Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

Each madhhab conquered its own territory over time. The Hanafi school proliferated among the Turks of Central Asia, becoming dominant in India and later in the Ottoman Empire when Turkic Muslim dynasties established themselves in those climes. The Shafi‘i school, based in Egypt and Yemen, spread through Indian Ocean trade to Southeast Asia, where it is the monopoly madhhab until today. The Maliki school spread with Malik’s students from North Africa to the west, becoming the exclusive madhhab from Andalusia to West Africa and even east to the Sudan. The Hanbali school was predominant in Baghdad through the fourteenth century, but otherwise it simmered only among scholarly circles in Jerusalem and, when the Crusaders drove many of its ulama to flight, in certain districts of Damascus.