ABSTRACT
Islamic law has been facing a crisis both in countries where it has been, uninterruptedly and exclusively, the law of the land for fourteen centuries, and in countries where since the mid-nineteenth century it has had to give way to Western-type codifications in many areas of the law. The roots of the crisis go back to the fourth century of the Islamic era when a consensus emerged among Sunni jurists that all the rules of Islamic law had been fully and definitively expounded. Islamic law became only one of several subjects taught at the new law schools and, for both scholars and practitioners, it lost importance except in the area of family and inheritance law, where it continued to apply. In Egypt, to mention only one Muslim country, modern legislation and comparative law have become part of the curricula of the law schools of al-Azhar and its affiliated institutions.
