This chapter is devoted to the context in which the Persian opinions of the ‘āqila developed and preserved. It points to eastern Iran, mainly the towns of Balkh, Bukhara, and Samarqand, as the origin of hundreds of legal opinions that deviated from Ḥanafī standard law, in response to particular conditions experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the Persian lands. These opinions form a rich repository from which Ḥanafī law drew legal material. The chapter offers a survey of the legal literature in which these opinions were preserved, and by which they were handed down, until finally incorporated into the Shar‘ia.