As Islam spread beyond the desert and the conditions in which the life of Mahomet and his companions had been cast, it came to regions, climates, customs, where the Arabian usages no longer held. Not only were the prescripts of Medina ill adapted to the new conditions; the new people had legal usages of their own to which they clung and which nothing could make them abandon. It was rather the Moslem leaders who were compelled to abandon their ideas and for the sake of the spread of Islam to accept and incorporate much that was diametrically opposed to the original legislation either of the Koran or of Mahomet's recorded decisions. As in religion the faiths of the conquered peoples were thinly veneered with Moslem phrases, so in law there grew up a customary code (_`adat_) for each country, differing from every other, which often completely obscured and annulled the prescriptions of the canon law. The one was an ideal system, studied and praised by the pious learned; the other was the actual working of law in the courts. But besides the obstinate adherence of various peoples to their old paths, the will of individual rulers was a determining factor. When these ceased to be saints and students of divine things, and came to be worldly statesmen and opportunists, followers of their own objects and pleasures, no system could hold which set a limit to their authority. The Oriental ruler must rule and judge on his own initiative, and the schools of canon law tended to reduce everything to an academic fixedness. There thus arose a new and specific statute law, emanating from the sovereign. At first he judged in the gate as seemed good in his eyes and as was his right and duty (cf. "court of oppressions"; see MAHOMMEDAN INSTITUTIONS); later, his will was codified as in the Turkish statute law (_qawanin_) derived from various European codes. Thus there has grown up in almost every Moslem country at least two systems of courts, the one administering this canon law, and taking cognisance of private and family affairs, such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, its officials also giving rulings on purely personal religious questions, such as details of the ritual law, the law of oaths and vows, &c.; the other, the true law courts of the land, administering codes based on local custom and the decrees of the local rulers.