This chapter is devoted to the context in which the Persian opinions of the ‘āqila developed and preserved. It points to eastern Iran, mainly the towns of Balkh, Bukhara, and Samarqand, as the origin of hundreds of legal opinions that deviated from Ḥanafī standard law, in response to particular conditions experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the Persian lands. These opinions form a rich repository from which Ḥanafī law drew legal material. The chapter offers a survey of the legal literature in which these opinions were preserved, and by which they were handed down, until finally incorporated into the Shar‘ia.

This chapter shows how the Persian Ḥanafīs in Khurasan and Transoxania in the ninth and tenth centuries AD developed their own opinions about the composition of the ‘āqila, questioning the hegemony of the standard Ḥanafī law, which developed in Iraq. Three unique Persian opinions, which seem to reflect the reality of life in eastern Iran, are presented. The first one extends the ‘āqila beyond the military dīwān, claiming that the dīwān whose members serve as an ‘āqila may also be a civilian institution, whose members receive regular remuneration. According to the second opinion, the ‘āqila of those who do not receive a salary from the government is not necessarily their tribesmen, as ruled the Iraqī Ḥanafīs, but can be any solidarity group, such as the residents of the same quarter, or men of the same occupation. The third opinion rejects the ‘āqila, contending that this institution does not exist among Persian Muslims, because the structure of their society does not allow for solidarity groups.