, and waḳf . [See maḥkama ].

This is one aspect of the tension between theory and practice ( ʿāda , ʿurf [qq.v.]), between jurisprudence and customary law, which existed in Islamic law from its very beginnings. The most remarkable and, for a time, the most successful effort on the part of a state of high material civilization to bridge this gulf, was made in the Ottoman Empire [see abu ’l-suʿūd , ḳānūn-nāme , s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-islām ]. Islamic ¶ jurisprudence, too, took notice of the practice which it could not overcome, and tried at least to control and regulate it in the works on ʿamal , on ḥiyal , and on s̲h̲urūṭ [qq.v.], which form an important branch of its literary productions.

Until the early ʿAbbāsid period, Islamic jurisprudence had been adaptable and growing, but from then onwards it became increasingly rigid and set in its final mould. This essential rigidity helped it to maintain its stability over the centuries which saw the decay of the political institutions of Islam. Taken as a whole, it reflects and fits the social and economic conditions of the early ʿAbbāsid period. If it grew more and more out of touch with later developments of state and society, in the long run it gained more in power over the minds than it lost in control over the bodies of the Muslims. The fiḳh is, in the words of Snouck Hurgronje, a “doctrine of duties”, the interpretation of a religious ideal not by legislators but by scholars, and the recognized handbooks of the several schools are not “codes” in the Western meaning of the term. Islamic law is a “jurists’ law” par excellence: Islamic jurisprudence did not grow out of an existing law, it itself created it. [See also s̲h̲arīʿa ].

In British India and in French Algeria, Islamic jurisprudence, being fused with Western legal thought and affected by Western legislation, gave birth, respectively, to Anglo-Muhammadan law [see hind ] and to the droit musulman algérien [see al-d̲j̲azāʾir ] both of which became independent legal systems. Only in the 20th century, Islamic Modernism, whilst accepting the postulate that Islam as a religion ought to regulate the sphere of law as well, has denied the validity of traditional Islamic jurisprudence. Under the influence of modern constitutional and social ideas, many institutions of Islamic law have been reshaped, and sometimes changed out of recognition, by secular legislation in a number of Islamic countries. Once again, jurists prepared, provoked, and guided a new legislation. On the other hand, the programme was formulated of deriving a new, modern law from the general formal principles which were elaborated by the early Islamic jurists. Both tendencies are inspired by the desire to put a new Islamic jurisprudence in the place of the old one. [See ḳānūn ].

(J. Schacht)

Bibliography

Lane, s.v.

LA, s.v.

Tahānawī, Dictionary of technical terms, 30-3.—Traditional accounts: Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ḥad̲j̲wī, al-Fikr al-sāmī fī taʾrīk̲h̲ al-fiḳh al-islāmī, 4 vols., Rabat-Fes-Tunis 1345-9/1926-31

Muḥammad Yūsuf Mūsā, Muḥāḍarāt fī taʾrīk̲h̲ al-fiḳh al-islāmī, 3 vols., Cairo 1954-6.— Modern historical studies: I. Goldziher, Die Ẓâhiriten, Leipzig 1884

idem, Muh. St., ii, 66-87 (Fr. transi. L. Bercher, Études sur la tradition islamique, Paris 1952, 79-105)

idem, Vorlesungen, 35-79 (2 30-70 309-21)

Selected works of C. Snouck Hurgronje, ed. G.-H. Bousquet and J. Schacht, Leiden 1957

D. S. Margoliouth, The early development of Mohammedanism, London 1914, 65-98

Juynboll, Handbuch, 22-38 (Handleiding 3 and 4, 16-32)

F. Köprülü, art. Fikih, in IA (1947)

R. Brunschvig, Polémiques médiévales autour du rite de Mālik, in Al-Andalus, 1950, 377-435î J. Schacht, The origins of Muhammadan jurisprudence 3, Oxford 1959

idem, Introduction to Islamic law, Oxford 1964, with detailed bibliography.— On foreign elements: J. Schacht, in Mémoires de l’Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, iii/4, Rome 1955, 127-41, and in XII Convegno “Volta”, ¶ Rome 1957, 197-218

on influences of Jewish law and ritual in particular: I. Goldziher, in RE J, xxviii, 78, xliii, 4

A. J. Wensinck, in Isl., i (1910), 101 f.

E. Mittwoch, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des islamischen Gebets und Kultus (Abh. Pr. Ak. W.), Berlin 1913.—On the literature of fiḳh: Juynboll, Handbuch, 360-3 (Handleiding, 373-8)

N. P. Aghnides, Mohammedan theories of finance, New York 1916, 177-94

J. Schacht, Introduction, chap. 16 and bibliography.

Cite this page

Goldziher, I., Schacht, J. and J. Schacht, “Fiḳh”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 10 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_2364>