Bingöl Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahā is a literary genre which tells about the biographies of Islamic jurists by grouping them into various categories. The main aim of this genre is to find out the jurists known for their contributions to sect accumulation, their introduction and giving information about their views. Establishing the levels of ijtihad and determining the hierarchy to be taken into account in preferences make the other aims of these works. The fact that tabaqāt type works where the biographies of the mentioned jurists are expressed with regard to a certain sect is accepted as one of the most important indicators of sectarianization of a fiqh understanding. It is recorded that tabaqāt authorship, whose subjects were the biographies of shafi’î jurists, started with Abû Hafs al-Mutawwiī in V century and continued with Abu’l-Tayyib al-Ṭabarī. After the tabaqāt of Abu Âsim al-Abbâdî accepted as the oldest example of this literature reaching today, the authorship of tabaqāt was maintained by Abu Ishaq al-Shirazī, Ibn al-Salâh and al-Nawawī. These compilations, which pioneered the development of shafi’i tabaqāt, were complementary to each other; and the biographies were generally kept short. In addition, the biographies written in this process, which continued until hegira VII century, made resources for the maturity period of shafi’i tabaqāt authorship that reached the most excellent stage together with Taj al-Din al-Subkī. The investigation of the tradition of tabaqāt in shafi’i sect allows more appropriate and healthy readings on the historical memory of the sect. In this study, the historical process of shafi’i tabaqāt authorship was investigated in the axis of prominent shafi’i tabaqāt works by considering that understanding the stages, which shafi’i jurisprudence have recorded so far, is some way related to tabaqāt works