A Source Bringing Together Children's Rights

This article examines the scholarly legacy of the medieval jurist Majd al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Ḥusayn al-Ustrūshanī, a prominent representative of the intellectual tradition of Ustrushana–an understudied scientific and cultural center of medieval Mawarannahr. Drawing on newly identified manuscript materials preserved in the Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī Institute of Oriental Studies, the study reconstructs the biography, academic genealogy, and juridical contributions of al-Ustrūshanī. Particular attention is devoted to his seminal work Jāmiʿ Aḥkām aṣ-Ṣighār (“The Code of Children’s Rights”), completed in 625/1228, which represents the earliest and most comprehensive legal source on children’s rights in Islamic law and world legal history. The discovery of the manuscript al-Asʾila wa-l-Ajwiba (completed in 637/1240) enables a revision of the scholar’s chronology, offering previously unknown information on his lifespan, teachers, and scholarly environment. The article provides a systematic analysis of al-Ustrūshanī’s extant works–Kitāb al-Fuṣūl, Jāmiʿ Aḥkām aṣ-Ṣighār, Qurrat al-ʿAynayn, al-Qurūḍ wa-d-Duyūn, and al-Asʾila wa-l-Ajwiba–highlighting their content, manuscript tradition, and influence on Hanafi jurisprudence. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that al-Ustrūshanī’s contributions attest to the advanced legal thinking of the First Renaissance in Central Asia and affirm Uzbekistan’s historical role as a cradle of early legal concepts related to child protection, family obligations, and social justice. Through a comprehensive evaluation of classical and modern sources, this research situates Ustrushana within the broader intellectual history of the Islamic world and reintroduces al-Ustrūshanī’s corpus into modern academic circulation.

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