A leading figure among the Hanafi scholars in late-Mamluk Cairo, Muhyiddin el-Kafiyaji (d. 879/1474) claimed to have founded a new discipline that focused on the individual’s relationship with his/her legal madhhab. Examining Kafiyaji’s science of madhhab, this article first tries to reconstruct the historical context of his project.

This article examines the intellectual position Ikhtiyar b. Ghiyath al-din (d. 1521/22) developed in his Asâs al-Iqtibâs, an insha work written in the Timurid capital Herat at the end of the fifteenth century. Throughout the fifteenth century Iran and Central Asia witnessed a series of intellectual clashes sustained by the Hurufiyya, messianic movements, walaya based Sufi trends, pro-Alid currents countered by certain reactionary responses. A series of debates revolving around the status of philosophy, theology and logic exacerbated these intellectual clashes.

Ibn Khaldun, one of the classical Muslim thinkers who received the greatest interest in modern times, is also the one with the most disagreement about his thought. The most important reason for this diversity is that his social and political thought developed in the Muqaddima was neither a continuation of a previous disciplinary tradition nor became a point of departure for the generation of a new tradition after it. As a matter of fact, according to an approach that is very famous especially in the West and still finds supporters, Ibn Khaldun has a “modern,” “scientific” and “secular” mind that cannot be attached to the medieval order or Islamic cultural environment.

Up until Kant’s critical philosophy, it was not easy to speak of the “world” itself as distinct from “nature”. After Kant, the world began to be considered from a historical perspective. Therefore, the world came to be considered as historical rather than natural, which is why it is possible to speak of different worlds in the history of thought.

In this article, I study the biography and tafsir works of Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 150/767), one of the most prominent scholars in the history of Qur’an commentary. I also trace the influence and circulation of his tafsir books, which form the very early examples of their kinds, in the classical period.