ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī

Scholar of the Farangī Maḥall family of Lucknow, famous above all for ḥadīth and Ḥanafī law, who also wrote on logic: a treatise on the Sullam’s puzzle of the ‘absolutely unknown’, a commentary on al-Bihārī’s treatise on fallacies and glosses on the commentaries on the Tahdhīb.

Life

ʿAbd al-Ḥayy belonged to the Anṣārī family of Farangī Maḥall in Lucknow, which traced its descent to the Companion Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he was born in Banda; al-Turkmānī gives the date as Tuesday 26 Dhū al-Qaʿda 1264 (1848). His father, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, was himself a prolific author on ḥadīth, law and the rational sciences, and was his main teacher: al-Turkmānī reports that he had finished the whole course of rational and transmitted books with him by the age of seventeen, and that he read mathematics and astronomy with Niʿmat Allāh b. Nūr Allāh al-Anṣārī, whom the TDV calls his father’s maternal uncle. Asad Q. Ahmed likewise notes that he was trained by members of his own family.

After his studies he taught for two years at the Madrasa Niẓāmiyya in Hyderabad, where his father was a judge, and made the pilgrimage with his father in 1863. When his father died in 1868 he declined to succeed him in office and left Hyderabad. On a second pilgrimage he received licences to transmit from scholars in Mecca and Medina, among them Aḥmad b. Zaynī Daḥlān. He died young, on 30 Rabīʿ I 1304 (27 December 1886), but left close to 120 works and many students.

His fame rests mainly on ḥadīth, Ḥanafī law and biography: al-Taʿlīq al-mumajjad on al-Shaybānī’s recension of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, al-Rafʿ wa-l-takmīl on the criticism of transmitters, al-Fawāʾid al-bahiyya on the Ḥanafī jurists and ʿUmdat al-riʿāya on Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa’s commentary on the Wiqāya. The TDV praises the introductions and careful collation of copies in the books he edited as a new method of editing for his time.

Logic was a smaller but real part of his work. When one of his students reached the Sullam al-ʿulūm’s discussion of the ‘absolutely unknown’ (al-majhūl al-muṭlaq), he wrote a short treatise to remove its difficulties; Ahmed cites this as an example of commentary written for teaching. The treatise, Ḥall al-mughlaq fī baḥth al-majhūl al-muṭlaq, was printed in Kanpur, and the TDV describes it as partly a refutation. He also commented on al-Bihārī’s treatise on fallacies of general application (Muʿīn al-ghāʾiṣīn), and wrote glosses on two commentaries on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb: on al-Dawānī’s (al-Taʿlīq al-ʿajīb) and on ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī’s. Further works deal with disputation (ādāb al-baḥth) and with Mīr Zāhid’s notes on al-Dawānī’s commentary on Suhrawardī’s Hayākil al-nūr.

His views also lived on in debate. Ahmed shows that he had criticised some of the treatises and commentaries of his rival ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Khayrābādī, and that his student ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bihārī carried the dispute on, finally in an oral debate at the court of the nawwāb of Rampur, where each side spoke ‘in the voice’ of its teacher.

Works

• Ḥall al-mughlaq fī baḥth al-majhūl al-muṭlaq حَلُّ المُغْلَقِ فِي بَحْثِ المَجْهُولِ المُطْلَقِ — عَلَى Sullam al-ʿulūmTreatise on the Sullam’s ‘absolutely unknown’, written when a student reached that passage (Ahmed). Printed in Kanpur 1308 (TDV); a British Library copy catalogued by Penn appends it to a Kanpur print of 1870 of Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary with his father’s al-Qawl al-aslam.عَمَل
• Muʿīn al-ghāʾiṣīn مُعِينُ الغَائِصِينَ — عَلَى al-BihārīCommentary on al-Bihārī’s Risāla fī al-mughālaṭāt al-ʿāmmat al-wurūd (fallacies of general application), printed with it in India in 1298/1881 (TDV, article on al-Bihārī).شَرْح
• al-Taʿlīq al-ʿajīb li-ḥall Ḥāshiyat al-Jalāl التَّعْلِيقُ العَجِيبُ لِحَلِّ حَاشِيَةِ الجَلَالِ — عَلَى al-Muḥaqqiq al-DawānīNotes explaining al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb (‘Mullā Jalāl’); autograph in the Farangī Maḥall collection, Aligarh (TDV).تَعْلِيقات
• Gloss on ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī’s Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb — عَلَى Mullā ʿAbd Allāh YazdīPrinted with the commentary in Lucknow (al-Maṭbaʿ al-ʿAlawī, 1300/1882–83) and in later South Asian prints; al-Turkmānī’s edition (Amman 2018) reprints it.حاشِيَة
• Taʿlīq al-ḥamāʾilOn Mīr Zāhid’s notes on al-Dawānī’s commentary on Suhrawardī’s Hayākil al-nūr (Lucknow 1304, TDV).تَعْلِيقات
• Works on disputationNotes on ʿAbd al-Rashīd al-Jawnpūrī’s al-Rashīdiyya on al-Jurjānī’s al-Sharīfiyya, and al-Hidāya al-mukhtāriyya on al-Ījī’s treatise on disputation (TDV).عَمَل
• al-Fawāʾid al-bahiyya fī tarājim al-Ḥanafiyya الفَوَائِدُ البَهِيَّةُ فِي تَرَاجِمِ الحَنَفِيَّةِBiographies of Ḥanafī jurists, with his own supplement al-Taʿlīqāt al-saniyya; one of his many works outside logic.عَمَل

Reception

His gloss became the usual companion of al-Yazdī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb in Indian and Pakistani prints; al-Turkmānī chose it for his 2018 edition.

Ḥall al-mughlaq is one of the separate treatises that single problems of the Sullam al-ʿulūm attracted in India (Ahmed).