Thus legal-minded
Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with
a legal bar, the want of authority. _As things stand_ there is no remedy
for this.
An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned,
that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the
Caliphate of what is called by them the _Saut el Hai_, the living voice
of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of
the Abbaside dynasty by Holagu, belonged to the successors of the
Prophet. It is certain that in the first four reigns of Abu Bekr, Omar,
Othman, and Ali, such a living power to legislate was accorded to the
Caliphs; and that on their own authority they modified at will the yet
unwritten law.
Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law
called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran,
declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again
reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the
Sunites. 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.
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