Commentaries, glosses and translations

1How the tradition grew

The most complete older list of works on the Sullam is in Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Supplement II, pp. 705–706). He records the author’s own commentary with three glosses on it, about a dozen further commentaries from Egypt and Morocco, and glosses on two of them, together with the manuscripts and the nineteenth-century prints known to him. His list also contains a few Indian names, among them Qāḍī Mubārak and Muḥibb Allāh; elsewhere in the same volume Brockelmann gives Qāḍī Mubārak a commentary on Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm, and these entries probably belong to that other ‘Sullam’, the great Indian handbook, rather than to al-Akhḍarī’s poem. They are left out of the catalogue on The Mantiqi.

Brockelmann did not know the Mauritanian tradition, which is now documented in the West African Arabic Manuscript Database (WAAMD), nor the modern Indonesian, Turkish and Arabic works. Taken together, the sources show three centres of commentary: the Maghrib, where the poem was written; Cairo and al-Azhar, where its best-known commentaries were composed in the eighteenth century; and the maḥaẓra schools of Mauritania. From Cairo the commentaries travelled to the Ottoman lands and to the Malay world, where new works in Arabic, Turkish, Javanese and Indonesian were added.

2Al-Akhḍarī’s own commentary

Al-Akhḍarī wrote the first commentary himself. Its preface says that after the urjūza was finished, ‘some brothers among the students’ urged him ‘again and again’ to write a useful commentary that would set out its meanings; he agreed, though he did not consider himself worthy, and wrote it ‘not for those above me, but for beginners like me’. The commentary quotes each line or pair of lines, explains the logic with the usual school examples, adds short ‘remarks’ (tanbīh) on disputed points, and ends each passage with notes on grammar and metre. It is short and practical, and its long digressions are moral rather than logical, such as the lament on the corruption of the tenth century in the closing section.

Brockelmann lists many manuscripts of it, from Berlin and Gotha to Algiers, Rabat and Cairo, and three glosses on it: by the Algerian Saʿīd Qaddūra (d. 1066/1656), by ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-ʿAdawī al-Ṣaʿīdī (d. 1189/1775) and by Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī (d. 1276/1860). In print the commentary usually appears with another work: in the margin of Indonesian prints of al-Damanhūrī’s Īḍāḥ al-mubham, as van Bruinessen observed, and after the Īḍāḥ in modern editions such as those of Dār al-Farfūr (Damascus 2001) and Sīdā (Diyarbakır 2014, with al-Bājūrī’s glosses). A separate edition, with an introduction and indexes by Abū Bakr Belkacem Ḍayf, appeared in Beirut in 2006 in a series on the Algerian heritage.

3The Maghrib: Qaddūra, al-Wallālī and al-Bannānī

In North Africa the poem was explained first of all through Saʿīd b. Ibrāhīm Qaddūra of Algiers. Brockelmann classes his work as a gloss on the author’s commentary, but the British Museum catalogue and later prints treat it as a commentary in its own right (Sharḥ Saʿīd Qaddūra ʿalā al-Sullam). It was printed in Būlāq in 1285/1868 and in Cairo in 1318/1900, appears in a Fez lithograph together with notes (taqrīrāt) by Muḥammad al-Sijilmāsī (d. 1155/1742), and was edited as a master’s thesis at the University of Tlemcen in 2012.

Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Wallālī (d. 1128/1716) wrote his commentary, al-Qawl al-musallam fī taḥqīq maʿānī al-Sullam, in Meknes in 1119/1707. The most widely used Moroccan commentary, however, became that of Muḥammad al-Bannānī. Brockelmann calls him Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Bannānī and places him around 1211/1796, which agrees with the title page of a Fez lithograph; the University of Pennsylvania catalogues the same work under Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Bannānī (1720/21–1780). The question is left open here. Al-Bannānī’s commentary was lithographed in Fez in 1300, 1313 and 1315 and printed in Cairo in 1318. It attracted two printed glosses: by ʿAlī b. Idrīs Qaṣṣāra (d. 1259/1843), printed in Fez in 1300, 1309 and 1315, and by al-Mahdī b. al-Ṭālib Ibn Sūda (1805/06–1877/78), a two-volume lithograph of 1310/1893. One Fez lithograph gathers four of these works in a single volume: al-Bannānī, Qaṣṣāra, Qaddūra and al-Sijilmāsī. In 2023 Dār Taḥqīq al-Kitāb in Istanbul published al-Bannānī’s commentary with Qaṣṣāra’s gloss in a new edition by Māhir Muḥammad ʿAdnān ʿUthmān.

Brockelmann adds Moroccan commentaries known only from Rabat manuscripts, by Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Tādilī al-Ribāṭī (around 1307/1890) and by an author called al-Miknāsī, and an anonymous one in Algiers; a commentary by Ibn Maʿzūz al-Jazāʾirī circulates online in a manuscript copy.

4Cairo: al-Mallawī and al-Ṣabbān

In Egypt the poem was taken up in the eighteenth century by scholars of al-Azhar. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Mallawī (1088–1181/1677–1767), a leading Azhar teacher of his time, wrote two commentaries on it, a large one and a small one, according to the biography published by Egypt’s Dār al-Iftāʾ. The small commentary (al-sharḥ al-ṣaghīr) was the one that spread; the same biography says that it remained a staple of Azhar teaching for decades. Manuscripts of al-Mallawī’s commentary are found in Berlin, Gotha, Munich, Paris, Cairo and elsewhere; a Munich copy of 110 leaves is dated before 1205/1791. Which of the two commentaries each manuscript contains is usually not stated in the catalogues.

The small commentary was glossed by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ṣabbān (d. 1206/1792), the author of well-known glosses in grammar as well. A Bavarian State Library manuscript copied in 1249/1834 calls his work ‘a gloss on the small commentary of al-Mallawī on the Sullam’. Al-Ṣabbān’s gloss was printed with al-Mallawī’s commentary in the margin at Būlāq in 1285/1868 and often afterwards (Cairo, al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya 1305/1887; al-Maṭbaʿa al-Azhariyya 1325/1907, 159 pages). There are two recent editions: Dār al-Baṣāʾir (Cairo 2015, 559 pages) and Dār Taḥqīq al-Kitāb (Istanbul 2020, 608 pages, ed. Ḥasan b. Riḍwān Ḥusnī and Māhir Muḥammad ʿAdnān ʿUthmān). Brockelmann also records a gloss on al-Mallawī by ʿAlī al-ʿAdawī al-Ṣaʿīdī; it may be the same work he lists among the glosses on the author’s commentary.

5Al-Damanhūrī’s Īḍāḥ al-mubham

The most famous commentary is Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam (‘Clarifying what is obscure in the meanings of the Sullam’) by Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Damanhūrī (1101–1192/1690–1778), the Azhar scholar who also commented on al-Akhḍarī’s rhetoric poem. The TDV calls it the best-known commentary on the Sullam; Fanani describes it as brief and meant to give students an introduction to logic. It explains the poem line by line in plain language.

Īḍāḥ al-mubham was printed in Cairo by al-Maṭbaʿa al-Wahbiyya in 1293/1876 and by al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya in 1308/1890, later by Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī and Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, and in many modern editions: Maktabat al-Maʿārif (Beirut 1996, reprinted 2006), Dār al-Farfūr (Damascus 2001, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Shannār), Dār al-Baṣāʾir (Cairo 2008, ed. Muṣṭafā Abū Zayd Maḥmūd al-Azharī) and Sīdā (Diyarbakır 2014, ed. Muḥammad Hādī al-Shamrakhī al-Mārdīnī), besides the Indonesian kitab-trade prints. The Jordanian teacher Bilāl al-Najjār has written a modern gloss on it, published in Amman by Dār al-Nūr al-Mubīn and presented by its publisher as a basic text for teaching beginners. In Indonesia Kiai Sahal Mahfudh wrote Izālat al-muttaham, an elaboration of the Īḍāḥ, while still a student at Sarang.

6Al-Quwaysinī, al-Bājūrī and other Azhar works

Ḥasan b. Darwīsh al-Quwaysinī (d. 1254/1838), who became Shaykh al-Azhar in 1250/1834, wrote a commentary of the mixed kind, which weaves the words of the poem into its own sentences. Some biographical works wrongly give it the title of al-Damanhūrī’s commentary, Īḍāḥ al-mubham. It was printed in Fez in 1319 with marginal notes by ‘al-Ḥaṭṭāb b. ʿUmar’, as Brockelmann has it, probably the Khaṭṭāb ʿUmar al-Darwī (alive in 1314/1896) whose notes on al-Quwaysinī are printed in a modern compilation, and in Cairo by al-Ḥalabī in 1352/1933, and it received glosses by Muṣṭafā al-Būlāqī (d. 1263/1847), which according to Brockelmann follow those of al-Ṣabbān, and by al-Bājūrī (Cairo 1275).

Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī (d. 1276/1860) wrote a gloss (ḥāshiya) that is usually printed with the text of the poem in its margin and is often catalogued as a gloss on the matn of the Sullam; Brockelmann lists it among the glosses on al-Akhḍarī’s own commentary, and one modern edition prints al-Akhḍarī’s commentary ‘with al-Bājūrī’s glosses’. It was printed in Cairo in 1282, 1286, 1306 and 1308, at Būlāq in 1297 with notes by Muḥammad al-Anbābī (1824/25–1895/96), and again in 1324/1906 with al-Anbābī’s taqrīr. A 2023 edition by Dār Taḥqīq al-Kitāb adds a further taqrīr by Sayyid al-Sharshīmī.

Brockelmann names other Egyptian commentaries that remained in manuscript: by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Damlījī Suwaydān (d. 1234/1819), by Ibrāhīm Ḥijāzī al-Sandiyūnī (around 1223/1808) and by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Qandīl (around 1160/1747), and a commentary by Ismāʿīl b. Ghunaym al-Jawharī (around 1150/1737) on the preface alone. A modern compilation volume, Majmūʿ al-Sullam al-murawnaq, prints seven of the older works together: al-Damanhūrī, al-Wallālī, al-Quwaysinī with al-Darwī’s notes, al-Akhḍarī’s own commentary, and Qaddūra with al-Sijilmāsī’s notes.

7Mauritania and West Africa

In West Africa the Sullam was the logic text. WAAMD calls al-Akhḍarī ‘perhaps the most widely-studied logician in West Africa’ and notes twenty copies of the poem in one manuscript survey, and it records a long series of Mauritanian commentaries, many of them in the short marginal form called ṭurra. They include works by Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-Bārtaylī (d. 1219/1805), Mbūyā al-Walātī (d. 1260/1844), Muḥanḍ Bāba b. Aʿbayd al-Daymānī (d. 1277/1860–61), whose Ṭurra was itself glossed later, Muḥammad Maḥmūd al-Abyayrī (d. 1297/1879), Muḥammaddu al-Sālim al-Idakwūdī (d. 1387/1968), Muḥammad al-Amīn b. Muḥammad al-Mukhtār al-Jakanī (d. 1393/1974), and members of the Ghallāwī family. A Fulani commentary, Daraj al-Sullam al-murawnaq, survives in the library of al-Ḥājj ʿUmar at Ségou.

Two Mauritanian works stand out. The ṭurra of Ghadīja bint al-ʿĀqil al-Daymāniyya, a woman scholar of the twelfth/eighteenth century who taught logic to her brother and to other later scholars, is still ‘glossed and reproduced for study in Mauritania’, as David Owen of Harvard put it in 2023; it remains in manuscript. And al-Mukhtār b. Ḥāmidun al-Daymānī (d. 1414/1993) wrote a ‘completion’ (Takmīl) of the Sullam. When he reached al-Akhḍarī’s line excusing a youth of twenty-one, he added lines of his own: another excuse is due to one whose years are nineteen, and he dated them to the end of Jumādā I 1335 (March 1917).

Shinqīṭī scholars also wrote on the poem outside Mauritania. Muḥammad Ḥabīb Allāh al-Shinqīṭī (1878–1944), who died in Cairo, wrote al-Sabk al-badīʿ al-muḥkam fī sharḥ naẓm al-Sullam, and a commentary called al-Ḍawʾ al-mushriq ʿalā Sullam al-manṭiq li-l-Akhḍarī, by Muḥammad Maḥfūẓ al-Shinqīṭī, was printed in Beirut in 2007. See ‘The Sullam in the madrasa’ for how these works were used.

8Ottoman and Kurdish works

The TDV notes that the Sullam was also read in Ottoman madrasas. Two Ottoman Turkish translations with commentary were printed in Istanbul: Wasīlat al-īqān (Vesîletü’l-îkān) by Rifʿat Efendi (1317/1899–1900) and al-Sanad al-muḥkam fī tarjamat al-Sullam (es-Senedü’l-muhkem) by Maḥmūd Nedīm, whose date of printing is given as 1303 in one list and 1317 in another; Enes Aksu transcribed Nedīm’s work into Latin script in a master’s thesis at Marmara University (2019).

In eastern Anatolia the poem was explained in Arabic by Bediüzzaman Said Nursi in Qızıl Ījāz (Kızıl İcaz, ‘the red concision’), a very compressed commentary written in his early years. It was printed in Istanbul in 1339/1920–21 and again in 1385/1965, and it acquired glosses of its own: by Nursi’s brother Molla Abdülmecid, by Molla Sadreddin Yüksel and by Muḥammad Bashīr al-Khalīlī; Molla Musa Celâlî later gathered these with his own notes into Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Qızıl Ījāz (2009). Turkish translations of Qızıl Ījāz appeared in 2020, and an edition by Ahmet Akgündüz in 2019. Mehmet Salih Geçit has studied this little ‘commentary family’ in two articles (2022, 2024); he also mentions a manuscript commentary by Şeyh Safvetullah Oxînî, printed in Celâlî’s volume.

9Southeast Asia and modern works

In the Malay world the poem was read with the Cairo commentaries, especially al-Damanhūrī’s, but local scholars added their own. Kiai Bisri Mustofa of Rembang made a Javanese verse translation, and his son Cholil Bisri an Indonesian one (1989). Kiai Sahal Mahfudh wrote two explanatory works as a student, al-Murannaq and Izālat al-muttaham. KH Imaduddin Utsman al-Bantanie first wrote a Javanese commentary, Tuḥfat al-nāẓirīn, at the age of twenty-seven, and later rewrote it in Arabic as Rūḥ al-manṭiqī fī sharḥ al-Sullam al-munawraq (2023) for a wider readership. In Malaysia a Malay-language commentary, al-Ghayth al-mughdiq fī sharḥ Sullam al-manṭiq, records the lessons of the Moroccan teacher ʿAbd Allāh Rāʾis al-Rasmūkī as written down by his Malay student Izham Hakimi. These and other translations are described in ‘The Sullam in the madrasa’.

New Arabic commentaries continue to appear. Among those found in print or online are al-Muyassar li-fahm maʿānī al-Sullam by the theologian Saʿīd Fūda, al-Sharḥ al-wāḍiḥ al-munassaq li-naẓm al-Sullam al-murawnaq by ʿAbd al-Malik al-Saʿdī (followed by a treatise on the etiquette of debate), al-Mukhtaṣar al-wajīz fī sharḥ al-Sullam by Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Buḥayrī, and al-Kawkab al-mushriq fī samāʾ ʿilm al-manṭiq by Muḥammad al-Amīn al-Buwayṭī. Recorded lesson series, such as those of Aḥmad b. ʿUmar al-Ḥāzimī on the poem, on al-Quwaysinī and on Īḍāḥ al-mubham, play the role that the classroom taqrīr once had.