Throughout most of its history, the Muslim world’s legal thinking has taken place within the framework of four schools of law: those of Abū Hanīfah, Mālik, al-Shāfi`ī, and Ahmad b. Hanbal.
Doubtless, these four imams were worthy of the recognition, authority and leadership that they attained. The universal acceptance that the Muslims have given these scholars is a distinction Allah only allows for those who truly deserve it. Their excellence was not limited to religious knowledge, but also to their faith, religious convictions, and good works.
Allah describes such leadership as follows: “And We appointed, from among them, leaders giving guidance by Our command, because they persevered with patience and had complete faith in Our revelations.” [Sūrah al-Sajdah: 24]
The famous jurist Ibn Taymiyah said, commenting on this verse: “Religious leadership is attained through patience and unwavering faith.”
At the same time, we can see that Islamic history is full of illustrious religious scholars whose names have been immortalised. It is cause to wonder how these four imams came out at the forefront of them all without ever seeking or even desiring such recognition. They were never in competition with their peers for pre-eminence.
Certainly among their contemporaries were legal scholars of immense stature. There were the seven fames jurists of Madinah. Then there was al-Awzā`ī, al-Thawrī, Abū Thawr, and al-Layth b. Sa`d.
We also have the jurists of the Zāhirī school of law and a number of other early legal schools, many of which were quite similar in their day to the schools of the four imams. However, none of those schools received anything like the kind of attention that the schools of the four imams received.
As for the legal school of Ja`far al-Sādiq, over time the concern of its adherents became more and more theological and ideological, so that its independence as a school of thought became more dependent on questions of creed than on those of law.
As for the four schools of law, they enjoyed the continued attention of illustrious Islamic scholars who developed them and extended their scope. As time went on, each of the four schools became full-scale programs of study producing the best scholars – and the best scholarship – of each subsequent generation. Research into legal questions and matters of jurisprudence were conducted within the legal framework established by each school’s imam. Immense libraries of scholarship grew from these efforts, covering every conceivable question of law, legal procedure, legal deduction, and judicial practice.
As a consequence, these schools developed the comprehensiveness, complexity and intellectual resources needed to engage in the detailed and precise investigations into law that Muslim society required. It became inevitable that any legal question that came up would be referred back to one these schools and resolved within its theoretical framework.
Sheikh Salman al-Oadah
Source: en.islamtoday.net
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