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Originally Posted by shek
Sparten,
I'm familiar with most of the above. The book that I have read on the history of Islamic Law (N.J. Coulson "A History of Islamic Law") didn't dispute the fact that the Sunni medhab maintain the double inheritance rule and instead focused on the mind numbing examples that you gave above - I didn't take much from those, as reading it at 9 PM on the Metro isn't the best environment for tackling complex fractional math word problems  Which schools outside of the Jafari diverge from the double inheritance rule and what hadith do they use for that, or is it because the will can be made to whomever? |
Sir,
The Qur'an does not say much as it is on inheritance, except that it is supposed to be equitable. That is the starting point.
Now the Hanfi schools law of inheritance is as you apparently know full well, very complicated, but the basic proposition is something like this
If a man dies leaving behind a wife and two children, a son and a daughter than the division of lthe estate is something like, 50 % son, 30% Daughter 20% wife, with the wife usually retaining a right to occupy her marital home till death.
If the daughter is unmarried, then depending on her age, and size of the estate the share is different, usually at the expense of the son.
Now to understand the reasoning for thr above, you need an understanding of hanfi property law. In it a mans property is not regarded as his absolutly, depending on circumstance, others may well have rights over them. A womens property is regareded as hers alone. Reasoning for that is the maintainece duty set out in the Quran and Hadith.
So Hanfi was of the opinion that since the sons property will be bound by encumberences and the daughter will inherit from (and has rights to)her husband's estates as well while the son will not inherit from his wife, so it was fair that the son gets a larger share.
IMO, he only made it complocated as hell.
The other schools divert from it as well. Hanbal does (but the man changed his mind several times, so its not really known what he believed) Maliks division can bring such a result but can also bring the opposite as well.