An Evaluation of Orientalists’ View on the Origin and Entity of Islamic Jurisprudence

Islamic Jurisprudence is one of the important issues of orientalists’ researches. The process of their conclusions shows that they hold that the origin of Islamic Jurisprudence is the judicial system of Jews and the Byzantine Empire. Being the latest research on the topic, this article investigates orientalists’ studies of the Qur’anic Jurisprudence, with an analytical-critical method. According to this research, Orientalists have cited to some resemblance between Islamic Law and Jewish-Roman Law. Muslim thinkers’ answer to this theory was always that all divine religions are revelations by one god (the Almighty Allah) and therefore these similarities are natural. They also tried to show the essential differences between Islamic Law and Jewish-Roman Law.