Why and What Did Legal Scholars Write in Medieval Islamic Societies?

Abstract

Maribel Fierro’s motivating question is “[w]hy books dealing with specific subjects were written at specific times and in specific contexts.” Relying on a dataset compiled by Historia de los Autores y Transmisores de al-Andalus (HATA), a project she directs that aims to map the intellectual production of al-Andalus, the author observes that the majority of scholarship produced by Andalusi scholars were fiqh and poetry texts. The former, she argues, is likely explained by the professional opportunities enabled by engaging in the study of fiqh at the time compared to other genres. What makes such research possible is the breadth of the dataset, in no small way thanks to the collegial sense of some of the scholars during the Andalusi era, exemplified by the case of Ibn al-Ṭallāʿ(d. 497/1104) whose Kitāb aqḍiyat rasūl Allāh lists thirty-four of the sources he relied on.