The encyclopedia of manṭiq

Classical logic in the Islamic scholarly tradition: its books and their commentaries, its scholars and curricula, and what is newly published.

The six handbooks

The books the madrasas read, from the Īsāghūjī to al-Mirqāt, each with its commentaries, glosses and catalogue.

المُتُون

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The masters

From Aristotle and Porphyry to the madrasas of India: the logicians whose books were read.

الأَعْلام

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II · Curricula

What was read, and where?

المَناهِج

The Dars-i NiẓāmīThe Dars-i Niẓāmī, the course associated with Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn of Farangī Maḥall in Lucknow, gave logic more room than any other madrasa curriculum, crowned by an Indian textbook, Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm.The Ottoman medreseIn the Ottoman medrese logic began with the Īsāghūjī and its commentaries and rose through the Shamsiyya and its glosses to the commentary on the Maṭāliʿ.Al-Azhar and EgyptAt al-Azhar the beginner’s logic was North African in origin: al-Akhḍarī’s verse Sullam and al-Sanūsī’s handbook, read with commentaries by Egyptian shaykhs such as al-Mallawī, al-Damanhūrī, al-Ṣabbān and al-Bājūrī, beside the Īsāghūjī with Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī.The Maghrib and MauritaniaNorth Africa produced the two short logic texts that dominated the western Islamic world: al-Sanūsī’s Mukhtaṣar and al-Akhḍarī’s verse Sullam.Kurdish madrasas and the Shīʿī ḥawzaKurdish madrasas kept a demanding logic course, taught from Arabic texts explained in Kurdish, into the twentieth century and in places until today.The pesantren and the Malay worldIn the pesantren of Java and Madura and the dayah of Aceh, logic arrived late and remained optional: where it is taught, the course is built on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam and its Egyptian commentaries, with the Īsāghūjī as an older and rarer alternative.Logic in the madrasa curriculum →From Fez to Lucknow and from Istanbul to Java, logic was one of the ‘tool sciences’ that every madrasa student was expected to learn before the higher subjects.

Study portal

ادْرُسْ دَرْسًا دَرْسًا

Read the books yourself, lesson by lesson, along three madrasa paths: al-Jurjānī's Persian primers and al-Mirqāt in India, the Īsāghūjī and al-Kātī in the Ottoman lands, and al-Akhḍarī's Sullam in North Africa.

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