The Impact of Jurists and Scholars on the Abbasid-Era (730-1258 A.D.) Koranic Scholarship: Craftsmen and Professionals as Models

Abstract

Crafts and professions are as old as human’s development and progress in many areas and aspects. These opportunities have long provided men with the material as well as the mental needs necessary for everyone’s prosperity and living. In the medieval Arab and Muslim world, especially in the Abbasid era times, religious knowledge has contributed to the public development and progress. Many jurists and scholars, therefore, have moved to manual and non-intellectual professions and crafts. This paper, accordingly, draws on this turn in the lives of those scholars, how this professional shift has contributed to scientific knowledge, and who were the key figures in that transformation. There had been many cases of Abbasid-era scholars and jurists who moved to lay professions and crafts, which will be detailed in this paper.