to gather the most learned Companions for consultation. When there was a difference of opinion, the decision of the majority was acted upon. Besides this council, there were great individual teachers, such as ‘A’ishah, Ibn ‘Abbās, Ibn ‘Umar and others, whose opinion was highly revered. Decisions were given and laws made and promulgated subject only to the one condition that they were neither contrary to the Holy Qur’ān nor to the practice of the Holy Prophet.

Great Jurists: Imām Abū Hanifah

In the second century of the Hijrah era arose the great jurists who codified the Islamic law according to the need of their time. The first of these, and the one who claims the allegiance of the greater part of the Muslim world, was Abū Ḥanīfah Nu‘mān ibn Thābit, born in Baṣrah in 80 A.H. (699 A.D.), a Persian by descent. His centre of activity, however, was Kūfah, and he passed away in 150 A.H. (767 A.D.). The basis of his analogical reasoning (qiyās) was the Holy Qur’ān, and he accepted Ḥadīth only when he was fully satisfied as to its authenticity; and, as the collectors had not yet commenced the work of collection, and Kūfah itself was not a great centre of that branch of learning, naturally Abū Ḥanīfah accepted very few ḥadīth, and always resorted to the Holy Qur’ān for his juristic views. Later on when Ḥadīth was collected, and was more in vogue, the followers of the Ḥanafī system — as Abū Ḥanīfah’s school of thought was called — introduced into it more ḥadīth. Abū Ḥanīfah had two famous disciples, Muḥammad and Abū Yūsuf, and it is mostly their views of the great master’s teaching that now form the basis of the Ḥanafī system. Abū Ḥanīfah was a man of highly independent character, and when, towards the close of his life, the then Muslim Government wanted to win him over to its side, he preferred imprisonment to an office which would have interfered with his independence of thought. His system is not only the first in point of time but is also that which claims allegiance from the great majority of Muslims, and a development of which on the right lines would have resulted in immense benefit to the Muslim world. It was he who first directed attention to the great value of analogical reasoning (qiyās) in legislation. He also laid down the principle of equity, whereby not only could new laws be made, but even logical conclusions could be