المذاهب الخمسة
al-Madhāhib al-Khamsah
The five schools of Islamic law, each a body of method and rulings built by a founding jurist and his students.
What it means
A madhhab is a school of law, a way (from a root meaning to go) of deriving rulings from the Quran, the Sunnah and the methods of reasoning. The four Sunni schools are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali, named for Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, al-Shafii and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Lists that speak of five schools add one more to these four.
The schools agree on the main duties of the faith, such as the five daily prayers and the fast of Ramadan. They differ on details of method and on some rulings, and each school regards the others as valid readings of the law, reached by honest effort. A Muslim usually follows the school of his or her community or teacher, and many today study the views of more than one school.
Often misunderstood as
The schools are sometimes taken for rival sects, when they are legal methods within one faith that disagree on details and not on belief.
What the sources say
Jurists explained the differences as a result of ijtihād, the effort to reach a ruling where the text allows more than one reading. Medieval scholars treated that variety as a mercy for the community.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 52, listed as AL MADHĀHIB AL KHAMSAH. The definition is restated here.