FROM THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Whenever any problem arose they first consulted the Quran and Hadith and only if they failed to find the solution there, they resorted, to the exercise of their personal judgement, while observing fully the spirit of the Quran and Hadith. It was at this stage when the exercise of reason was done to deduce a law, that the term fiqh came to be frequently used for this endeavour. Towards the end of the seventh century a movement of collecting Hadith started. Large number of people devoted their entire lives to collect and record the teachings of the Prophet. There was another group of people who were interested only in those teachings from which some legal rule could be deduced. For this purpose they resorted to the exercise of reason and personal judgement. This knowledge came to be known as fiqh and those who were involved in this task came to be known as fuqaha. During the age of successors the Arabs settled in different parts of the vast Muslim empire. Consequently they came into contact with different cultures and civilizations—confronting with problems they had never faced before. In their endeavour to solve these problems they made great advances in various fields of learning. Islamic law developed and towards the middle of the ninth century books began to be written exclusively on fiqh. Origins of Different Schools of Law One should be clear about the fact that during the time of the Prophet there was no such science as that of jurisprudence. The only ideal for Muslims at that time was the conduct of the Prophet. They learnt by observing the Prophet’s actions and under his instructions. On different occasions, cases were brought to the Prophet for his decision. Prophet’s decisions were taken as models for similar decisions in similar cases. During this period, people were not interested in unnecessary philosophical discussions or in meticulous details. Prophet’s practice remained a general directive, interpreted by the early Muslims in different ways. Of course the Prophet laid down certain regulations but the jurists elaborated them with more details. The reason for this further addition to the laws by interpretation is that the Prophet himself had made allowances in his commands. He left many things to the discretion of the community to be decided according to a given situation. The Prophet provided a wide scope for differences by giving instructions of a general nature, or by validating two diverse actions in the same