Egyptian Shāfiʿī jurist, student of Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, whose fatwā gave the standard summary of the three positions on studying logic.
Life
Aḥmad al-Ramlī, called ‘the elder’ to distinguish him from his son Shams al-Dīn al-Ramlī, came from Ramla in the province of al-Manūfiyya in the Nile Delta, not the town in Palestine. He studied with Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, the leading Shāfiʿī of Cairo and the author of a commentary on the Īsāghūjī; according to al-Shaʿrānī he revised two of his teacher’s commentaries with his permission. He taught at al-Azhar and at the Nāṣiriyya madrasa. His students included his son, al-Shaʿrānī, al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī. He died in Cairo in Jumādā II 957/June 1550.
His works are mostly on Shāfiʿī law, among them glosses on al-Anṣārī’s Asnā al-maṭālib and a commentary on al-Juwaynī’s Waraqāt. His fatwās were collected by his son and arranged by the chapters of law; the TDV notes that the manuscripts attribute the collection sometimes to the father and sometimes to the son, and that the two are often confused.
In the history of logic he is remembered for one fatwā, quoted by Khaled El-Rouayheb. There are, he says, three opinions on studying logic: Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ and al-Nawawī forbade it; al-Ghazālī said that the knowledge of someone who does not know logic cannot be trusted; and the correct view is that it is permitted to a person of sound mind who holds to the Qurʾān and the Sunna. Logic, he adds, protects the mind from error in thinking as grammar protects the tongue from error in speech, and it is a tool for the other sciences. The same three positions, with the same conclusion, appear in al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam a generation later.
Uncertain or disputed
- Because the fatwā collection was compiled by his son and is sometimes attributed to him, the fatwā on logic may be the son’s rather than the father’s; El-Rouayheb attributes it to the father.
- Year of birth is not given in the sources consulted.
Works
- Fatāwā al-Ramlī فَتَاوَى الرَّمْلِيِّCollected by his son Shams al-Dīn; printed in the margin of Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s al-Fatāwā al-kubrā al-fiqhiyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1308/1891), where the fatwā on logic is in vol. 4, p. 337 (as cited by El-Rouayheb).عَمَل
- Ghāyat al-maʾmūl غَايَةُ المَأْمُولِCommentary on al-Juwaynī’s al-Waraqāt on legal theory (TDV).شَرْح
- Ḥāshiya ʿalā Asnā al-maṭālib — عَلَى شَيْخُ الإِسْلامِ زَكَرِيّا الأَنْصارِيّGloss on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s commentary on Rawḍ al-ṭālib (law).حاشِيَة
Reception
His three-position summary became the standard way of presenting the question; El-Rouayheb uses it to show that the mainstream of sixteenth-century Egyptian Shāfiʿism allowed logic.
Sources (2)