Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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The origin of the schools of thought essentially goes back to the early decades of the
second century of Islam. These early branches were developed under the surmounting
need to reevaluate legal practices during the growing Ummyyad dynasty reign
(41H./661AD-132/759). Under the vast expanding territory of the Muslim empire, jurists
and judges were overwhelmed by the tremendous increase in new cases and problems.
They attempted pragmatically to rule the cases in light of the established Islamic laws as
pronounced in the Koran. The scholars established various criteria by which rules were
either approved or rejected. What had started as a personal judgment on the part of
scholars, had materialized into procedures of agreement on such criteria, ijma'a, or
consensus of the Muslims.
Eventually, such agreement began to constitute the body of sunnah, actual customary
practices derived from traditions documenting Mohammed's life. By the second century
the term "sunnah" (literally means the divinely inspired conduct of the Prophet) evolved to
mean "the ideal doctrine established in the school and expounded by its current
representatives." 32 Sunnah evolved through crises of definitions and content, which by
the third century was resolved in the Muslim scholars' community and concluded in the
birth of Hadeeth science. Encompassing Mohammed's sayings and conduct, scholars
considered Sunnah to be inspired by God, therefore complimenting the Koran, Allah's
actual words revealed and quoted verbatim by Mohammed. In addition to Koran and
Sunnah, ijmaa', or agreement was considered a third source of legislation based on
majority rule by the scholars' interpretation and analogical reasoning, qias. The scholars'
acceptance of the ijm'a as binding, resulted in discarding the customary practice of ijtihad,
independent judgment, and the development of theoretical law was supplanted with that of
ijmaa'.
A1 Hathloul argues that such developments have become binding. He states "this
pattern of dominance of an unchallenged and long-standing tradition is repeated in the
contexts of the Arab-Muslim cities' built environment." A1 Hathloul commented, "From
that time onwards, jurisprudence was confined to the elaboration and detailed analysis of
established rules. This development substantially affected the way Muslim legal sources
were composed, since the role of jurists became that of commentators upon the works of
past masters." 33 Within this environment, a tradition of building developed in harmony
with the legal system which has since shaped the production of the traditional Muslim built