A Simple Guide to ISLAM
Fiqh – Jurisprudence
~ 101 ~
Towards the end of the first century a movement of collecting
hadith started. Large numbers of people devoted their entire lives
to collect and record the traditions. Now the knowledge of the
traditions came to be termed as
ilm
and the traditionists began to
be called
ulama
.
At this stage there was another group who was interested only in
those traditions from which some legal rule could be deduced. For
this purpose they resorted to the exercise of reason and personal
judgement. This knowledge coming from this second group came
to be termed as
fiqh
as against
ilm
.
During the age of successors
(Tabiun)
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 was also developed as a science. According to
Ibn Khaldun the teachers of the Qur'an were no longer called
qurra
, they were rather known as
fuqaha
and
ulama
. Among the
successors there were
fuquha
and
ulama
, that is, those who were
authorities in law and hadith.
The most well-known scholar of Madina was
Said b-al-Musayyib
(d
94 AH). In this second period of the development of
fiqh
the
phrases
ahl al-ilm
and
ahl al-fiqh
were often used interchangeably.
Al-Muwatta
of Imam Malik the most famous book of this period,
provides an example when
fiqh
and
hadith
was not yet fully
separated. It is neither exclusively on
hadith
nor on
fiqh
. Both
