m, and how this outlook raised jurisprudence and the philosophy of law to a central role in Islamic thought. From this basis, the closing of the gates of ijtihad is then shown to be a logical consequence of a legal system's needs. A concluding section re-examines the Western perception of Islamic decline; the degree to which this was rooted in Western rather than Islamic experience and the degree to which a "closing of the gates" may be a natural development in any system of thought.
It should be noted that the closing of the gates of ijtihad is a specifically Sunni Muslim position. Among Shias, the gates remained open under certain conditions. More generally, Islamic thought will be shown to be heavily influenced by legal thought, and the legal principles of "Twelver" Shi'ism developed quite differently from those of Sunni Islam, due to the special authority of imams to promulgate doctrine (Savory, 1976, p. 59).
It will be suggested at the end of this essay that intellectual traditions eventually r
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