Islamic Legal Genres – Marion Katz
Posted on January 02, 2022
On October 27, 2021, Marion Katz (New York University) presented “Form, Function and Historical Development of the ṭabaqāt al-fuqaha literature.” Katz’ talk was composed of three sections: a review of scholarship on ṭabaqāt, followed by the objectives of legal biographies, and finally a discussion of whether or not ṭabaqāt constitute a single coherent genre. Professor Katz argues that to understand ṭabaqāt, we must study the variety of purposes these biographies served throughout history, thereby understanding that ṭabaqāt did not form a uniform genre in and of themselves.