Praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings be upon our master Muhammad

hadith
which one of the Companions 
transmitted. A second group criticised those who gave 
fatwa
based on their opinion, saying that they gave 
fatwa
in the 
Deen
of Allah without authority from the Book or the 
Sunna
.
The truth is that the Companions found themselves in an impossible quandary resulting from the strength 
of their religious feelings. On the one hand, they might memorise a lot of 
hadiths
from the Messenger of Allah 
in order to learn the judgements from them, but then they feared that they might be inaccurate about what he 
said. As we read in 
Hujjatullah al-Baligha
by Shah Waliyullah ad-Dihlawi: “When ‘Umar sent a group to 
Kufa, he told them: ‘You are going to a people who are confused about the Qur’an, so they will ask you about 
hadith
. Do not give them too many.’” On the other hand, they could give 
fatwa
by their own opinions and be 

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in danger of making things lawful and unlawful without proper justification. Some of them preferred 
hadiths
from the Messenger of Allah and some of them chose opinion when there was no clear precedent. If they 
subsequently learned of a clear 
sunna
, they retracted their opinion. That was related of many of the 
Companions, including ‘Umar. 
After the Companions came their students, the 
Tabi‘un
, and two problems arose in their time. One was that 
the Muslims divided into parties and groups. The level of disagreement became intense and impassioned. 
They were severe with one another and started to accuse one another of disbelief, iniquity and rebellion, and 
to threaten one another and to unsheathe the sword. The Community divided into the Kharijites, Shi‘ites, 
Umayyads and those who were quiescent in the face of the afflictions which occurred and remained far from 
sedition, refusing to become involved in it.
The Kharijites formed different sects: the Azraqites, Ibadites, Najdites and others. The Shi‘a formed into 
disparate groups, some of whom had bizarre opinions which took them outside of Islam, even though they 
pretended to follow Islam in order to corrupt people. They were not concerned with establishing the 
Deen
, but 
rather with destroying its basis to restore their old religion and its power and authority – or at least to shatter 
Muslim cohesion or to make the Muslims live with intense seditions, and to extinguish the Light of Allah. 
The second problem was that Madina lost the unique authority which it enjoyed in the time of the 
Companions, especially in the time of ‘Umar which is considered the Golden Age of legal 
ijtihad
. It was the 
home of the scholars and 
fuqaha’
of the Com-panions. They did not leave it without maintaining a scholarly 
connection with it. They corresponded regarding problems which arose, because the 
sunna
of ‘Umar was to 
ensure that the Com-panions of Quraysh were kept within the confines of the Hijaz. The great 
Muhajirun
and 
Ansar
never left the boundaries of Madina without his permission and he watched over them.
When ‘Umar died, they left for outlying regions. Each group of them became the source of a legal school 
which was connected to them and which the people of the places to which they emigrated followed. In the 
time of the 
Tabi‘un,
there were students of those 
fuqaha’
who lived in Madina or other places. Each city had 
its 
fuqaha’
and their views grew apart as the cities were far apart, each adapting to the customs of his region 
and having to deal with the particular problems which troubled it. So people followed the path of those 
Companions who were in that region and transmitted the 
hadiths
which they reported and which therefore 
became current among them. In this way various methods of legal thought appeared in different places, all 
derived from the Qur’an and the 
Sunna
of the Prophet. 
As we have seen, in the time of the Companions there were basically two schools. In one of them, opinion 
dominated and transmission played a lesser role, though, if a clear 
sunna
emerged, opinion would be 
abandoned in favour of it. The other relied almost totally on transmission and preferred not to give a