Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

discusses why the different Madhabs, or schools of thought in Islamic Jurisprudence, have developed different approaches to Fiqh and in deriving rulings.

Adopted from The Evolution of Fiqh, pp. 80-81

The different approaches of the Ahl Al-Hadeeth and Ahl Ar-Ra'i scholars may be traced to certain political factors combined with the differing socio-cultural backgrounds of the two areas in which their schools of thought flourished. From the time of the last Righteous Caliph, `Ali Ibn Abi Talib (R), the capital of the Islamic state shifted first to Iraq and then to Syria. Thus, the Hijaz (Western coast of the Arabian Peninsula including Makkah and Madinah) was spared much of the turbulence and influx of foreign cultures and ideas which took place at the centre of the state. Life in the Hijaz continued to be easy-going and simple, due to its isolation. The Hijaz was also the home of the Prophet (SAW) and the birth-place of the Islamic state. Consequently, there was an abundance of hadiths in this region as well as a wealth of legal rulings made by the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, `Umar, and `Uthman (may Allah be pleased with them). On the other hand, Iraq was a new and strange land for Muslims. When the capital of the Islamic state was stationed there, it became a virtual melting pot of various cultures and gave rise to a great number of stations and events which were outside the experience of Muslim scholars of the time. Furthermore, because the number of Sahabah who settled there was small, hadiths were not nearly available there as in Hijaz. Indeed, Iraq became the birth-place of fabricated hadith as well as the breeding ground for most of the early deviant sects. not being able to rely on the validity of quoted hadiths, the scholars of Iraq tended to rely on hadiths which these Iraqi scholars considered accurate, were only acepted after the fulfillment of very strict conditions. the natural result of this development was that the Iraqi school of thought and its scholars depended more on reason and logic than on the narrated Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW).