Mughal Administration c10.s4.12

c10.s4.12

The crudeness and insufficiency of the judicial system were aggravated by the fact that the only law recognised by the Emperor and his judges was the Quranic law, which had originated and grown to maturity outside India. It was supposed to have been defined once for all within the pages of the Quran as revealed to the Arabian Prophet and his Traditional Sayings (*Hadis*). But there was a wide latitude in the interpretation of the words of the Quran. And for this purpose our Indian judges turned to the known decisions of the pious Muslim kings and eminent Muslim jurists of the past, in the chief centres of Islamic thought and civilization outside India. Thus, Muslim law in India did not originate in legislation but in revelation ; it had two other sources, *viz.*, precedents or case-laws and the opinions of jurists, though both of these latter merely professed to make the meaning of the *Quran* explicit and not to add any new principle or rule to what is written in the Book of God.