Changes

Soon after, in a vigorous attempt to reconcile the rival groups, one brilliant legal scholar named Shafii systematized and developed what were called the “roots of the law” at the time. He criticized both what he called “people of reason” and “people of tradition” trying to prove that neither group is absolutely true to Sharia. Shafii argued that in solving a legal question, the qadi or government judges should first consult the Quran. If the answers were not clear there, the judges then should refer to the authentic sayings and decisions of Muhammad. If the answers continued to elude the judges, they subsequently should follow and refer to the consensus of Muslim legal scholars on the matter. Still failing to find a solution, and as a last resort allowance, the judges could form their own answer(s) by analogy from “the precedent nearest in resemblance and most appropriate” to the case in hand. And although taken very contradictory at the beginning, with lots of opposing traditional Sharia interpreters, Shafii’s approach was later widely adopted throughout the Islamic world in the following years.

Thus by around the year 900, the classic Sharia was formed and established. And although a number of different concepts and institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the following centuries and they shaped different versions of Sharia in different schools of Islamic jurisprudence, all of them recognized the Sharia as the main and only law of behavior for all Muslims. The process was backed up by unified handbooks with examples, assembled by Islamic specialists in the law and prepared for Islamic judges to use in their decision makings. Moreover, the classic Sharia was not a code of laws, but a collective body of religious and legal scholarship that generally ceased to develop for the next 1,000 years.

==References==

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[[Category:Wikis]]

[[Category:Middle East History]] [[Category:Legal History]] [[Category:Religious History]]

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