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The Fakh ed Din and the Fakh esh Sheriat of Abu Hanifeh, the doctor intrusted with this duty, was a first attempt to put into reasoned form the floating tradition of the faithful, and to make a digest of existing legal practice.
The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as collected in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they hold to be inspired and unimpeachable, as are to a certain extent the theological treatises of the four great doctors of Islam, the Imams Abu Hanifeh, Malek, Esh Shafy, and Hanbal, and after them, though with less and less authority, the "fetwas," or decisions of distinguished Ulema, down to the present day.
He dared not venture his barbarian dignity in the war of wit which occupied the schools; and so fortified his unintelligence behind a rampart of dogmatic faith. Impotent to develop law himself, he clutched blindly at that which he found written to his hand. The code of Abu Hanifeh seemed to him a perfect thing, and he made it the resting place of his legal reason.
Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law; and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.
Abu Hanifeh quoted and argued rather than determined; and as long as the Arabian mind continued to be supreme in Islam the process of reasoning development continued.
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