Fiqh

A wife of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), daughter of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, and the most prolific woman transmitter of hadith in Islam. The Prophet died in her apartment. She taught and issued legal rulings in Medina for more than four decades after him.

The Five Pillars of Islam are the five obligatory acts of Muslim practice: the shahada, the five daily prayers, the zakat, the fast of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those able to make it. They are named together in the Hadith of Gabriel.

Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man ibn Thabit (699–767 CE) founded the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, the most widely followed legal tradition in the Muslim world. A silk merchant turned scholar, he developed a method balancing scripture with reason, and died in Abbasid imprisonment.

Malik ibn Anas (711–795 CE) was the Imam of Medina and founder of the Maliki school of jurisprudence. His Al-Muwatta was the first systematic work joining hadith with legal reasoning, and his idea of the living practice of Medina as a source of law was a distinctive contribution.

The madhabs, the schools of Islamic law that developed methods for deriving rulings from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Four Sunni schools and the Shi'a traditions have guided Muslim practice for over a millennium; they are schools of method, not sects.

Sharia is the comprehensive legal and moral framework of Islam, derived from the Quran and Sunnah. It encompasses ethics, spirituality, and social justice, aiming to promote human welfare and establish a just society based on divine guidance.