Codification of Islamic Laws in the Fourteen and Fifteen Centuries A.H.: A Study of Three Examples

Dr. Mohamed Shafei Bosheya
Assistant Professor, Former Head of Jurisprudence Department
Sharia and Law Faculty, International Islamic University
Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah (UniSHAMS)
Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia

Abstract:


Islamic Law is suitable to be practiced at any time and place. It has served as an example of a perfect journey in the establishment of justice. The Muslim Jurists have encouraged Muslim Ummah (nation) to bring out this important issue through their vast compilations and writings. The Arab and Islamic World has witnessed, during the Fourteen and Fifteen Centuries A.H., visible advancements in Islamic Law in terms of explanation, simplification, and codification, recorded in contemporary writing style which combined in its meaning and structure the originality of Islamic Sharia and the weight of the minds of its venerable jurists, the abundance of what they wrote in their various works over the centuries, and the modern legal texts issued by the various judicial authorities, or drawn up by senior jurists of materials and explanatory explanations for them. The most famous of these efforts is the “Journal of Judicial Judgments”, which was issued in 1295 AH.
However, other efforts have been made that are no less important than the Code of Judicial Judgments, but they have not been able to spread, or work on a wide range due to circumstances related to their content, as some of them represented a specific scope, such as “Ahkam Al Jinayat (criminal provisions) wal Hudud (limitations) or “family rulings”, or “endowments”, or matters related to the authorities that issued them, or the circumstances and conditions of the countries in which they were issued.
This research, too, deals with three efforts to codify Islamic law that were made during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AH, specifically within the range of 100 years, starting in the year 1306 AH and ending in 1403 AH, which are: Muhammad Qadri Group Legal Pasha (died in 1306 AH), the Family Rights Law or the Turkish Family Law (issued in 1336 AH), and the draft legalization of Islamic Sharia on the four schools (issued by the Egyptian People’s Assembly (1403 AH-1983 AD)), through a historical, descriptive and analytical study of these three efforts. .

Keywords: Islamic law, jurisprudence, codification, family rights, financial transactions, endowment.

Read Full PDF Text (Arabic)