The Schools of Law (Madhāhib)

A madhhab is a school of legal method and doctrine, formed around great early jurists and their students; several survive as living traditions, and mainstream scholarship treats them as legitimate alternatives rather than rivals to be ranked.

At a glance

The four surviving Sunni schools each grew from the teaching of an eponymous jurist and the community of scholars who refined it. The Ḥanafī school, tracing to Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767), became the most widespread, favoured by the Ottomans and across much of South and Central Asia; the Mālikī school, rooted in the practice of Medina and the teaching of Mālik (d. 795), predominates in North and West Africa; the Shāfiʿī school, named for al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820) who did much to systematise legal theory, spread through Egypt, East Africa and Southeast Asia; and the Ḥanbalī school, tracing to Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855) and closely tied to hadith, is associated today especially with the Arabian Peninsula. Several other early Sunni schools, such as the Ẓāhirī, did not endure as living traditions.

Shiʿi Islam has its own schools. The Twelver Jaʿfarī school takes its name from the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), whose circle the Twelver tradition regards as foundational for its law; the Zaydīs and the Ismāʿīlīs developed distinct legal traditions of their own. The Ibāḍīs of Oman, descended from the early Khārijite milieu but long since a distinct and quietist community, preserve a further school. Each derives law through the methods its own uṣūl al-fiqh prescribes.

The relationship among the schools has generally been one of mutual recognition: a Muslim ordinarily follows one madhhab in practice while acknowledging the others as valid interpretations, and jurists have long studied across school lines. In the modern period this pluralism has been affirmed formally — the 2004 "Amman Message," endorsed by a wide range of scholars and institutions, recognised eight schools (the four Sunni, the Jaʿfarī and Zaydī, the Ibāḍī and the Ẓāhirī) as legitimate. Chronicle attributes rulings to their schools rather than presenting any one as the ruling of "Islam" as such.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.