History of Islamic Legislation is
divisible into six distinct periods or stages, which are explained below:
1.
First Period or The Era of the Prophet Muhammad or daur-alnabi (PBUH):
The first period is
the period when the Holy Prophet was alive from the year 13 before Hijrah to 10
A.H. (608/609-631/632A.D.).
This Period can be further divided
into two more sub-periods, namely:
·
The Meccan Period:
The
period before Hijrah when the prophet
(PBUH) was in Mecca is known as the Meccan period. The period extends from 1st
Nabavi up to 1st of Hijrah.
The main
revelations in that period were regarding the fundamental beliefs of the
nascent religion, like
o
Fundamental beliefs like Monotheism, Prophet
hood etc.
o
Injunctions of Shariah regarding murder, burial
of infant daughters alive, infidelity, hypocrisy etc.
o
Applaud able qualities like truthfulness, good
behavior towards parents etc
·
The Madani Period:
The period after the Hijrah, when the Prophet (PBUH) migrated to Madinah from Mecca is
called the Madani Period. The period lasted from 1st Hijrah until 10th of Hijrah.
The Revelations in
that period were broader in dimension than the ones in the Meccan Period, they
include:
o
Obligations like Zakat, Hajj etc.
o
Penalties, punishment, remedies etc
o
Directions concerning matters of the state.
During the period of revelation in
the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, all legal ruling were derived from the
following sources:
a. THE HOLY
QURAN. This is the compilation of ALLAH’S divine revelation which serves as the
blueprint of the Islamic way of life. Many sections of the Quran were revealed
to resolve problems arising from the increasing Muslim Community. This Method
of gradual and experiential legislation was most suitable for the nomadic Arab
tribes who were used to a life of unchallenged freedom.
b. THE
SUNNAH OF THE PROPHET. This consists of the acts and sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad and represents the application of the Quranic blueprint in the daily
life of a Muslim.
2.
Second Period or The Era of the Four
Rightly Guided Caliphs (daur Al-Khilafa-al-
Rashidun):
The second period
is the period from 10 A.H. to 40 A.H. (631/632-660/661 A.D.). The thirty years
of the rightly guided Caliphs, the period of the Companions of the Prophet
(Ashab) and their immediate successors (Tabi’un). This was the Golden Age of Islam. This was the period where
the compilation of the Glorious Qur’an was made and the appointment of First
Judge as well as the separation of the Executive branch of government and the
Judiciary. This stage witnessed the rapid expansion of the Islamic Empire to
include Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Persia (now known as Iran).Hence, the
early Muslim community came into immediate contact with new cultures, systems
and behavioral patterns which did not have specific corresponding provisions in
the
Shari’ah.
Sources of Ijtehad in that era were the following:
·
Quran
·
Sunnah
·
Ijma
·
Qia’s
Confronted with
situational conflicts, the Caliphs decided as follows:
a. Search
first for a specific ruling in the Holy Qur’an
b. If
there is no such ruling in the Holy Qur’an, search for a ruling from the Sunnah
of the Prophet
c. If
there is no ruling in the Sunnah, meet with the major Sahabah and obtain a
unanimous agreement on the solution to the conflict. This unanimity became
known as Ijma
d. If there is no unanimity, obtain the
majority’s position.
e. If
the differences are great and no significant majority can be obtained, the
Caliph can make his own Ijtihad, which will now be the rule in the conflict.
Fiqh was developed or introduced at this
period/stage which was based on actual rather than hypothetical conflicts.
Later in the evolution of fiqh, this came to be called f iqh ul-waqi’ee.
3.
Third Period or The Era of Umayyad
Dynasty or (daur-alnumuw wa alrush):
The third period
of Muslim law is the period of the Umayyad Caliphate from 41 A.H. to 132 A.H.
(661-750 A.D.). In this period, the Muslim empire was transformed from an Islamic
theocracy to an Arab state. In this period there arose different parties such
as the Shiahs, the Kharijites and the Sunnis. The use of ijtihad increased
because of the difficulty of gathering all legal scholars together in one place
because of the expansion of the Islamic Empire. The Sunnah of the Prophet was
no longer readily accessible to Muslim populations far from Madinah and Makkah,
the two most important centers of Islam. Hadith narratives also became widespread
and there grew a tendency to falsify or fabricate them to suit personal
purposes. This period marked the first attempt to compile the ijtihad and ijma of
the Sahabah. Clear-cut schools of legal
thought arose which would later become the Madhahib or Schools of Law. Four of
these madhahib will survive to become known as the Four Orthodox Schools of
Islamic Law:
·
Hanafi
·
Maliki
·
Shafi’i
·
Hanbali
There appeared many renowned Fuqaha in various parts of the Islamic
Empire like:
o Abdullah
bin Umar, Saeed bin Musayyab, Urwa bin Zubair in Madinah
o Abdullah
bin Abbas in Makkah
o Abdullah
bin Masud, Alqama, Aswad, Ibrahim Nakh’I, Abu Haneefa in Koufa
o Abu Musa Asha’ri, Anis bin Malik in
Basra
o Abdullah bin Amar, Laith bin Sa’d, Ibn Abi
Habeeb in Shaam
4.
Fourth Period or The Era of Abbasids or (daur-alizdehaar -wa -altadween):
The fourth period
of the Islamic law is the period of the Abbasid Caliphate from 132 A.H. to 450
A.H. In this particular period Muslims excelled in nearly every domain of
knowledge, new branches of knowledge were also discovered by profoundly
talented Muslim Scholars, this development was made possible due to the support
of the Abbasid Caliphs who took keen interest in flourishing different fields
of knowledge. Not only the Sunnah
of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was
compiled into in this period but also
various books on the subject of Fiqh arduously
compiled by the Jurists. Like all the
other scholars, the Jurists were also bestowed with gracious gifts. In rare
cases the Caliph himself called upon Scholars to produce manuscripts containing
codes for running the state, like the Caliph Haroon-ur-Rasheed called upon Imam Abu Yusuf to compile Kitaab-ul-Khiraaj to run the affairs of
the ever extending Empire.
A large
number of Ahadeeth compendiums (like the Infamous Sehah sitta) were
compiled and collected in this period which gave rise to new fields of Ilm-al-Hadeeth like jarh, ta’deel. These new trends also affected the ilm-al-fiqh and such technicalities
started to develop in this branch of knowledge as well. Imam Shafi’I (founder of usool-alfiqh)
and Imam Muhammad are the leading
Jurists of that Era.
5.
Fifth Period or The Era of Ottoman
Caliphate or (daur-u-altaqleed)
The fifth period
of the Islamic law is the period of the Ottoman Caliphate from 450 A.H. to 1286
A.H. In these periods the pupils of the worthy Jurists started following the madhab of their mentors as they found
the rich texts sufficient to carry out the activities of Qada efficiently. In addition legal reasoning prospered as the
scholars intended to study the intents, motives and reasons behind sharai’ phenomena. Moreover the practices
of Jarh and Ta’deel became more
significant than ever. Not everything went in the favor of Ummah as Legal disputes appeared; subsequently legal arguments were
introduced to deal with these growing shenanigans which turned out be to rather
unsuccessful, instead these arguments added fuel to the fire and puny disputes
turned into conflicts between the Madahibs. Ijtehad in its true form was more
or less abandoned and a new refined form appeared in the following Era, that is
the era of Legislatine Renaissance.
6.
Sixth Period or The Era of
Legislative Renaissance
The sixth period of the Muslim
Legislative History is from 1286 A.H. to the Modern day. At the Dawn of the
Modern Age it occurred to the Muslim Jurists that the lack of Ijtehad and the
tradition of Taqleed adopted in the
last period had left a wide gap, thus the Laws of Shariah were struggling to keep up with the changing modern legal
trends, thus under the banner of Ottoman Caliphate (which was about to
collapse) Lajnah Turkiyya released a
manuscript to set out some “standards of Shariah” to mold its various laws
according to the requirements of the Modern age and the foundations of this
manuscript were not laid upon any madhad in
particular, thus the older practice of strictly following a single madhab was not followed in its
compilation.
Many Institutions were established nationally and internationally to
cope with the ever-increasing requirements in the 20th century, some
of which are as follows:
o Islamic
Ideological Council, Pakistan
o Islamic
Research Institute in Al-Azhar, Egypt
o Fiqh
Council which works under Muslim World League
o Islamic
Legislative Council, Sudan
o Islamic
Legislative Council, affiliated with Organization of Islamic Conference.
No comments:
Post a Comment