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DEVELOPMENT OF JURISPRUDENCE

religious section. Harun writes on his accession to the Khalifate (170), complaining that Sufyan had not visited him, in spite of their bond of brotherhood, and offering him wealth from the public treasury. Sufyan replied, denouncing such use of public fund and all the other uses of them by Harun—many enough—except those precisely laid down in the codes. On the basis of these, Harun would have had to work for his own living. There are also other denunciations for crimes in the ruler which he punished in others. Harun is said to have kept the letter and wept over it at intervals, but no change of life on his part is recorded. Apparently, with the accession of the Abbasids ascetic and mystical Islam made a great development. It became plain to the pious that no man could inherit both this world and the next.

While Abu Hanifa was developing his system in Mesopotamia, al-Awza'i was working similarly in Syria. He was born at Baalbec, lived at Damascus, and at Beyrout where he died in 157. Of him and his teaching we know comparatively little. But so far it is clear that he was not a speculative jurist of the same type as Abu Hanifa, but paid especial attention to traditions. At one time his school was followed by the Muslims of Syria and the entire West to Morocco and Spain. But its day was a short one. The school of Abu Hanifa, championed by Abu Yusuf with his tremendous influence as chief Qadi of the Abbasid empire, pushed it aside, and at the present day it has no place except in history. For us, its interest is that of another witness to the early

MALIK IBN ANAS

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rise and spread of systems of jurisprudence outside of Arabia.

In A.H. 179, three years before the death of Abu Yusuf and twenty-nine after that of Abu Hanifa, there died at al-Madina the founder and head of an independent school of a very different type. This was Malik ibn Anas, under whose hands what we may call, for distinction, the historical school of al-Madina took form. Al-Madina, it will be remembered, was the mother-city of Muslim law. It was the special home of the traditions of the Prophet and the scene of his legislative and judicial life. Its pre-Islamic customary law had been sanctioned, in a sense, by his use. It had been the capital of the state in its purest days. From the height of all these privileges its traditionists and lawyers looked down upon the outsiders and parvenus who had begun to intermeddle in sacred things.

But it must not be thought that this school was of a rigid traditionism. The case was quite the reverse, and in many respects it is hard to make a distinction between it and that of Abu Hanifa. Its first source was, of necessity, the Qur'an. Then came the usage of the Prophet. This merged into the usage of the Successors of the Prophet and the unwritten custom of the town. It will be seen that here the historical weight of the place came to bear. No other place, no other community, could furnish that later tradition with anything like the same authority. Further, Malik ibn Anas was a practical jurist, a working judge. He was occupied in meeting real cases from day to day. When he sat in public and judged the people, or

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