“Classical” Islamic Legal Theory as Ideology

Joseph Schacht opened his classical work on Islamic law in 1950 with the following statement:

The classical theory of Muhammadan law, as developed by the Muhammadan jurisprudents, traces the whole of the legal system to four principles or sources: the Koran, the sunna of the Prophet, that is, his model behaviour, the consensus of the orthodox community, and the method of analogy. The essentials of this theory were created by Shāfi‘ī … [H]e carried it to a degree of competence and mastery which had not been achieved before and was hardly equalled and never surpassed after him.

(Schacht 1959, 1)