Islamic Law and its Origins

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins and early development of Islamic law. The legal code of Islam is known as Sharia, an Arabic word meaning “the way”. Its sources include the Islamic holy book the Qur’an, the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad, and the opinions of legal scholars. In the 7th century, Sharia started to replace the tribal laws of pre-Islamic Arabia; over the next three hundred years it underwent considerable evolution as Islam spread. By 900 a body of religious and legal scholarship recognisable as classical Sharia had emerged.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Hugh Kennedy 11 episodes
  Professor of Arabic in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London
• Robert Gleave 4 episodes
  Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter
• Mona Siddiqui 2 episodes
  Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Glasgow

Related episodes

• The Arab Conquests
  
  26 Jun, 2008 900 History
• Maths in the Early Islamic World
  
  16 Feb, 2017 510 Mathematics
• The Abbasid Caliphs
  
  2 Feb, 2006 950 History of Asia
• Sunni and Shia Islam
  
  25 Jun, 2009 290 Other religions
• Al-Ghazali
  
  19 Mar, 2015 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Translation Movement
  
  2 Oct, 2008 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Al-Kindi
  
  28 Jun, 2012 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Muslim Spain
  
  21 Nov, 2002 940 History of Europe
• Chinese Legalism
  
  10 Dec, 2015 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Spanish Inquisition
  
  22 Jun, 2006 270 History of Christianity

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b010t69b

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010t69b

Auto-category: 340.59 (Islamic law)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In the early 7th century, a new religion emerged in the Arabian Peninsula.