Some other personal schools also came into existence, of which mention must be made of the Zahiri School of law founded by Dawud Ibn Khalaf. It is the only school which has not taken its name from a person but from a legal theory.
This was an orthodox school which accepted the literal meaning (zahir) of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet, and rejected both the personal opinions of the jurists as well as the analogical and systematic reasoning.
Among the personal schools of law, mention may also be made of the school of Abdu Thawr, and of the school of Tabari. Mention may also be made of the Almohads movement in North Africa whose founder was Ibn Tumart. Blit by 1300 A.D., 6tily the four schools of the Sunnis, viz., the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi and the Habali, survived.
Image Source: upload.wikimedia.org
ADVERTISEMENTS:
“In their relationship to one another”, Schacht observes, “The orthodox schools of law have, notwithstanding acts of fanaticism, particularly on the part of the populace and of the rulers in the high middle ages generally practised mutual toleration.
The maxim that disagreement in the community of Muslims was a sign of divine indulgence had already been formulated in the second century of the hijra. The opportunity for disagreements on questions of principle arose only from the time of Shaft’s systematic innovation onwards.
In his particular case, the several schools arrived at a compromise, and generally speaking the consensus, which acted as the integrating principle of Islam, has succeeded in making innocuous those differences of opinion that it could not eliminate.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The four schools, then, are equally covered by ijma, they are all deemed to translate into individual legal rules the will of Allah as expressed in the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet; their alternative interpretations are all equally valid, their method of reasoning equally legitimate, in short, they are equally orthodox”.