2. SHARI'A

In our attempt to get acquainted with Islamic law, which constitutes one of the components of Egypt's legal system, and how it was applied in Islamic Egypt, it is necessary to examine the internal structure of the Shari'a.

Under the former division we have the Koran and the Sunna, that is the rules and the integrated legal provision. It is a self-evident fact that legal provisions are few in the Koran, and that these are governed by the following two systems:

First, the system of hudud¹ (sing, had) or standardized penalties which constitutes the Islamic penal code. According to religious scholars, it aims at safeguarding the fundamental interests of the Islamic society and upgrading them to the level of the moral interests of the community. This system involves crimes of defamation, theft, adultery, highway robbery, corruption, all of which are governed by hudud.

Second, the system of business relations which is made up of the family laws (matrimonial bonds, dissolution of marriage and the legal implications involved) in addition to certain regulations governing contracts, administration of justice and profession of faith.

As for the rational sources, they are being determined by opinions and personal reasoning. Under this general division we find diverse forms such as ijmah (consensus), qiyas (analogy) and istihsan (preponderance of opinion). Fundamentalists have called them borrowed or rational evidence, while in actual fact they are nothing but technical methods meant to develop Islamic juris prudence to suit the movement of change which involved the Islamic societies.

As for the legal application of the Shari'a in Egypt, in accordance with the principle of regionality of laws in the Abode of Islam, Islamic law was preponderant; but following its evolution and its interaction with Egyptian law and following the advent of Amr and up to the hanging of Touman Bay, it became the general law which was to apply in cases of crime and business relations with the exception of personal status for non-Moslem Egyptians.