ʿULAMĀʾ ("the learned"), the religious scholars of Islam, are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of its sciences, doctrines, and laws and the chief guarantors of continuity in the spiritual and intellectual history of the Islamic community. The term is a generic one and embraces all who have cultivated the religious disciplines or fulfilled certain practical functions such as judgeship. [See figure 1 for individual titles given to ʿulamāʾ.]

It is an axiom that the scholars are the heirs of the prophets; the emergence of the ʿulamāʾ as a distinct group had, therefore, to await the passing of the prophet Muḥammad and the completion of revelation. However, the Qurʾān itself indicates the necessity and excellence of a learned class, quite apart from extolling, in numerous verses, the virtue of knowledge (ʾilm). The word ʿulamāʾ appears in sūrah...