Fukahâ فقهاء

Symposium22–24 October 2026

The seventh Hijri century

Istanbul · Istanbul University Faculty of Theology, University of Malaya, Sultan Qaboos University, Istanbul Mufti’s Office, Darülfünun Theology Foundation

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Iznik tiles, Rüstem Pasha Mosque, Istanbul · CC BY-SA 3.0

JuristḤanafī · d. 370/980-81

أبو بكر الرازي الجصاص

Abu Bakr Ahmad b. 'Ali al-Razi al-Jassas

The leading Hanafi of his age who followed al-Karkhi's asceticism and took over teaching in Baghdad; he twice refused a judgeship. Ahkam al-Qur'an is his best-known work.

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The Ulugh Beg Madrasa, Samarkand, 823/1420 · CC0

News25 September 2026

Every jurist now has a page of his own

Pages for all 525 jurists bring together their works, teachers, students, the theses written about them and al-Laknawī’s Arabic entry.

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The Persian Sea, from a copy of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s Masālik al-mamālik · Public domain

News25 September 2026

Fukahâ is live

The first version of the guide is online, with trilingual, sortable tables of classical works, jurists and theses.

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The Registan and its madrasas, Samarkand · CC0

JuristḤanafī · d. 490/1096-97

شمس الأئمة السرخسي

Shams al-A'imma Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Sarakhsi

A student of al-Hulwani and mujtahid on particular questions; imprisoned in a well at Uzjand for counselling the Khaqan, he dictated the fifteen-volume al-Mabsut from memory while his students wrote above.

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The Mustanṣiriyya Madrasa, Baghdad, 631/1234 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The jurists, their works, and what has been written about them

Search the jurists of al-Laknawī’s al-Fawāʾid al-bahiyya, the works they wrote, and the theses on Islamic law written in Turkey, with full bibliographic records.

Announcements & News

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Jurists

The lives of the jurists come from two biographical dictionaries. Every jurist has a page of their own, and every entry keeps its source text.

al-Jawāhir al-muḍiyya

The biographies of Hanafi jurists in Ibn Abi al-Wafa al-Qurashi’s (d. 775/1373) al-Jawahir al-mudiyya, entry by entry.

Jurist of the day

A different jurist every day. Come back tomorrow.

صدر الشريعة عبيد الله بن مسعود

Sadr al-Shari'a al-Asghar 'Ubayd Allah b. Mas'ud al-Mahbubi

Ḥanafī d. 747/1346-47 · Bukhara

He studied with his grandfather Taj al-Shari'a and wrote the best commentary on al-Wiqaya, as well as al-Tanqih and its commentary al-Tawdih; al-Laknawi here untangles long-standing confusion over the Mahbubi genealogy.

8 works

The jurist’s page

The jurists across the centuries

The Hijri century in which 359 jurists died. Click a column to list that century’s jurists.

  1. 11 2nd c.
  2. 32 3rd c.
  3. 36 4th c.
  4. 40 5th c.
  5. 56 6th c.
  6. 58 7th c.
  7. 65 8th c.
  8. 32 9th c.
  9. 29 10th c.

166 jurists whose date of death the source does not give are left out.

Cities where most jurists died

Fukahâ in numbers

Research tools

The cities where the jurists lived are on a map, and the ties between teachers and students can be explored as a network along a timeline.

Map

Where al-Laknawī’s jurists were born, studied, taught, served as judges and died.

Network

The teacher and student ties among the jurists. Point at a name to see from whom he learned and whom he trained.

Recently added theses

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The theses most recently entered in YÖK. Click a cover to open its YÖK record.

Theses by year

Theses on Islamic law entered in YÖK since 1970; 2,204 of them are doctoral.

The busiest year was 2019, with 867 theses. The chart starts in 1990; 82 theses are older.

Universities with the most theses

  1. Marmara Üniversitesi974
  2. İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim Üniversitesi574
  3. İstanbul Üniversitesi510
  4. Ankara Üniversitesi330
  5. Sakarya Üniversitesi326
  6. Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi306
  7. Atatürk Üniversitesi302
  8. Selçuk Üniversitesi267

By topic

From the jurists

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The four jurists most often studied in theses.

Blog

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Notes on how the collections are compiled and how the sources are transcribed.