The historical development and functions of legal maxims have not been studied within their context in contemporary scholarship. Especially in studies which examine legal maxims as a genre, this is mostly done in a bibliographical and descriptive manner. This leaves the question of why this genre has emerged in Islamic law. This study examines the legal maxims in terms of conceptual and historical development and their application. It analyses the subject from a viewpoint of cause-and-effect rather than examining it in a descriptive manner. Both handwritten manuscripts and printed legal maxims titles have been used for writing this book and the subjects are mostly examined based on primary sources.
