Ijtihad does not mean forming opinions arbitrarily. Rather, it involves reflecting and pondering on the Quran and the Sunnah (the authentic sources of Islam) and deriving new Shariah rules through qiyas (analogy) or istimbat (deductive inference). In essence, ijtihad is also a type of taqlid. While an ordinary muqallid (one who engages in taqlid) follows the opinions of the fuqaha (Muslim jurisprudents), the mujtahid (one who engages in ijtihad) follows the guidance of God and the Prophet by directly reflecting on the Quran and Hadith, deriving rules by inference.
The term ijtihad refers to the same intellectual process described as istimbat (inference) in the Quran (4:83). In the terminology of the fuqaha, this process is also known as qiyas.
The Quranic commentator Al-Qurtubi wrote: “Istimbat in the Arabic language means istikhraj, and it indicates ijtihad when texts and consensus are absent” (Al-Jami’ li Ahkam al-Quran, Vol. 5, p. 292). This means that istimbat refers to deriving Shariah rulings through ijtihad in the absence of clear texts (nass) and consensus (ijma).
In the second century of the Hijra, Muslim jurists undertook this work of ijtihad. During the Abbasid Caliphate, many new issues arose that did not have direct or mansus (text-based) answers in the Quran and Sunnah. At that time, jurists solved these issues through ijtihad, deriving Shariah rulings for new circumstances through qiyas (analogy) or istimbat from the texts of the Quran and Sunnah. This effort ensured that the Muslim community continued to receive Shariah guidance for evolving circumstances, allowing their historical journey to proceed without interruption.
However, after the second and third centuries of the Hijra, a misconception arose among Muslims for various reasons. This misconception was that the ijtihad or istimbat required to be done directly from the Quran and Sunnah had been fully accomplished by the early jurists. It was believed that there was no longer a need to derive rulings directly from the primary sources of Islam. Instead, the task for later Muslims was to study the works of these early jurists, contemplate them, and derive Shariah rulings for later times.
As a result, in the intellectual history of Islam, the jurists of the Abbasid period were given the status of absolute mujtahids, while the jurists of the later period were considered restricted mujtahids. The ijtihad of the early jurists was based on the Quran and Sunnah, whereas for later scholars, ijtihad meant staying within the confines of the early jurists’ interpretations to derive rulings.
