The development of Muslim law
No doubt its origins Islamic law takes from the Prophet Muhammad, it is considered the first legislator in Islam after God. But what we have now resembles what it was under the Prophet Muhammad.
In fact, the Prophet Muhammad, if they expressed their views and opinions regarding many issues, especially those relating to family relations and criminal penalties for crimes that expounded in a more simple way than is customary now to think. And then he simply could not Express its views on all questions which he is now credited simply because physically he was not.
The emergence and development of Muslim law in no way be compared with the Roman law. In Roman law all undertakings and development reflected in writing almost from the beginning, and in Islam it started only after almost 60 or 70 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.
Please note that in the period between the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the emergence of the classical schools of law, the Muslim community has experienced two major civil wars, the first which caused the collapse of three major branches Sunnism, Shiism, and the second was the cause of the formation of the Arab language as the state language throughout the territory of the Caliphate.
And here is a second civil war would cause the Muslim law as the legal system itself. Abd al Malik Ibn Marwan, the fifth Caliph of branch dynasty, which became the winner in this civil war, and became the catalyst for the changes that have occurred not only in Islam, but in Islamic law.
Namely, Abd al-Malik began to gather researchers and encourage them legal, and then intensively began to develop in academic circles in various parts of the Caliphate, namely, Mecca, Medina, Kufa and Basra. Support Abd al-Malik brought to fruition, scientists started to use the daily practice Umayyads governors and administrators as well as the jurisprudence as raw material for their judgments and opinions. Systematization comes later, but the beginnings of this systematization was laid precisely then.
About the emergence of the classical schools of law as their predecessors, and I will discuss in the next lecture.