The commentary tradition

1A short book that gathered a library

Al-Abharī’s Īsāghūjī is very short: a few pages that cover the whole of logic in outline. TDV describes it as the first logic book read in the madrasas and as one of the logic texts on which the most commentaries and glosses were written. The editor of a modern edition of al-Kātī’s commentary says simply that the commentaries and glosses on it are too many to count.

Brevity was the point. A short text could be memorised and read quickly with a teacher, and the teacher, or a written commentary, supplied the explanations, examples, objections and answers. Over time the best of these explanations were written down, copied and taught in their turn, so that the Īsāghūjī came to be read in layers: the text (matn), a commentary (sharḥ), and often one or more glosses (ḥāshiya) on the commentary.

Already in the seventeenth century the Ottoman bibliographer Ḥājjī Khalīfa (Kâtip Çelebi, d. 1067/1657) listed more than a dozen commentaries, about ten glosses and notes on them, and three versifications in his entry on the Īsāghūjī, adding that the abridgement attributed to al-Abharī was the one ‘current in our time’ among several works that bore the name. Some of the works he lists are still printed and taught; others survive only in a few manuscripts or as a name in his list.

2How commentary works: sharḥ, ḥāshiya, taʿlīq

A sharḥ (commentary) explains a whole work. TDV distinguishes three ways of laying one out. In the first, a passage of the text is quoted after qāla (‘he said’) and the explanation follows after aqūlu (‘I say’). In the second, only the words being explained are quoted, introduced by qawluhu (‘his words …’). In the third, the commentator weaves the text into his own sentences so that text and commentary read as one (sharḥ mamzūj, a ‘blended’ commentary); copyists then mark the text, for example with a line drawn over it (in many manuscripts in red).

The Īsāghūjī commentaries show both main types. Ḥājjī Khalīfa calls al-Kātī’s commentary ‘a short commentary bi-l-qawl’, that is, in the qāla … aqūlu form, which is why, according to its modern editor, it is known simply as Qāla aqūlu; a Berlin manuscript marks the two words in red. Al-Fanārī’s commentary, by contrast, is mamzūj: al-Abharī’s words are part of al-Fanārī’s own sentences. Ḥājjī Khalīfa also describes the commentaries of al-Bitlīsī (qāla/aqūlu) and al-Abdī (blended).

A ḥāshiya (gloss, literally ‘margin’) was originally a note written in the margin of a page. As a technical term it came to mean an explanatory work on a commentary, which takes up difficult words of the commentary or the text, adds information and sometimes criticises the commentator. TDV notes that after the eighth/fourteenth century whole independent books of this kind were called ḥāshiya, that many seem to have grown out of teachers’ or students’ lesson notes, and that later glosses typically introduce each phrase they discuss with qawluhu.

Taʿlīq or taʿlīqāt (‘attached notes’) is used for shorter notes, often in the margins or between the lines, or modestly for a gloss. Ḥājjī Khalīfa, for example, speaks of ‘taʿlīqāt found in the margins’ of Qul Aḥmad’s gloss on al-Fanārī. A further, more specialised genre is the iʿrāb, a grammatical analysis of a text: he records one on al-Kātī’s commentary, Yanbūʿ al-ḥayāt by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Malaṭī.

In practice the layers travelled together. Manuscript catalogues often describe volumes in which the matn, a commentary and one or more glosses are bound together, and an Istanbul lithograph of 1858 (date supplied by the catalogue) contains the text, al-Fanārī’s commentary and the glosses of Qul Aḥmad and Burhān al-Dīn in one volume.

3The main commentaries

Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Kātī (d. 760/1358–9) wrote what Turkish scholars call the first known commentary, a short qāla/aqūlu commentary that keeps close to al-Abharī’s text. According to the Islamisation of Anatolia project it remained the accompanying text through which the Īsāghūjī was studied throughout the Ottoman period; its modern edition (Beirut, Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2015, edited by Qāsim b. Naʿīm al-Ḥanafī) is the one used on The Mantiqi.

Shams al-Dīn al-Fanārī (d. 834/1431), the first holder of the office of müftü in the Ottoman capital, wrote al-Fawāʾid al-Fanāriyya, a dense blended commentary which, by his own account, he wrote in a single short day. It opens with a reflection on what gives a science its unity (jihat al-waḥda) that later circulated as a treatise of its own. TDV and its article on commentary (‘ŞERH’) name it, with al-Anṣārī’s, as one of the two most famous Īsāghūjī commentaries.

Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520), chief Shāfiʿī judge of Mamluk Cairo, wrote al-Maṭlaʿ (TDV reads al-Muṭṭalaʿ), the commentary on which the Egyptian glosses were written; it was printed repeatedly in Būlāq and Cairo with Yūsuf al-Ḥifnī’s gloss.

Two later Ottoman commentaries became especially important in teaching. Maḥmūd b. Ḥasan al-Maghnīsāwī (d. 1222/1807–8 according to the catalogues) wrote Mughnī al-ṭullāb, which a modern teacher in Baghdad calls one of the most precise and useful commentaries and the best preparation for longer logic books. Ismāʿīl al-Kalanbawī (Gelenbevî, d. 1205/1791) wrote a demanding commentary that the same teacher describes as so difficult that some teachers gave up teaching it.

The modern editor of al-Kātī lists, besides these, the commentaries of Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Abdī and of Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī (d. 862), a student of al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, both of which also appear in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s list.

4A family tree: from matn to sharḥ to ḥāshiya

At the root stands the matn, al-Abharī’s Īsāghūjī. From it grow the commentaries (shurūḥ), each written directly on the text. The four branches that carried the most later growth are those of al-Kātī, al-Fanārī, al-Anṣārī and al-Maghnīsāwī.

On al-Kātī’s commentary grew the glosses of Mawlānā Qaraja Aḥmad (d. 854/1450), Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Tālishī (dated 884/1479 in the German catalogues, but see his entry), Muḥammad al-Bardaʿī (d. 927/1521), Sürûrî (d. 969/1562, according to TDV’s article on him), al-Shirwānī, al-Abīwardī and others; the modern editor adds ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm al-Siyālkūtī (d. 1067) and a gloss by ‘al-Mawlawī’ printed in its margin. One level further, al-Bardaʿī’s gloss received a gloss of its own by Yaḥyā b. Nuṣūḥ b. Isrāʾīl. Alaattin Tekin and Adem Evmeş call al-Kātī with al-Tālishī one of the two great ‘commentary chains’ of the Īsāghūjī.

On al-Fanārī’s commentary grew, above all, the gloss of Qul Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Khiḍr (ca. 950/1543), which became so attached to it that the two were printed and named together, and the easier gloss of Burhān al-Dīn al-Bulghārī (before 1061/1651), al-Fawāʾid (or al-Farāʾid) al-Burhāniyya. Further glosses on al-Fanārī are recorded by Qara Khalīl (d. 1123) and one al-Jūrī. Qul Aḥmad’s gloss in turn received notes: al-Farāʾid al-saniyya by Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Ḥalabī and the glosses of Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Ṭarasūsī (d. 1705–6), printed with it. This branch therefore has four levels: matn, sharḥ, ḥāshiya and ḥāshiya on the ḥāshiya. Al-Fanārī with Qul Aḥmad is the second of the two great chains.

On al-Anṣārī’s al-Maṭlaʿ grew the Egyptian glosses of Yūsuf b. Sālim al-Ḥifnī (d. 1762–3), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qalyūbī (d. 1069/1659) and Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/1834). On al-Maghnīsāwī’s Mughnī al-ṭullāb grew Sayf al-ghullāb by Muḥammad Fawzī, mufti of Edirne (d. 1318/1900), and an Istanbul printing added a Turkish interlinear translation and marginal glosses by one Ṭayyār.

The tree is a simplification: some scholars wrote on several branches, the same scholar may be listed as commentator in one source and glossator in another, and many glosses survive only in manuscript.

5Which commentaries dominated where

In the Ottoman lands the Īsāghūjī was a madrasa textbook until the end of the empire (TDV). It was read above all with al-Kātī’s commentary, which Taşköprüzāde mentions in his autobiography as the commentary through which he studied the book, and with al-Fanārī’s commentary and Qul Aḥmad’s gloss, which Ahmet Kayacık places at the ‘Yukarı İktisar’ stage of the madrasa course. A study of al-Tālishī’s gloss on al-Kātī says that it became widespread in Anatolia after the seventeenth century. Later Ottoman additions include al-Maghnīsāwī’s Mughnī al-ṭullāb, printed in Istanbul with a Turkish interlinear translation, and al-Kalanbawī’s commentary.

In Egypt the Īsāghūjī was read above all with al-Anṣārī’s al-Maṭlaʿ, judging by the glosses written on it there (by al-Ḥifnī, al-Qalyūbī and al-ʿAṭṭār) and by its many printings in Būlāq and Cairo. TDV notes that commentaries were still being written in Egypt after the eighteenth century, al-ʿAṭṭār’s being the most noteworthy, and, citing Aḥmad Fuʾād al-Ahwānī, that the Īsāghūjī was taught at al-Azhar until the 1950s.

Further east the picture is less well documented in the sources consulted. The modern editor of al-Kātī, an imam and teacher at the Sulaymāniyya mosque and madrasa in Baghdad, writes that al-Kātī’s commentary had previously been printed only in Indian lithographs, that al-Fanārī’s commentary is still read in the schools, and that he himself has taught al-Maghnīsāwī’s Mughnī al-ṭullāb many times. A bookseller’s description of a modern edition of the Mughnī likewise says that it was studied in Anatolia and the eastern Islamic lands.

From North Africa came the best-known versification, al-Sullam al-munawraq by the Algerian scholar al-Akhḍarī (see below). TDV says it became very widely known and was taught in Ottoman madrasas as well; a French translation was published in Algiers in 1921.

6Versifications

Several scholars turned the Īsāghūjī into a poem (naẓm), a form that is easier to memorise. Ḥājjī Khalīfa names three: a versification by Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ushmūnī (d. around 900); al-Sullam al-munawraq by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Sayyidī Muḥammad (al-Akhḍarī), who also wrote a commentary on it; and a poem rhyming in tāʾ (tāʾiyya) by Ibrāhīm al-Shabistarī (d. 920), also with the author’s own commentary.

The Sullam of the Algerian scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Akhḍarī (d. 983/1575–76) became by far the best known. TDV describes it as the verse form of al-Abharī’s Īsāghūjī; it was commented on first by al-Akhḍarī himself and most famously in al-Damanhūrī’s Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam, received an Ottoman Turkish translation with commentary (Wasīlat al-īqān) by Rifʿat Efendi, and was translated into French by J.-D. Luciani (Le Soullam, Algiers 1921).

TDV’s article on the Īsāghūjī names, besides al-Akhḍarī, a versification by ‘İbrâhim eş-Şibrî’; this may be the same work as the tāʾiyya of Ibrāhīm al-Shabistarī listed by Ḥājjī Khalīfa, but the sources consulted do not settle the question.

7Less-known commentaries named in the reference works

Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-ẓunūn and TDV’s article on the Īsāghūjī name a number of commentaries that are rarely mentioned today. Among the Ottoman ones: Khayr al-Dīn al-Bitlīsī (a qāla/aqūlu commentary beginning naḥmaduka yā man yusʿidunā); Ḥakīm Shāh Muḥammad b. Mubārak al-Qazwīnī (d. after 929/1523), physician at the Ottoman court; Khayr al-Dīn Khiḍr al-ʿAṭūfī (d. 948/1541 according to TDV, 953 according to Ḥājjī Khalīfa); and Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā b. Shaʿbān al-Surūrī (d. 969/1562), whose work TDV’s article on him describes as a gloss on al-Kātī.

Further names in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s list: Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Abdī, whose blended commentary he calls long compared with the others; al-Sharīf Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī, student of al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, who died in Medina in 862; ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-ʿAjamī, who dedicated his commentary to a sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubād; Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥanbalī al-Ḥalabī, whose commentary covers only the part on concepts (taṣawwurāt); a commentary called Maṭāliʿ al-afkār written for a Shaykh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Manṣūrī; and an anonymous qāla/aqūlu commentary beginning al-ḥamdu li-llāhi alladhī jaʿala manṭiqa l-insān.

Among the glosses he lists on al-Kātī are those of al-Shirwānī and al-Abīwardī and an anonymous gloss written for an Amīr Sulṭān ʿAlī; manuscript catalogues add the glosses on al-Fanārī by Qara Khalīl (Khalīl b. Ḥasan, d. 1123; printed Cairo 1289) and al-Jūrī (Berlin).

Later Ottoman scholars kept adding to the list. Dāwūd al-Qarṣī (d. 1169/1756), who taught for a time in Cyprus and spent his last years in Birgi, wrote a concise commentary on the Īsāghūjī and also a new short logic text in the same manner, al-Īsāghūjī al-jadīd wa-l-durr al-farīd, with his own commentary; according to İbrahim Çapak and Ferruh Özpilavcı this helped turn ‘Īsāghūjī’ into a general name for short logic handbooks. A late Ottoman commentary called al-Mabdaʾ, by Ḥaṣīrīzāde Elif Efendi, has been studied by Özpilavcı (2021).

8Reading the tradition today

Several of the main commentaries are available in modern printed editions: al-Kātī (Beirut, 2015, ed. Qāsim b. Naʿīm al-Ḥanafī, the edition used on The Mantiqi), al-Fanārī and Qul Aḥmad’s gloss (Beirut, Maktabat al-Hāshimī, ed. Muṣṭafā Shaykh Muṣṭafā, 2nd ed. 2015), al-Maghnīsāwī’s Mughnī al-ṭullāb (ed. ʿIṣām al-Subuʿī, 1430/2009) and al-Kalanbawī’s commentary (Jordan, Dār al-Nūr, 2016), as cited in Adem Evmeş’s studies. Many nineteenth-century Istanbul, Būlāq and Cairo printings are also accessible in libraries and digital collections.

Modern scholarship on the tradition is still young. Ahmet Kayacık wrote a doctoral thesis on the earliest commentaries (Ebherî’nin Îsâgûcî’sinin İlk Şerhleri, Erciyes University, 1996); C. F. Seybold discussed al-Abharī and al-Fanārī’s commentary in Der Islam as early as 1919; and in recent years Adem Evmeş, Ferruh Özpilavcı, Alaattin Tekin and others have published comparisons and editions of individual commentaries.

The dates and attributions in this field are often uncertain. Many commentators are known only from a line in Ḥājjī Khalīfa or a library catalogue, and the sources sometimes disagree by decades or even centuries; the individual entries on The Mantiqi note these disagreements where they occur.