In the Maghreb, there was a kind of rehashing of secondary issues in jurisprudence, and the focus shifted to mere engagement with it through explanation and summarization. This led to a departure from the spirit of ijtihad (independent reasoning) and discovery. This, in turn, resulted in later scholars imitating earlier ones, applying old rulings issued by a past scholar to new situations whose circumstances might have changed from those of the old situations.

This situation was a cause for complaint from some of the prominent scholars of the time, including Abu Bakr Ibn al-Arabi, who, describing the jurists of Al-Andalus, said: "Then events occurred that they did not find in the texts of the Malikis, so they considered them, and the later ones followed the earlier ones in this. Until the situation reached a point where they looked at the opinion of Malik and the great companions without knowledge. And it was said: 'The people of Cordoba, the people of Talmanca, the people of Tolbira, and the people of Toledo have said about this issue.' So they moved from the city and its jurists to Tolbira and its path."

This illustrates a narrowness in imitation, where scholars went beyond the principles of Sharia to the considerations of the founders of the school themselves, content with what was transmitted from their distant followers' opinions.

Philosophical Thought: The Maghrebi environment was not a cradle for philosophical thought before the fifth century. Rather, it adopted an attitude of rejection and resistance towards it, to the point where it became devoid of this type of thought. The attempt made in Al-Andalus by Prince Al-Hakam Al-Mustansir Billah, son of Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir (d. 366 AH / 976 CE), to bring in treatises and works on philosophical sciences (sciences of the ancients), and to spread them and the knowledge within them, failed. After him, his son Hisham Al-Mu'ayyad Billah (d. 399 AH / 1008 CE) took over, dispersed those writings, and ordered their destruction. He did this to endear himself to the common people, as these sciences were abandoned by their predecessors and condemned by their leaders. Anyone who read them was suspected of apostasy and accused of heresy in the Sharia.

Islamic Sects in North Africa: See Al-Fard, Vol. 1, p. 154. Al-Awāsim min al-Qawāsim by Ibn al-Arabi, p. 155. He also spoke about this in Al-I'tisam by Al-Shatibi, p. 348. Tabaqat al-Umam by Sa'id al-Andalusi, p. 53.