Madhhab as an Epistemic-Institutional System: A Literature Review of The History of Islamic Legal Thought and Ijtihad Methodology

Abstract

Studies on Islamic legal schools are often narrowly understood as differences among juristic opinions or as normative identities of the four major madhhabs. In fact, madhhabs emerged through complex historical, methodological, and institutional processes. This study aims to analyze research trends, dominant themes, methodological tendencies, and the transformation of authority in the literature on the history of Islamic legal thought and the ijtihad methods of madhhab imams. This study employs a systematic literature review approach based on narrative-thematic synthesis of 30 selected articles, identified through stages of record identification, deduplication, screening, and eligibility assessment using inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings show that the literature is dominated by themes of Usul Fiqh and legal derivation methodology, the historical formation of madhhabs, al-Shafi‘i’s qiyas, later madhhab theorists, as well as taqlid, tarjih, and non-dominant legal schools. The main finding confirms that a madhhab is not merely a collection of legal doctrines, but an epistemic-institutional system that produces, validates, selects, and reproduces legal authority through ijtihad methods, textual transmission, scholarly networks, and educational-legal institutions. This article implies the need for a more historical, comparative, and institutional reading of madhhabs, tarjih-takhrij practices, and classical and contemporary networks of legal knowledge transmission.