Abstract:

In this article, I studied the characteristics, types, and titles of fiqh works written in the Ayyubid-Mamluk period with special reference to the scientific mindset of the period. Firstly I found 464 scholars who had written at least one fiqh work with the condition that they had lived and died in Egypt, Biladush-Sham or Hijaz in the Ayyubid-Mamluk period. Secondly I identified the fiqh works of these scholars (whether they existed today or not), and found around 1750 titles. Then I classified and analyzed them, setting the general inclinations and characteristics of the fiqh writing in that period. Additionally I made general, macrolevel comparisons between the mentioned period and other periods of Islamic history. Against the thesis and historical narrative seeing this period as a period of decline and imitation, I claim that the richness of fiqh literature, the rise of new types and existence of assertive fiqh scholars and works draw a very different picture. So the history of legal thought and practice of this period deserves to be researched and rewritten.

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