INTRODUCTION

in its developed form, Islamic legal theory came to recognize a variety of sources and methods from and through which the law might be derived. Those sources from which the law may be derived are the Quran and the Sunna or example of the Prophet, both of which provide the subject matter of the law. Those sources through which the law may be derived represent either methods of legal reasoning and interpretation or the sanctioning instrument of consensus (ijmāʿ). Primacy of place within the hierarchy of all these sources is given to the Quran, followed by the Sunna which, though second in order of importance, provided the greatest bulk of material from which the law was derived. The third is consensus, a sanctioning instrument whereby the creative jurists, the mujtahids, representing the community at large, are considered to have reached an agreement, known retrospectively, on a technical legal ruling, thereby rendering it as conclusive and as epistemologically certain as any verse of the Quran and the Sunna of the Prophet. The certitude bestowed upon a case of law renders that case, together with its ruling, a material source on the basis of which a similar legal case may be solved. The mujtahids, authorized by divine revelation, are thus capable of transforming a ruling reached through human legal reasoning into a textual source by the very fact of their agreement on its validity.