he principles which underlie Islamic jurisprudence, and to examine the historical development of law in the Islamic world. Very broadly, the development of Islamic jurisprudence can be divided into four periods. The first is the period of origination, which can be taken as comprising the time of the Prophet's life work, and the first few generations 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 thus far from decided.
Our concern in this chapter is with the first two periods, in which Muslim civilization came into being and took a mature form. In particular, the first few centuries of the second period the caliphal period is the era in which Islamic jurisprudence was largely defined, both in theory and in practice.
To begin with, what exactly is "Islamic law?" One of the most familiar statements about Islam, found in some form in virtually every introduction to Islam written for Westerners, is that Islam is not a compartmentalized religion in the narrow sense, as Christianity tends to be in the modern West, but a complete way of life. Christianity gre...