by force and free invention of authorities. But they recognized their responsibility to God and man and the necessity of building up a stable and complete means of rendering justice. These armies of Muslims, we must remember, were not like the hordes of Attila or Chingis Khan, destroyers only. The lands they conquered were put to hard tribute, but it was under a reign of law. They recognized frankly that it was for them that this mighty empire existed; but they recognized also that it could continue to exist only with order and duty imposed upon all. They saw, too, how deficient was their own knowledge and learned willingly of the people among whom they had come. And here, a second time, Roman law—the parent-law of the world—made itself felt. There were schools of that law in Syria at Caesarea and Beyrout, but we need not imagine that the Muslim jurists studied there. Rather, it was the practical school of the courts as they actually existed which they attended. These courts were permitted to continue in existence till Islam had learned from them all that was needed. We can still recognize certain principles that were so carried over. That the duty of proof lies upon the plaintiff, and the right of defending himself with an oath upon the defendant; the doctrine of invariable custom and that of the different kinds of legal presumption. These, as expressed in Arabic, are almost verbal renderings of the pregnant utterances of Latin law.

But most important of all was a liberty suggested by that system to the Muslim jurisconsults. This was through the part played in the older school by the

Responsa Prudentium, answers by prominent lawyers to questions put to them by their clients, in which the older law of the Twelve Tables was expounded, expanded, and often practically set aside by their comments. Sir Henry Maine thus states the situation "The authors of the. new jurisprudence, during the whole progress of its formation, professed the most sedulous respect for the letter of the code. They were merely explaining it, deciphering it, bringing out its full meaning; but then, in the result, by placing texts together, by adjusting the law to states of fact which actually presented themselves, and by speculating on its possible application to others which might, occur, by introducing principles of interpretation derived from the exegesis of other written documents which fell under their observation, they educed a vast variety of canons which had never been dreamt of by the compilers of the Twelve Tables, and which were in truth rarely or never to be found there." All this precisely applies to the development of law in Islam. The part of the Twelve Tables was taken by the statute law of the Qur'an and the case law derived from the Usage of Muhammad; that of the Roman Iurisprudentes by those speculative jurists who worked mostly outside of al-Madina in the camp cities of Mesopotamia and Syria—the very name for lawyer in Arabic, faqih, plural fuqaha, is a translation of prudens, prudentes; and that of the Responsa, the answers, by the "Opinion" which they claimed as a legitimate legal method and source. Further, the validity of a general agreement of jurisconsults "reminds us of the rescript of Hadrian, which. ordains