7. Unprecedented rivalry of the European law code

The Europeans almost stole the laws of the Islamic State specifically from Spain but they did a better job in deriving provisions and bylaws to make it easy for the general populous to understand. The Muslims did not have the tradition of making Fiqh into bylaws that would make it easy for the judges and others to study and apply the law. The Muslims were only able to summarize the Fiqh into Mutun. After seeing the example of the European law code, the Muslims established the constitution of Fiqh. By the end of Ottoman Khilafah, Muslims were trying to copy and emulate the European bylaws because they were fascinated with the ones from the Europeans. Thus, they started establishing a reformation movement to the Islamic law. In preparation for the Islamic Khilafah in the Ottoman Empire, they invented the system to start using these bylaws in the courts to make it more organized. Abu Haneefah’s madhab was the official madhab of the Ottoman state, so the Fiqh was taken from this Madhab. The developed bylaws were called the Majallat al-Ahkam-Al-Adliyyah – the magazine of the Juristic code (bylaws of Islamic State). This piece of work developed gradually; by taking one section of Fiqh at a time, the fuqaha and contemporary lawyers would reform Fiqh into laws and present it to state in a well organized and coherent manner. However, due to the advent of the First World War, this work was never completed. The portion that was completed is preserved and available in libraries. Faqeeh says… Majallat al-Ahkam al-Adliyyah (Or the Just code journal) is considered a contemporary source for the Hanafi Madhab. The work itself was one of the attempts at reformation at the end of this period. The attempt was to codify Islamic law under the auspices of the Ottoman Khilafah.