Shigabutdin Marjani: Thinker, Historian, Jurist

Abstract

The author considers the views of Shigabutdin Marjani and his research on a number of issues of state and legal nature. Vafiyat al-Aslaf, Mustafad al-Akhbar, al-Hikma al-Baliga are the most significant works by Sh. Marjani devoted to various problems of Islamic law. The research into Marjani’s contribution to Islamic jurisprudence is one of the topical issues of religious studies since it allows to consolidate the knowledge about the formation and development of Turkic-Tatar law. Marjani, in fact, identified three independent directions in the Turkic-Tatar jurisprudence – the history of political and legal teachings of the East, the history of the national statehood of the Tatars and the problems of the theory of Islamic law and the state. Thus, the scholar determined the development of the Tatar state-legal thought for many decades to come. The article attempts to study each of these areas separately. The study is based on logical-legal, comparative-legal and historical-legal research methods. The paper emphasizes the need for a high-quality translation of all works by Sh. Marjani into the Tatar and Russian languages, as well as uniting them into a single collection of works.