The principal goal of such works "is to offer to the reader a moral portrait and information on the noble actions of the individuals who constitute their subject or on the superior merits of a certain group".
[1] The earliest texts labelled as manāqib have generally not survived, and their existence is known only from bibliographic lists made by medieval scholars.
[1] From the 4th A.H. / 10th A.D. century onwards, manāqib were produced focusing on biographies of the imams (madhāhib) who founded different schools of Islamic thought (madhhab) about shariʿa, primarily: Abū Ḥanīfa (d. ca.
[1] From this time too, however, manāqib were increasingly produced in praise of people who achieved the status of saints in some varieties of Islam, distinguished particularly by their (supposed) miracles.
This trend pertained particularly to the Maghrib, with key subjects of manāqib including: Abū Yazīd (d. 336/947), al-Rabīʿ ibn al-Qaṭṭān (d. 334/946), al-Mammasī (d. 333/944), al-Sabāʾī (d. 356/966), al-Jabanyānī (d. 369/979), and the patron saint of Tunis, Sīdī Maḥrez (d. 413/1022).