al-Kātibī

Persian logician of the Maragha circle, pupil of al-Abharī, whose al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya became, with the Īsāghūjī, one of the two mainstays of madrasa logic.

Life

Al-Kātibī was born in Qazvin in north-western Iran in Rajab 600/March 1204, according to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi and the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ. He was also called Dabīrān; the TDV notes that some explained this as a place name, but thinks it more likely, given the meaning of the Persian dabīr (‘secretary, scribe’), that he was so called because he worked as a secretary or teacher, which the Arabic nisba al-Kātibī would echo. After his first studies in Qazvin he travelled to the main centres of learning.

His decisive teacher was Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī, the author of the Īsāghūjī. Tony Street reports manuscript evidence that in 1228 and 1229 al-Kātibī read al-Abharī’s texts under his supervision, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that ‘Kātibī was Abharī’s student’. His relation to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī is reported in different ways: the TDV says he learned theology, philosophy, astronomy and logic from al-Ṭūsī; the Dār al-Iftāʾ notes that some affirm and others deny that he studied with him; Street treats them as two pupils of al-Abharī who ‘differed on profoundly important issues’. They certainly worked together: in 1259 al-Ṭūsī engaged al-Kātibī as one of four scholars to help with the new observatory at Maragha, and the two exchanged written objections and replies on logic and on the proof of the Necessary Existent.

He taught in Qazvin, where, according to the TDV, his lessons drew many scholars, and during the early years of the Maragha observatory he was teaching Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Mulakhkhaṣ and al-Khūnajī’s Kashf al-asrār (Stanford Encyclopedia). His best-known students were al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 726/1325) and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311). Street adds that shortly before his death he and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī left Maragha to found a school in Juwayn, near Nishapur, where he probably died. Most sources give Ramaḍān 675/February 1277 for his death; Ḥājjī Khalīfa has 693/1294.

In logic al-Kātibī belongs to the generation that settled the form of the subject after Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī. Street calls him ‘fundamentally an Avicennan logician’ who, wherever he departs from Ibn Sīnā, follows al-Khūnajī: on the subject matter of logic (‘known conceptions and assents’), on conversion with negative terms and in modal logic, where he declares the conversion of the two possibility propositions ‘unknown’. His two major logical works are the short Shamsiyya, written for Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Juwaynī and therefore after 1262 according to Street, and the much longer Jāmiʿ al-daqāʾiq, written after 1265. He also commented on al-Khūnajī’s Kashf al-asrār and on al-Rāzī’s Mulakhkhaṣ, and wrote on philosophy (Ḥikmat al-ʿayn) and theology.

Works

• al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya fī al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya الرِّسَالَةُ الشَّمْسِيَّةُ فِي القَوَاعِدِ المَنْطِقِيَّةِ — عَلَى al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaA compact textbook of about 120 lemmata (Street), named after Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Juwaynī. Printed Calcutta 1815, Istanbul 1263, Tashkent 1894 and often with its commentaries; critical edition and translation by Tony Street (2024).مَتْن
• Jāmiʿ al-daqāʾiq fī kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq جَامِعُ الدَّقَائِقِ فِي كَشْفِ الحَقَائِقِA large work on logic and metaphysics whose logical part is much longer than the Shamsiyya (Süleymaniye, Carullah 1351).عَمَل
• ʿAyn al-qawāʿid fī al-manṭiq wa-l-ḥikma عَيْنُ القَوَاعِدِ فِي المَنْطِقِ وَالحِكْمَةِShorter work on logic and philosophy; the TDV lists Baḥr al-fawāʾid as the author’s commentary on it.عَمَل
• Ḥikmat al-ʿayn حِكْمَةُ العَيْنِAdds physics and metaphysics to the ʿAyn al-qawāʿid; a school text with commentaries by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī and Mīrak al-Bukhārī.عَمَل
• Sharḥ Kashf al-asrār ʿan ghawāmiḍ al-afkār شَرْحُ كَشْفِ الأَسْرَارِ عَنْ غَوَامِضِ الأَفْكَارِ — عَلَى al-KhūnajīA large commentary on al-Khūnajī’s main work on logic (Süleymaniye, Laleli 2664).شَرْح
• al-Munaṣṣaṣ fī sharḥ al-Mulakhkhaṣ المُنَصَّصُ فِي شَرْحِ المُلَخَّصِOn Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Mulakhkhaṣ in logic and philosophy; the author’s own copy is in the Köprülü library (Fazıl Ahmed Paşa 887–889).شَرْح
• Sharḥ al-mawāḍiʿ al-mushkila min al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya — عَلَى al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaA short commentary on the difficult passages of the Shamsiyya, attributed to the author by its editors Özpilavcı and Öztop (2019); see ‘Al-Kātibī’ in the Shamsiyya section.شَرْح
• al-Mufaṣṣal fī sharḥ al-Muḥaṣṣal المُفَصَّلُ فِي شَرْحِ المُحَصَّلِCommentary on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s theological Muḥaṣṣal.عَمَل
• Exchanges with Naṣīr al-Dīn al-ṬūsīPublished as Muṭāraḥāt manṭiqiyya (ed. ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī) and Muṭāraḥāt falsafiyya (ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan Āl Yāsīn, Baghdad 1956); questions on medicine as Muṭāraḥāt ṭibbiyya (TDV).عَمَل

Reception

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy counts the Shamsiyya and the Īsāghūjī as the two texts that ‘became mainstays of the madrasa teaching of logic’, used by Sunnīs and Shīʿīs alike; through Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary and al-Jurjānī’s gloss it was read from Cairo and Istanbul to Lucknow.

The Dār al-Iftāʾ notes that the Shamsiyya was taught at al-Azhar and elsewhere for centuries, and that al-Sakhāwī’s al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ alone mentions more than forty scholars who read it or its commentaries.

A legal opinion quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia names ‘the works of al-Kātibī’ beside the Īsāghūjī, al-Khūnajī’s Jumal and al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb as logic ‘not mixed with philosophy’, whose study is permitted without dispute.