In theory, at least, Islamic scholars only recognized four ‘roots’, or sources, of law: the Quran itself, little though it had to say about law; the sunna of the Prophet, or what were accepted as records of his activities; the results of reasoning by analogy; and the conclusions of an established community of scholars, on the assumption that they had correctly reasoned from established sources. Custom and practice inevitably contributed a great deal to the reasoning of both scholars and judges, but these were not officially recognized as sources of law.21 Scholars continued to develop new
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