Around the beginning of the 10th century, most Sunni jurists argued that all major matters of religious law had been settled, allowing for taqlid, "the established legal precedents and traditions," to take priority over ijtihad [REF].
The settling of Sunni law and increasing prominence of taqlid has at one point led most Western scholars to believe that the "gate of ijtihad" was in fact effectively closed around 900 C.E [REF].