284 SYSTEMATIZING AND ISLAMICIZING

this happened, became indistinguishable from the majority.¹ But the Islamicizing process by which Muhammadan law as such emerged was not a monopoly of the traditionists or, within the ancient schools of law, of the school of Medina.²

The process of Islamicizing was, however, not carried to its logical conclusion: the sphere of law retained a technical character of its own, and legal relationships were not completely reduced to and expressed in terms of religious and ethical duties. The traditionists, it is true, set out to do this, and tried to identify the categories 'forbidden' and 'invalid'.³ But this did not prevail, and even Shāfi'ī who adopted the teaching of the traditionists in most other respects, distinguished between the legal and the moral aspects and maintained that Muhammadan law was concerned with the forum externum only.⁴ This clear position was of course reached only gradually.⁵

The following examples, in addition to those which have occurred earlier in this book,⁶ are meant to show the close connexion that exists between systematizing and Islamicizing, the interaction of both tendencies, and the gradual achieving of a balance between the two elements.

Tr. I, 28: Ibn Abī Lailā decides a problem of the law of contracts by a consideration of material justice and identifies the moral and the legal aspect;⁷ Abū Ḥanīfa shows a higher degree of technical legal reasoning, Abū Yūsuf goes back to Ibn Abī Lailā, but Shaibānī improves on Abū Ḥanīfa and anticipates Shāfiʿī (Sarakhsī, xiii. 86); Shāfiʿī follows Shaibānī and distinguishes clearly between the moral and the legal aspect.

Tr. I, 167: According to Ibn Abī Lailā, the debtor is bound to pay zakāt tax on his debt. This opinion was also attributed to Ibrāhīm Nakhaʿī, and so was the argument that the debtor worked with it and derived profit from it.⁸ The argument is presumably not in fact Ibrāhīm’s,⁹ but nevertheless represents