Writing and Reproduction of Jurisprudential Books in the First Safavid Period in Iran According to the Manuscripts of Iranian Libraries

The main issue of this research is to investigate the frequency of reproduction of jurisprudential books in the first Safavid period. After reviewing the jurisprudence manuscripts written during the Safavid period, it is possible to understand the increasing growth and development of Imami jurisprudence in this period and the continuation of this upward trend in the following periods. In this research, the author intends to study the growing trend in the Safavid era by examining and counting the manuscripts reproduced in this period, and by separating the jurisprudential versions written in the Safavid period, to examine the growth of the production of jurisprudential works in the Safavid period.
This research is done by content analysis method. Due to the breadth of the subject, the thematic scope of this research is the jurisprudential books copied in the first Safavid period, from the beginning to the era of Shah Abbas I (from 907 to 1038 AH).
Findings indicate that out of 554 jurisprudential books and treatises produced in the first Safavid period, 38.3 percent of those works have been written with book structure and 61.7 percent of the works have been written in the form of treatises. Among the 212 jurisprudential books produced in this period, 45 are independent books and 167 are non-independent books (in the descriptions and margins of other books). Some of these books (84 titles in total) are only written by the jurists of this period and the written versions of these titles have been seen in later periods and some (128 titles in total) also have copies written in this period. The most widely used jurisprudential books in this period are: the works of Shahid Thani, Mohaghegh Karki, Sheikh Baha'i and Moqaddas Ardabili, which have the highest frequency in reproduction.
Considering that the jurisprudential works of the mentioned scholars are comprehensive jurisprudential and reasoning books, therefore it can be concluded that the frequency of copying these works, in a very high volume in this period, is mainly to meet the need of teaching resources in Shiite schools in the cities. The important and great Iran was established in this period. And it turns out that these works were among the main sources of jurisprudence in Shia schools and valid jurisprudential references and sources for other jurists to refer to them for scientific discussions and deriving jurisprudential fatwas needed by the society in response to new and emerging jurisprudential issues.