Legal System

Sharia

shah-REE-ah

Also Known As Islamic Law

Religious Law Systems

Sharia, in the comparative-law classification JuriGlobe and other schemes use, names the Muslim law legal family, a system that derives its authority from religious sources and juristic method rather than from a secular legislature or accumulated case law alone. Applied as law it varies enormously by jurisdiction, from the near-complete state law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, to one law among several in a mixed system such as personal-status law for Muslims within Malaysia and Nigeria, to a purely private, opt-in arbitration framework such as the Sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunal of England and Wales, which carry no independent legal force outside the ordinary law of contract and arbitration. This entry treats Sharia only as this legal-system facet: which jurisdictions apply it, and how its courts and jurists function as legal machinery. The doctrinal content of Islamic law, its sources, schools of jurisprudence and lived religious practice, remains Divinity Atlas's own subject under the family standing seam.

Facts

Example Jurisdictions

Saudi Arabia, where the 1992 Basic Law of Governance names the Quran and Sunna as the constitution and Sharia courts hear most civil, criminal and family matters alongside the administrative Board of Grievances; Iran, where all legislation is reviewed for conformity with Islamic criteria by the Guardian Council under the 1979 constitution; Malaysia and the northern states of Nigeria, where Sharia applies within a defined domain (chiefly personal status and, in Nigeria, some criminal law) alongside a general secular system; England and Wales, where Sharia councils and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal operate as private arbitration under the Arbitration Act 1996, with no jurisdiction over criminal law or divorce and no independent state-law force. 2

Primary Source of Law

The Quran and Sunna as interpreted through juristic method by the classical schools of Islamic jurisprudence; in states applying it as public law, codified statutes and royal or ministerial decrees implementing Sharia principles sit alongside direct judicial application by Sharia-trained judges. 2

Disputed

Origin Year

632 2

632, the death of Muhammad, is sometimes taken as the point at which systematic juristic derivation of law from revelation began, but comparative-law scholarship more often dates the crystallization of Sharia as a working legal system, with its classical schools of jurisprudence and settled methodology, to the eighth through tenth centuries, so no single year is agreed.

Classification

Legal Family

Religious Law 1

Learn More

One Body of Law, Four Legal Statuses

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Sharia is a single body of religious law, but comparative-law scholarship classifies it as one of the world's great legal families precisely because no two states that apply it give it the same legal weight. In Saudi Arabia, the 1992 Basic Law of Governance names the Quran and Sunna as the constitution itself, so Sharia sits at the top of the legal order, applied by general Sharia courts and, for administrative disputes against the government, by the separate Board of Grievances. In Iran, the relationship is one step removed: an elected parliament passes ordinary legislation, but nothing it passes stands unless the Guardian Council, twelve jurists half named by the Supreme Leader and half nominated by the judiciary, certifies that the law conforms to Islamic criteria. Sharia there is less the whole of positive law than its outer limit.

Move further along the spectrum and the state stops applying Sharia as public law at all. Malaysia and the northern states of Nigeria carve out a defined domain, generally personal status and, in parts of Nigeria, some criminal law, where Sharia courts sit alongside a general secular system that governs everything else. In England and Wales, Sharia has no state-law status whatsoever. Sharia councils and bodies such as the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, formed in 2007, operate purely as private arbitration under the Arbitration Act 1996, a law that lets two parties agree in advance to have a civil dispute decided under a chosen set of rules, religious or otherwise. Criminal law and divorce sit entirely outside what the Act allows an arbitrator to touch, and a panel award carries legal force in England only because the ordinary civil courts enforce an unchallenged arbitration award of any kind, not because Sharia itself has any standing there.

Four jurisdictions, four different answers to the same question: what happens when this body of law meets the machinery of a state. Comparative-law classification treats that variation as the interesting fact, not an inconsistency to explain away.

Sharia

142 entries

Role

Nationality or Jurisdiction

Field of Law

Gender

Court Served On

Abd Allah al-Qaysi

Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak

Abd al-Rahman al-Awza'i

Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Qasim al-Utaqi

Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr al-Humaydi

Abdul Ghanee Mohamed

Abdul Qadir Gilani

Abdul Razzaq Gilani

Abu al-Fadl Muhammad ibn al-Imam

Abu al-Hasan al-Qabisi

Abu al-Hassan al-Lakhmi

Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi

Abu al-Qasim al-Rafi'i

Abu al-Walid al-Baji

Abu Bakr al-Khallal

Abu Bakr al-Khassaf

Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi

Abu Hafs Umar al-Nasafi

Abu Hanifa

Abu Ishaq al-Isfarayini

Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi

Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi

Abu Muhammad al-Juwayni

Abu Saeed Mubarak Makhzoomi

Abu Tahir Multani

Abu Talib al-Makki

Abu Uthman al-Sabuni

Abu Yusuf

Adud al-Din al-Iji

Ahmad al-Rifa'i

Ahmad al-Wansharisi

Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Aisha Shujune Muhammad

Ala al-Din al-Baji

Al-Akhdari

Al-Allama al-Hilli

Al-Baghawi

Al-Baqillani

Al-Barzanjī

Al-Bayhaqi

Al-Damiri

Al-Fadl ibn Shadhan

Al-Ghazali

Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi

Al-Halimi

Al-Hasan ibn 'Ali al-Barbahari

Al-Hattab

Ali ibn Qasim al-Zaqqaq

Al-Jassas

Al-Khatib al-Shirbini

Al-Khattabi

Al-Layth ibn Sa'd

Al-Mahalli

Al-Marghinani

Al-Mawardi

Al-Mazari

Al-Mundhiri

Al-Muzani

Al-Nawawi

Al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar

Al-Qadi al-Nu'man

Al-Qurtubi

Al-Sarakhsi

Al-Shafi'i

Al-Tabari

Al-Tahawi

Al-Zarkashi

Al-Zayla'i

Amah al-Wahid

Asad ibn al-Furat

Azmiralda Zahir

Badr al-Din al-Ayni

Badr al-Din ibn Jama'ah

Dawud al-Zahiri

Diya' al-Din al-Makki

Diya' al-Din al-Maqdisi

Firuzabadi

Ghulam al-Khallal

Ibn 'Abd al-Barr

Ibn Abd al-Hadi