SHARI'AH

the fundamental religious concept of Islam, namely its law, systematized during the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Muslim era (8th9th centuries AD). Total and unqualified submission to the will of Allah (God) is the fundamental tenet of Islam: Islamic law is therefore the expression of Allah's command for Muslim society and, in application, constitutes a system of duties that are incumbent upon a Muslim by virtue of his religious belief. Known as the Shari'ah (literally, the path leading to the watering place), the law constitutes a divinely ordained path of conduct that guides the Muslim toward a practical expression of his religious conviction in this world and the goal of divine favour in the world to come. the fundamental religious concept of Islam, namely its law, systematized during the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Muslim era (8th9th century AD). The formulation of the Shari'ah rests on four bases (usul): 1. The Qur'an (q.v.). 2. The sunna (the way) of the Prophet as recorded in the Tradition, or Hadith (q.v.). 3. The ijma', or universal agreement, which has been materially perhaps the most important factor in defining what the Qur'an and the sunna mean (i.e., in formulating the doctrine and practice of the Muslim community) but which itself has curiously remained the least clearly formulated religious institution of Isl am. Its full nature and implications have never been adequately analyzed either in medieval Islam or by modern scholarship. Two important points must be borne in mind. First, although this is not inherent in the concept itself, ijma', in the premodern Islamic usage, has always had reference to the past, near or remote, and does not denote a contemporaneous agreement. In the modern Muslim usage of the term, however, ijma' has come to mean a democratic institution opposed to traditional authority. Second, and consequently, far from working as a monolithic principle of unique standardization, ijma' came to operate as a principle of toleration of different traditions within Islam. 4. The fourth principle of the Shari'ah formulation, known as qiyas, or analogical reasoning, is the genuine basis of interpretation and thought (ijtihad) in Islam. It is this which makes progressive ijma' possible. Its earlier form was personal thought and opinion (ra'y), which was criticized by many eminent traditional authorities as arbitrary. There are four sciences known as the sciences of the Shari'ah: the prophetic Tradition (Hadith), the Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), theology (kalam), and law (fiqh). The first two are the materials for theology and law. In the four schools of law, the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi'i, and the Hanbali, which took shape earlyduring the first two centuries of Islamlaw and theology were a unity and were not separated, although theology at that time was merely a statement of the doctrine. As a result of increased exposure to other religious systems, a cleavage occurred between the law and the doctrine, and the former, which ideally presupposed the latter as its base, came not only to be an independent discipline but to claim for itself the title of the science of the Shari'ah par excellence and was even identified with the Shari'ah itself. Thus fiqh, which originally meant an understanding of the entire range of the faith, came to be applied to law alone. Shari'ah differs fundamentally from Western law in that it is not, in theory, man-made but rather grounded in divine revelation. Among modern Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia retains the Shari'ah as the law of the land, secular as well as religious, but the westernized civil codes of most other Muslim countries have departed from the precepts of Shari'ah when this was deemed unavoidable. Additional reading A general survey of the Islamic legal system, covering its historical development, jurisprudential theory, and the most important spheres of the substantive law, is contained in Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964); James N.D. Anderson, Islamic Law in the Modern World (1959, reprinted 1975); and Noel J. Coulson, History of Islamic Law (1964, reprinted 1971). The reader is referred to the bibliographies of these books, particularly for the numerous articles written by James N.D. Anderson on developments in the law. Joseph Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950, reissued with corrections and additions, 1967), is a fundamental work of modern research on the early development of legal theory written by the pioneer scholar of this subject. A sound analysis of traditional legal theory is presented in Abdur Rahim, Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1911, reprinted 1981); and in The Philosophy of Jurisprudence in Islam, (1961), an Eng. trans. by Farmat J. Ziadeh of the Arabic text of an outstanding Muslim jurist, Subhi Mahmassani. Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny (eds.), Law in the Middle East (1955), includes chapters by Muslim scholars and Western Orientalists on the various spheres of substantive Islamic law, traditional and modern. Asaf A.A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, 4th ed. (1974), is a standard text dealing with Islamic law as it is applied in India and Pakistan. Norman Anderson, Law Reform in the Muslim World (1976), is a comparative study of the history, philosophy, and achievements of legal reform. The Encyclopaedia of Islam (191342; new ed., 1960 ), contains numerous articles on individual legal topics.