Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ

Persian scholar of the sixteenth century whose gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb, with his completion of it, became the standard advanced text on the Tahdhīb in the Ottoman madrasas, known there simply as ‘Mīr’.

Life

Very little is known about Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ’s life. Robert Wisnovsky’s handlist of post-classical commentaries (PIPDI) names him Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. Amīn Tāj al-Saʿīdī al-Ardabīlī and dates his death to 950/1543; Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-ẓunūn calls him ‘the learned Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ al-Saʿīdī, d. about 950’. The nisba al-Ardabīlī points to Ardabil in Azerbaijan; his teachers, offices and places of work are not given in the sources consulted. He belongs to the generation after Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 907/1501), much of whose work he glossed.

His best-known work is a gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb al-manṭiq. Al-Dawānī had left his commentary unfinished; according to Kashf al-ẓunūn, Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ wrote his gloss ‘together with a completion (takmila) of al-Dawānī’s commentary’, promised at its end to explain the rest, and excused himself for not having reached it. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Turkmānī notes that the version with the takmila remains in manuscript while the gloss without it was printed. In the Ottoman madrasas this gloss became the standard way into the Tahdhīb at an advanced level and was called simply ‘Mīr’; PIPDI and al-Turkmānī list Ottoman super-glosses on it by Muḥammad b. Ḥamīd al-Kaffawī, Ismāʿīl al-Kalanbawī (Gelenbevî), Walī al-Dīn Efendi, Qara Khalīl and many others, and an edition in circulation prints the Tahdhīb with al-Dawānī’s commentary, Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ’s gloss and al-Kalanbawī’s super-gloss together.

He wrote on other standard texts of the Shiraz tradition as well. PIPDI records a supergloss on al-Dawānī’s gloss on al-Jurjānī’s ‘small gloss’ on the Shamsiyya commentary, a gloss on Muḥammad al-Tabrīzī al-Ḥanafī’s commentary on al-Ījī’s treatise on disputation (al-Risāla al-Ḥanafiyya), known in Ottoman usage as al-Fawāʾid al-Mīriyya and itself much glossed, a gloss on al-Masʿūdī’s commentary on al-Samarqandī’s treatise on disputation, and a commentary on al-Ījī’s al-Risāla al-waḍʿiyya on semantics.

Works

• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb li-l-Dawānī, with a takmila (‘Mīr’) حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى شَرْحِ التَّهْذِيبِ لِلدَّوَانِيِّ — عَلَى Tahdhīb al-manṭiqBegins ammā baʿdu, aḥmadu llāha mufīḍa l-ṣuwar (Kashf). Printed without the takmila; the version with it is in manuscript (al-Turkmānī). Glossed by many Ottoman scholars, among them al-Kalanbawī.حاشِيَة
• Supergloss on al-Dawānī’s gloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Quṭbī — عَلَى al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaRecorded by Brockelmann and PIPDI; glossed in turn by Muḥammad Efendi al-Qayṣarī. Manuscript.حاشِيَة
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-Risāla al-Ḥanafiyya (al-Fawāʾid al-Mīriyya)On Muḥammad al-Tabrīzī al-Ḥanafī’s commentary on al-Ījī’s treatise on the etiquette of debate; glossed by Ottoman scholars such as Ramaḍān al-Bihishtī and Minqārīzāde (PIPDI); Eyyûbîzâde Muṣṭafā of Mostar also wrote notes on it (TDV).حاشِيَة
• Sharḥ al-Risāla al-waḍʿiyyaCommentary on al-Ījī’s treatise on semantic coinage (waḍʿ) (PIPDI).شَرْح

Reception

In the Ottoman lands ‘al-Dawānī with Mīr’ was the advanced route into the Tahdhīb, as al-Khabīṣī was in Egypt and al-Yazdī in Iran and India (see ‘The commentaries on the Tahdhīb’).

The number of Ottoman super-glosses on ‘Mīr’ (al-Turkmānī lists some sixteen) shows how firmly it was established in the madrasa course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.