From prior to the first quarter of the second century to the mid-third century AH (eighthninth century AD), reports and transmitted legal opinions reflected variant legal rulings.

The Companions issued legal opinions in accordance with what they had heard from the Prophet, and the Successors followed their example by relating what they had heard from the Companions.¹ This practice, conducted through various methods of interpretation, was based on the principle of tolerance, because no fixed methodological interpretations existed at that time, only the doctrine of 'Ata’ b.

Yasir (d. 103/721), the doctrine of the Medinan jurists, and similar groupings.² Thus both generations utilized what existed: the statements and opinions of the Prophet and the early Companions, as well as their own Ijtihad. Differences of opinions naturally arose, for not all of them possessed the same level of knowledge and conservation, the same method of reasoning/diligence and consideration, or the same model of understanding and elicitation.³

The following generation of jurists wrote down their schools’ doctrines in order to account for and explain the preceding information. They focused on the knowledge produced in their regions: Malik b. Anas focused on the learning of Medina, al-Shafi'i on that of Mecca, Abu Hanifa and Sufyan al-Thawri on that of Iraq, al-Awza'i on that of Syria, and al- Layth b. Sa'd on that of Egypt.⁴ Ahmad b. Hanbal and Dawud b. 'Ali, who emerged in the ninth century and whose schools of thought were codified and followed, had a reverse impact on the jurisprudential direction of Baghdad.⁵ These regionally significant jurists formulated the crucial elements of ray, or considered opinion, and athar, or traditional material.⁶

Several of these jurists are considered to be founders of schools of jurisprudence, including Sufyan b. 'Uyayna (d. 198/814) of Mecca, the ‘scholar of the Hejaz’; Ishaq b. Rahawayit (d. 238/852), the ‘scholar of the East and Khurasan’; and Abu Thawr Ibrahim b.

Khalid (d. 240/854), a prominent Baghdadi jurist. These schools of legal thought were those of ahl al-Sunnah, the majority of Muslims, but not all of them were fully codified. Some were only partially codified, and others were never codified. Their opinions and views were noted, yet because their disciples did not write them down, the only record of their existence is in the works of other jurists. The surviving legal schools are based on the legal thought of the Sunni jurists Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi'i, and Ibn Hanbal. Other surviving schools of that era are the Imaml or Twelver Shi'i school, attributed to Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148/765), the Zaydi

Shi'i school, attributed to the Imam Zayd ibn ‘Ali (d. 122/740), and the Ibadi Khariji school, attributed to 'Abdullah b. Ibad al-Tamimi (d. 80/699) and still followed by some Tunisians, Algerians, and Omanis. These founding figures, later jurists, and the related processes of recording legal scholarship, deriving subsidiary rulings using the principles of legal hermeneutics (usul al-fiqh), and the application of the law will be given below.

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Source: Abou El Fadl Khaled, Ahmad Ahmad Atif, Hassan Said Fares (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law. Routledge,2019. — 466 p.. 2019

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