FROM THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

situation. Had the Prophet laid down specific and rigid rules for each problem, the coming generations would have been deprived of exercising reason and framing laws according to the need of the hour. Thus whenever any problem arose the Muslims tried to solve it by first referring to the Quran; If no definite answer was found in the Quran then they would turn to the Sunnah (the practice of the Prophet); if there too the problem remained to be solved then they resorted to consensus of the scholars; and as a final recourse they drew an analogy with the Quran and Sunnah. From the above points we can understand that the science of jurisprudence had come into existence with the advent of Islam, but it developed as an academic discipline in the eighth century. Imams or scholars have established four different Islamic schools of jurisprudence. There is no conflict between them and they are accepted by all the Muslims of the world. One could follow any school of thought one wants to. For example the Maliki School of law is dominant in the Arab west and is also found in southern Egypt and Sudan. These four different schools of Islamic jurisprudence have been established by the following Imams and named after them. Abu Hanifa Nu’man ibn Thabit (Hanafi School of Law) Born in 699 CE in Kufa, Umayyad Caliphate Died in 767 CE in Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate Malik ibn Anas (Maliki School of Law) Born in 711 CE in Madinah Died in 795 CE in Madinah Abu Abdillah Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi (Shafi School of Law) Born in 767 CE in Gaza, Bilad al-Sham, Abbasid Caliphate Died in 820 CE in Egypt Ahmad bin Hanbal (Hanbali School of Law) Born in 780 CE in Baghdad, Iraq Died in 855 CE in Baghdad, Iraq o Dr. Farida Khanam hub@thespiritofislam.org The Prophet provided a wide scope for differences by giving instructions of a general nature, or by validating two diverse actions in the same situation.