| For generations, scholarship has attempted to determine the sources and authors of Islamic law and jurisprudence: first, the thesis that disengaged h&dotbelow;adīth from Muhammad as contended by Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht; then, and most recently, the study conducted by David Powers that led him to conclude that there existed two kinds of law: proto-Islamic law and Islamic law.; Similarly, a number of other scholars relied on the philological analysis of the Qur'ān and H&dotbelow;adīth only to conclude that these primary sources themselves had been subjected to a process of manipulation; hence, casting doubt on the authenticity of such documents. These views were in sharp contrast with the classical Muslim opinion that characterized Islamic law as a system based on the primary sources and on the Islamic-specific theoretical tools devised by later jurists.; Taking the Qur'ānic verses on inheritance as a starting point, this study examines the related disciplines (tafsīr, h&dotbelow;adīth, us&dotbelow;ūl, and ah&dotbelow;kām) in order to introduce a fresh perspective arguing that Qur'ānic enunciations on inheritance are not necessarily binding unless activated by precedents that are largely transmitted orally. In the process, we have discovered that Islamic law in general consisted of ascribing and confining meaning with disparate accretive precedents and general principles. Islamic legal proofs (adilah) are dormant unless authorized by privileged oral parlance inherited from the Prophet Muhammad, al-Khulafā' al-Rāshidūn, the Companions, and/or the Mujtahidūn. It was concluded in the light of the examined evidence that throughout the formative period of Islamic law (the first three Islamic centuries), legal opinions and proofs were expressed exclusively in privileged oral discourse; not in a written textual medium. This point of view implies also that Islamic law is far from being systematic as these authorizing traditions were never the synthesis of reason alone. Similarly, the claim of “fabrication” is untenable since the proponents of such a point of view relied on philological analysis of written texts and ignored the oral dimension despite the fact that the existence and accuracy of these texts during the formative period of classical Islamic law is shown to be very inconclusive. |
