Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word sharia originally meant the path to a water hole in the arid deserts of pre-Islamic Arabia. This ancient linguistic root derived from the Arabic root letters sh-r-ayn evokes the desperate need for water in a harsh environment. The Quran adopted this imagery to describe the divine law as the only true path to salvation.
The classical theory of Islamic law crystallized around four distinct sources by the ninth century. These sources include the Quran, the Sunnah, ijma, and qiyas. This framework defined legal reasoning for over a millennium.
The four major Sunni schools of law were founded by Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. These schools emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries. Each school developed its own methodology for deriving rulings from the scriptural sources.
The pre-modern Islamic world featured the qadi's court, the mazalim court, police courts run by the shurta, and the office of the muhtasib. The qadi's court handled civil and criminal cases while the mazalim court addressed wrongs that Sharia courts could not. The police courts had powers to inflict discretionary punishments.
Sharia categorizes crimes into hudud, qisas, and tazir. Hudud applies to punishments for crimes like murder and theft with fixed penalties. Qisas involves retaliation in kind or blood money for homicide. Tazir refers to offenses where the punishment is at the discretion of the state or a qadi.
Modern debates regarding sharia involve fundamentalists advocating for complete implementation and modernists arguing for alignment with human rights. The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought calls for full implementation including hudud corporal punishments. Contemporary scholars seek to adapt classical jurisprudence to the challenges of the modern world.