The PhD thesis is the first comprehensive study of Shiite Islamic law in the domestic doctrine of comparative law. The study of Shiite Islamic law is necessary to understand its content and features, as it works as a «Personal Status Law» for millions of people. Currently, the boundaries between classical legal systems are so blurred that even leading experts in the field of comparative studies note that the formulation of a «perfect framework» for the world's legal systems is virtually impossible. Therefore, research in the field of «mixed» legal systems, in which the legal elements of different systems are used, is becoming relevant. Thus, the study of Islamic law becomes even more relevant, as there is a need not only for competent knowledge of Islamic law but also the possibility of its integration with other legal systems. The paper explores the following options for integration on the example of modern states with a Shiite population (Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, others). Also, the provisions and theoretical developments developed in the dissertation can be applied in further research of Islamic law, a compilation of educational material and teaching such disciplines as «comparative law», «philosophy of law», «theory of law» and «history of the law of foreign countries».
The dissertation studies and analyses the history of the development of Islamic law. The history of Shia legal doctrine should be considered in conjunction with an analysis of the history of Sunni Islamic law, as the Jafari jurists put their madhhab in opposition to the Sunni ones, and the Zaydi jurists borrowed many elements from the Sunni madhhabs. The main source of Islamic law is Allah, and we can learn about His will from the Quran and Sunnah. The Sunnah in the Shia doctrine is interpreted more broadly than in the Sunni, so for the latter, the Quran and the Sunnah were «formed» after the death of the Prophet, so for them it remained only to systematize the hadiths. At the same time, for Twelver Shiites contact with the sinless ceased only with the occultation of the twelfth Imam, so hadiths from imams continued to appear in the Jafari school for almost 300 years after the Prophet's death, and Sunnah as a source of law continued to form. Therefore, the need to form derivative sources of law in Shiism arose later than in Sunnism. The history of the struggle between the doctrines of Ahl al-hadith and Ahl ar-Ra'y and the emergence of the first legal schools, which we called «protomadhhabs» (since it was from them that the main modern madhhabs were later formed), have been studied. The following periodization of the development of the Jafari madhhab is proposed:
1) era of the infallible (from VII to IX–X centuries) – all Shiites in religious matters did taqlid (followed the decrees) of the Prophet and the Imams, who were infallible messengers of God's will;
2) period of hadiths or era of the «four books» (X–XI centuries) – the creation of fundamental Shiite collections of hadiths, the activities of the jurists were reduced exclusively to the collection of hadiths without commenting on them;
3) period of the beginning of the doctrinal development of the Shiite law school (XI–XII centuries) – the activities of Shaykh Mufid, Shaykh Tusi and others to develop the first rational methods of deriving norms from the original sources of the Quran and Sunnah;
4) period of development of ijtihad methods (XIII–XVI centuries) – the activities of representatives of the school of Hillah (the most famous Muhaqqiq Hilli, Allamah Hilli), marks the inclusion of the term «ijtihad» in Shiite legal doctrine and its development;
5) period of confrontation or «Akhbaris century» (XVII century) – the emergence of Akhbari direction and the period of its heyday; only the Quran and hadiths were considered sources of law, so Shiite jurists were mainly engaged in compiling collections of hadiths;
6) era of ijtihad and its heyday (from the XVIII century) – the activities of Vahid Behbahani and Murtada Ansari, thanks to which Usuli became the victors in the discussion with the Akhbaris; development and improvement of ijtihad methods. A separate sub period is the development of Shiite Islamic law in Iran (after 1979), which is characterized by the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the emergence of state implementation of Shiite law.
This periodization is the first in domestic legal science, and in comparison with foreign ones, it is not complicated by a large number of periods (some of them contained 9–10 stages).
