After the Prophet, the Companions settled in different parts of the vast Islamic empire. Here they were confronted with new problems, and they had no option but to exercise their personal judgement. The Prophet was no longer amidst them to turn to him for the solution of these problems. Therefore whenever any problem arose they first consulted the Quran and Hadith and only if they failed to find the solution there, they resorted, to the exercise of their personal judgement, while observing fully the spirit of the Quran and Hadith. It was at this stage when the exercise of reason was done to deduce a law, that the term fiqh came to be frequently used for this endeavour. Towards the end of the seventh century a movement of collecting Hadith started. Large number of people devoted their entire lives to collect and record the teachings of the Prophet. There was another group of people who were interested only in those teachings from which some legal rule could be deduced. For this purpose they resorted to the exercise of reason and personal judgement. This knowledge came to be known as fiqh and those who were involved in this task came to be known as fuqaha. During the age of successors the Arabs settled in different parts of the vast Muslim empire. Consequently they came into contact with different cultures and civilizations—confronting with problems they had never faced before. In their endeavour to solve these problems they made great advances in various fields of learning. Islamic law developed and towards the middle of the ninth century books began to be written exclusively on fiqh.