religious commands or prohibitions, as congenial or obnoxious to the law or as matters legally indifferent and therefore permissible.  The arrangement of the work of daily life in correspondence with these religious points of view is the most important outcome of the Muhammedan doctrine of duties.  The religious utterances which also cover the whole business of life were first made duties by this doctrine:  in practice their fulfilment is impossible, but the theory of their obligatory nature is a fundamental element in Muhammedanism.

Where the doctrine of duties deals with legal rights, its application was in practice confined to marriage and the affairs of family life:  the theoretical demands of its penal clauses, for instance, raise impossible difficulties.  At the same time, it has been of great importance to the whole spiritual life of Islam down to the present day, because it reflects Muhammedan ideals of life and of man’s place in the world.  Even to-day it remains the daily bread of the soul that desires instruction, to quote the words of the greatest father of the Muhammedan church.  It will thus be immediately obvious to what a vast extent Christian theory of the seventh and eighth centuries still remains operative upon Muhammedan thought throughout the world.

Considerable parts of the doctrine of duties are concerned with the forms of Muhammedan worship.  It is becoming ever clearer that only slight tendencies to a form of worship were apparent under Muhammed.  The mosque, the building erected for the special purpose of divine service, was unknown during the prophet’s lifetime; nor was there any definite church organisation, of which the most important parts are the common ritual and the preaching.  Tendencies existed but no system, was to be found:  there was no clerical class to take an interest in the development of an order of divine service.  The Caliphs prayed before the faithful in the capital, as did the governors in the provinces.  The military commanders also led a simple service in their own stations.

It was contact with foreign influence which first provided the impulse to a systematic form of worship.  Both Christians and Jews possessed such forms.  Their example was followed and a ritual was evolved, at first of the very simplest kind.  No detailed organisation, however, was attempted, until Christian influence led to the formation of the class which naturally took an interest in the matter, the professional theologians.  These soon replaced the military service leaders.  This change denoted the final stage in the development of ritual.  The object of the theologians was to subject the various occupations of life to ritual as well as to religion.  The mediatorial or sacramental theories of the priestly office were unknown to Islam, but ritual customs of similar character were gradually evolved, and are especially pronounced in the ceremonies of marriage and burial.