Al-Mirqāt in the madrasa

1A later addition to the Dars-i Niẓāmī

The Dars-i Niẓāmī, the madrasa course named after Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn of Farangī Maḥall (d. 1748), was known for the weight it gave to the rational sciences. Francis Robinson’s list of its logic books includes al-Jurjānī’s Ṣughrā and Kubrā, the Īsāghūjī, the Tahdhīb and its commentary, Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya and Mīr Quṭbī, Sullam al-ʿulūm, and Mīr Zāhid’s glosses. Al-Mirqāt, written some eighty years after Niẓām al-Dīn’s death, is not among them.

It entered the course in the nineteenth century. The earliest dated print seen is a Delhi lithograph of 1286/1869, and Delhi editions of 1886 and 1888 came with marginal notes compiled by teachers ‘from various sources’, the typical form of a classroom text. Jamal Malik notes that al-Mirqāt ‘was taught approvingly for long years at Deoband’, the madrasa whose version of the course many others followed; and an Urdu translation was published in 1339/1921 by Osmania University in Hyderabad ‘for the matriculation’.

2Its place in the logic sequence

In the version of the Dars-i Niẓāmī adopted by Deobandi madrasas, as listed by Zubair Zafar Khan, the logic books run: Ṣughrā, Kubrā, Īsāghūjī, Mirqāt, Mīzān al-manṭiq, Tahdhīb, Quṭbī, Mīr Quṭbī, the Sullam commentaries of Mullā Ḥasan, Ḥamd Allāh and Qāḍī Mubārak, and Mīr Zāhid’s gloss. Al-Mirqāt is the fourth book: after the primers, before the Tahdhīb.

The course has since been shortened. The current eight-year course of the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband has only four logic books: the primer Taysīr al-manṭiq in the first year; al-Mirqāt in the second; Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb in the third; and Quṭbī in the fourth. The Īsāghūjī is not listed: in this course al-Mirqāt follows the primer directly.

3Pakistan

In Pakistan the Dars-i Niẓāmī is examined by several boards (wifāq), one for each school of thought, among them the Deobandi Wifāq al-Madāris al-ʿArabiyya and the Barelwi Tanẓīm al-Madāris. Pakistani publishers and madrasa book sites list al-Mirqāt, with Taysīr al-manṭiq, among the books of the second year, darja thāniya ʿāmma; Maktaba al-Bushrā in Karachi publishes Taysīr al-manṭiq, the Īsāghūjī and al-Mirqāt together in a single volume. A comparative study of the higher-secondary curricula of the Pakistani boards found logic in all of them (the Salafi board teaches it without examining it), with Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb as the most common text at that later stage.

The book is read in Barelwi (Ahl-i Sunnat) madrasas as much as in Deobandi ones. An Arabic gloss for students, al-Mirḍāt, was written by ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Sharaf Qādirī of the Jāmiʿa Niẓāmiyya Riḍawiyya in Lahore, and the Barelwi movement Dawat-e-Islami publishes a vocalised edition with notes (Karachi 2015). The Urdu commentaries sold for the second year include Tuḥfat al-Manẓūr, from lectures given at the Dār al-ʿUlūm ʿĪdgāh in Kabirwala; Tawḍīḥāt by Iftikhār Aḥmad (Maktaba Ḥaqqāniyya); Dars-i Mirqāt by Muftī Sanāʾ Allāh Qāsmī; and al-Taqrīrāt by Ashraf Ḥusayn ʿAṭṭārī (Maktabat al-Muṣṭafā).

4India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan

In India al-Mirqāt is read at Deoband and in the many madrasas that follow its course, and in Barelwi madrasas. Indian publishers have produced their own aids: an Urdu commentary, Tawḍīḥāt, printed in Deoband (2011), and Taqwiyat al-Mirqāt, Arabic notes by Muḥammad Ilyās b. ʿAbd Allāh published at Dābhel in Gujarat.

For the Qawmī madrasas of Bangladesh, which follow the Deobandi Dars-i Niẓāmī, and for the madrasas of Afghanistan, the sources consulted for this article give no reliable information on whether and in which year al-Mirqāt is read. That it is read in the Pashto-speaking madrasas of Pakistan is likely but not documented here.

5Beyond South Asia

The Dars-i Niẓāmī has travelled with South Asian Muslim communities, and al-Mirqāt with it. The publisher of the first English translation (2026) states that the book is ‘also studied at some institutions in North America, the UK, and South Africa’. A syllabus published by a South African dār al-ʿulūm lists ‘Aasan Mantiq / Mirqaat’ for its third year and the Tahdhīb for its fourth, and an Arabic gloss for students, al-Taʿlīqāt al-muntaqāt ʿalā al-Mirqāt, is by Muftī ʿAbd Allāh Moolla.

New Arabic editions have also appeared: a critical edition of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī’s commentary appeared in Amman in 2019, and Maktaba al-Ghānim printed al-Mirqāt in 2025 with al-Shērkōṭī’s gloss al-Mirʾāt and a versification, Sullam al-ruqāt li-naẓm al-Mirqāt.