 The village mullah was the natural arbiter in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and the exalted jurisconsult, in order to carry out the very function for which he was exalted, gave opinions on those matters of law on which he was consulted.In between the village mullah and the jurisconsult there were mullahs with courts which, while sometimes sanctioned by the royal government, depended for their power on the prestige of the presiding mullah judge as much or more than on the government's sanction
Since the sixteenth century AD Iran has been the only country in the world having Shi'ah Islam as its official religion, consequently the general principles of its legal system differed somewhat from those of other countries which followed Islamic law.Among the ways, law in Iran and the rest of the Muslim world differed from European law was in its lack of a single law code.