IX asrning birinchi yarmida Abbosiylar xalifaligi fuqarolarining aksariyati nasroniylar, yahudiylar, zardushtiylar yoki hatto butparastlar edi. Musulmon hukmron ozchilik deyarli har qadamda o'zga hayot tarzlari va tafakkurlarining tahdidi yoki jozibasiga duch kelardi, bu tarzlar yer, tarix va urf-odatlarga chuqur ildiz otgan edi. Shuning uchun ular ko'pincha o'zlarini qamalda his qilar yoki vasvasaga berilib qolardilar: bu qo'shnining uyiga taklif shaklida, tasodifiy romantik yoki jinsiy aloqa shaklida, yoki musulmon bo'lmagan ota-onani dafn etish zarurati shaklida kelishi mumkin edi. Har holda, kundalik xulq-atvor haqida batafsil ko'rsatmaga ehtiyoj bor edi. Yo'l-yo'riq Qur'ondan izlanishi mumkin edi, ammo uning ko'p qismi noaniq yoki aytilmagan edi. Shu bo'shliqni to'ldirish uchun Payg'ambar ﷺning so'zlari va ishlari haqidagi rivoyatlar (hadislar) ko'paydi. Taniqli huquqshunos mutafakkir al-Shofiʿiy (vafoti 204 hijriy / 820 milodiy) o'zining tarixiy ahamiyatga ega "Huquq nazariyasi haqida risola" asarida hadislarning nufuzini qat'iy himoya qilgan (bu asar yaqinda Arab adabiyoti kutubxonasi uchun tarjima qilingan).

During the first half of the ninth century, most of the Abbasid Caliphate’s subjects were Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians or even pagans. The ruling minority of Muslims faced, at almost every turn, the threat—or allure—of other ways of life and thought, deeply rooted in landscape, history and custom. No wonder they often felt embattled, or succumbed to temptation: it might come in the form of an invitation to a neighbor’s house, a casual romantic or sexual encounter, or the need to bury a non-Muslim parent. There was, in any event, a need for detailed instruction about everyday deportment. Guidance might be sought in the Qurʾan, but much in it was ambiguous or left unsaid. Traditions about the Prophet’s sayings and doings (hadiths) proliferated to fill the gap. The eminent legal thinker, al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204 H/820AD), strongly advocated the authority of hadiths in his epoch-making Epistle on Legal Theory (recently translated for the Library of Arabic Literature).