The fiqh resources for pre-Ottoman Turkish law and social history, despite their extraordinary abundance, have not often been the topic of academic research topic. This study focuses on the literary products - particularly a special type called vakiat (fataawa) – from a very lively period in the field of law in Bukhara and its surrounding area (Central Asia, formerly known as Mawaraannahr).

The first chapter of the work demonstrates the historical and theoretical context of a regional phenomenon which can be called “Bukhara law tradition”; the work analyzes the structure of legal education in Muslim society in the Middle Ages, the formation of the practice of law as a separate profession, and the way in which the law managed change in a large conceptual framework.

The second chapter focuses on waqf law as an area of research and analyzes the sections of over 40 works, the majority of which are manuscripts, that focus on waqfs; these works are presented diachronically and concurrently and are known as vakiat literature. This chapter follows the emergence of the waqf doctrine and its development through the Bukhara school of law to the extent the works permit.

The study presents the changes in Islamic approach to law in the last centuries by addressing a historical phenomenon; in this way it contributes to the development of our perception of fiqh.

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