ations of the Muslim community. The second, and by far the longest, is the period of development and establishment, beginning roughly with the foundation of the Ommayyid Caliphate and continuing thereafter for about a thousand years. This is a period in which Muslims were masters in their own house, and faced the full range of legal problems posed by a vast and cosmopolitan civilization. The third period is that of Western colonial or neo colonial encroachment. During this period, Islamic jurisprudence was supplanted in most of the Muslim world by Western derived legal practice, whether imposed by Western colonial powers (as in Pakistan) or by Westernizing reformers (as in Iran). Only a few Muslim countries notably Saudi Arabia substantially escaped this encroachment. The fourth period, that of Islamic legal reassertion, has only begun in recent years, and the form which that reassertion will take is still far from decided.
Our concern in this chapter is with the first two periods, in which Muslim civilization
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