Sullam al-ʿulūm

Dedicated to Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh ʿĀlam (Bahādur Shāh I), so written during his reign (Ahmed). Nuzhat gives the incipit ‘Laka al-ḥamd yā man ʿalā al-akwān bi-aṣnāf al-iḥsān’. Manuscript: Rampur, Raza Library MS 3400/4341M; a copy dated 1229 AH is among the Indian Ministry of Culture scans. Holds that a distinction made by the mind suffices to answer the liar paradox.

Editions

• Delhi, 1893: ‘Fayrūz’, commentary on the Taṣawwurāt, with marginal glosses by Ṣāḥibzāda Asʿad b. Maḥmūd (Ūtmānzai) (British Library; Penn record)
• Fragments in the margins of nineteenth-century lithographs of the Sullam (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:783, entry on Mullā Fīrūz b. Maḥabba (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Fayrūz (Delhi, 1893)
• Internet Archive: Sharh Sullam al-Ulum, Mohammad Firuz bin Muhabbat (copy dated 1229 AH)

Possibly the first extended commentary. Dedicated to Nawwāb Khudābanda Khān (d. June 1707) and finished in the first half of 1119/1707, after al-Bihārī’s death; says the Sullam was already well known. Discusses three readings of ‘this speech’ in the liar paradox. Manuscript: Rampur, Raza Library MS 3399/588D (Ahmed).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Advanced handbook of logic in two parts, conceptualizations (taṣawwurāt) and assents (taṣdīqāt); 52 numbered paragraphs in Ahmed’s translation. Written before 1109/1698 (Ahmed), probably in Lucknow or Delhi. No critical edition exists (Ahmed calls one ‘a desideratum’).

Editions

• Lahore, 1880, lithograph (University of Toronto copy, scanned)
• Lahore: Maṭbaʿ Rifāh-i ʿĀmm, 1317/1899–1900, lithograph (Digital Library of India, Maulana Azad Library AMU copy)
• Delhi: Maṭbaʿ-yi Mujtabāʾī, 1322/1904, with Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s Inṭāq al-fuhūm (Ahmed)
• Delhi: Maṭbaʿ-yi Mujtabāʾī, 1905, Majmūʿat al-Sullam with the gloss of Ḥāfiẓ Darāz (Ahmed)
• Kanpur: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Qawmiyya, n.d., with Barakat Allāh’s Iṣʿād al-fuhūm; the text used for Ahmed’s translation, ‘pervasively used’ in South Asian madrasas
• Most nineteenth-century lithographs print the matn with a commentary (Mubārak, Ḥamd Allāh, Mullā Ḥasan, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Fīrūz): see those entries

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Internet Archive: Sullam al-ʿulūm (Lahore, 1880)
• Internet Archive: Sullamul Uloom (Lahore: Matba Rifahul Aam, 1317)
• Internet Archive: Sullam al-ʿulūm maʿa ḥāshiyat Iṣʿād al-fuhūm
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:793, entry on Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Quoted by all the early commentators, by the earliest two with little attribution. Ahmed thinks it may have been written together with the text as a teaching companion and that it was meant to guide later commentators rather than solve the book’s difficulties; he quotes it on what makes a mental consideration true fī nafs al-amr. No print was found.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Covers only the part on assents; ʿArshī reports a very small part on the Taṣawwurāt, which Ahmed could not verify. Undated, but after Mubārak’s and in conversation with it. Nuzhat calls it the author’s most famous work, put into the teaching programme. The gateway to the Taṣdīqāt and the most glossed of all Sullam commentaries; an early self-commentary survives in the margins of early copies (Ahmed).

Editions

• Kanpur: Maṭbaʿ Muṣṭafāʾī, 1278/1861–62 (Digital Library of India, AMU copy)
• Kanpur, 1862, 2nd ed., ii + 232 pp., with Ilāhī Bakhsh al-Fayḍābādī’s al-Intibāh (British Library; Penn record)
• Lahore, 1892, 240 pp., with ʿAbd Allāh al-Tūnkī’s Taʿlīqāt al-Muftī (British Library; Penn record)
• Kanpur: Maṭbaʿ-yi Niẓāmī, 1328/1910, with Ilāhī Bakhsh (Ahmed)
• Lahore: Maṭbaʿ Islāmiyya, n.d., with al-Tūnkī’s notes (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:716, entry on Ḥamd Allāh al-Sandīlawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Hamidullah Sharah Sullamul Uloom (Kanpur: Matba Mustafai, 1278)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sullam al-ʿulūm with Ḥamd Allāh and al-Intibāh (Kanpur, 1862)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sullam al-ʿulūm with Ḥamd Allāh and Taʿlīqāt al-Muftī (Lahore, 1892)

Begun during the author’s studies (by 1118/1707), finished in Delhi on Thursday 7 Rabīʿ I 1143/1730 under Muḥammad Shāh, with the patronage of Nawwāb Sharīʿat Allāh Khān (Ahmed; Nuzhat). Nuzhat says the scholars put it into the teaching programme. Covers the whole Sullam; valued for its epistemology and ontology and drawing on Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn. One of the three ‘gateway’ commentaries; the Deobandi course lists it as ‘Sharh Sullam Qadi Mubarak or al-Munhiya’. Autographs with self-glosses in the Raza Library, Rampur.

Editions

• Lithograph dated 1265/1848–49 (Digital Library of India scan, ‘Sharḥ al-Sullam li-l-Qāḍī’)
• Kanpur, 1881: the Taṣawwurāt with Mubārak’s commentary and glosses and Turāb ʿAlī’s al-Bayān al-wāfī, 193 pp. (British Library; Penn record)
• al-Maṭbaʿa al-Malikiyya, 1887: Kitāb Sullam al-ʿulūm wa-ḥāshiyatuhu al-mashhūra bi-l-Qāḍī maʿa minhuyātihi (Ahmed)
• Quetta: Amīr Ḥamza Kutubkhāna, 1424/2003: Majmūʿat al-ḥawāshī, with ʿUbayd Allāh al-Qandahārī’s commentary (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:792, entry on Qāḍī Mubārak al-Gūpāmawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Sharhus Sullam lil-Qazi (1265)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sullam al-ʿulūm with Manhīyāt and al-Bayān al-wāfī (Kanpur, 1881)
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139

Completed 1136/1723–24; the author began with the Taṣdīqāt and only then commented on the Taṣawwurāt, and wrote a partial self-commentary. He was a grandson of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī. Manuscript: Rampur, Raza Library MS 3402/1815D. His grandson Walī Allāh wrote a completion (takmila) of it (Nuzhat 7:1135).

Editions

• Lucknow: Maṭbaʿ Yūsufī, n.d.: ‘Taṣawwurāt sharḥ al-Sullam’ by Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq (Digital Library of India, AMU copy); identity with Suddat al-ʿulūm assumed, not checked

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:695, entry on Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Laknawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Tasawwurat Sharah al-Sullam, Ahmad Abdul Haq (Lucknow: Matba Yusafi)

Partial commentary (ʿArshī, Rampur catalogue 4:390–91, cited by Ahmed). Kamāl al-Dīn taught Ḥamd Allāh, Mullā Ḥasan, Muḥammad Walī and Baḥr al-ʿUlūm and is, for Ahmed, the central node of the second phase of the tradition.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:789, entry on Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fatiḥpūrī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

An independent handbook of logic (‘matn matīn fī al-manṭiq’, Nuzhat), which Ahmed describes as taking a critical approach to the Sullam. Walī Allāh al-Laknawī wrote a commentary on it.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:813, entry on Mullā Ḥasan (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Composed 1155/1742 (Ahmed). Great-grandson of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī, student of Kamāl al-Dīn and Niẓām al-Dīn, qāḍī of Mallāwah, later teacher in Lucknow; brother of Mullā Ḥasan.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:842, entry on al-Qāḍī Muḥammad Walī al-Laknawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

A ‘sharḥ basīṭ’ (Nuzhat). The author studied at Gūpāmaw and Khayrābād and taught at Mallānwa.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:829, entry on Muḥammad ʿAẓīm al-Mallānawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Dated 1177/1763–64; on the Taṣawwurāt only. After Mubārak and Ḥamd Allāh the most glossed commentary. Nuzhat says the scholars received it with acceptance. The Deobandi course lists it as ‘Sharh Sullam al-Ulum or Mulla Hasan’.

Editions

• Kanpur: Maṭbaʿ Niẓāmī, 1286/1869–70 (Digital Library of India, AMU copy)
• Kanpur, [1870], 272 pp., with ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm’s al-Qawl al-aslam and ʿAbd al-Ḥayy’s Ḥall al-mughlaq (British Library; Penn record)
• Karachi: Ḍiyāʾ al-Islām, n.d. (Ahmed)
• Karachi: Qadīmī Kutubkhāna, n.d., with Muḥammad Yūsuf b. Aṣghar’s commentary (Ahmed)
• Modern Indian edition, n.d. (scan)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:813, entry on Mullā Ḥasan (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Sharah Sullamul Uloom, Mulla Hasan (Kanpur: Matba Nizami, 1286)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sharḥ Mullā Ḥasan lil-Sullam (Kanpur, 1870)
• Internet Archive: Mullā Ḥasan sharḥ Sullam al-ʿulūm (modern edition)

By a student and in-law of Ḥamd Allāh (Ahmed); Nuzhat calls it a ‘sharḥ basīṭ’. Manuscript: Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, Lucknow, MS 824; another copy among the Ministry of Culture scans.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:696, entry on al-Qāḍī Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Sandīlawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Sharh Sullam al-Ulum, Ahmad Ali al-Sandili

Partial commentary (Nuzhat; Ahmed). Ahmed notes that from the late 12th/18th century many commentaries stopped at the conditionals.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:998, entry on ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ al-Qannawjī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Completed 1200/1786, at the request of his nephew Walī Allāh (Ahmed). Covers the whole Sullam and the debates around it; ‘arguably the most lucid and extended exposition’ (Ahmed), and for that reason little used in class (the pun ‘Mubīnrā mabīn chūn mubīn’). Ahmed’s notes to his translation rely mainly on it. TDV lists it.

Editions

• [Lucknow], 1871, 2 parts (British Library; Penn record)
• 1299/1882, Taṣawwurāt (Digital Library of India scans)
• 1896 (Digital Library of India scan)
• Maṭbaʿ al-Saʿāda, 1321/1903, 2 vols. (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:1077, entry on Mullā Mubīn (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Mirʾāt al-shurūḥ (1871)
• Internet Archive: Sharah Sullam Mulla Mubeen Tasawwurat: Miratus Shuruh (1882)
• Internet Archive: Tasawwurat Shraah Sullam Mulla Mubeen (1896)
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139

Written in the author’s youth, probably in Lucknow before ca. 1167/1754. Received practically no glosses from teachers; Ahmed thinks its later standing owes much to print. Engages ontology heavily and refers to his metaphysical work al-ʿUjāla al-nāfiʿa.

Editions

• Delhi, 1861 (TDV)
• Delhi: Maṭbaʿ-yi Mujtabāʾī, 1309/1892, 276 pp., with the Minhuyāt and glosses by Muḥammad Ilyās al-Pishāwarī and Khalīl Aḥmad al-Sanbhalī (British Library; Penn record; DLI copy catalogued 1891)
• Kuwait: Dār al-Ḍiyāʾ, 2012, ed. ʿAbd al-Naṣīr Aḥmad al-Malībārī (Ahmed)
• A copy dated 1204 AH is among the Indian Ministry of Culture scans

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Metin Yurdagür, ‘Bahrülulûm el-Leknevî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 4 (1991), 518–519
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:1022–23, entry on ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sharḥ Sullam Baḥr al-ʿUlūm maʿa Manhīyāt (Delhi, 1892)
• Internet Archive: Sharah Sullam Bahrul Uloom ma Manhiyyat (Delhi: Matba Mujtabai)
• Internet Archive: Sharh Sullam al-Ulum, Bahr al-Ulum (copy dated 1204 AH)

Partial commentary, up to the passage ‘He is neither defined nor conceptualized’ (Nuzhat). The author, a student of Mullā Ḥasan and Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, headed teaching in Rampur.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:986, entry on al-Muftī Sharaf al-Dīn al-Rāmpūrī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

The author studied in Delhi and in Lucknow with Anwār al-Ḥaqq and Nūr al-Ḥaqq of Farangī Maḥall.

Editions

• Delhi: al-Maṭbaʿ al-Aḥmadī, 1270/1853–54 (Ahmed; Nuzhat; Digital Library of India scan)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:958, entry on Ḥanīf al-Dhamtūrī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Tanveerus Sullam (sharah Sullam), Mohammad Haneef (1270)

Short annotations on certain passages of the Sullam. The attribution differs between the British Library catalogue (ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm) and the TDV (Muḥammad Ḥasan, i.e. perhaps Mullā Ḥasan).

Editions

• Kanpur, [1870], 6 pp. (British Library; Penn record)

Sources

• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): al-Aqwāl al-arbaʿa fī radd al-shubuhāt al-mūrada (Kanpur, 1870)
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139

The only Pashto commentary noted by Ahmed (after Fuyūḍ al-Raḥmān, Mashāhīr-i ʿulamāʾ-i sarḥad).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Listed by Ahmed among the last first-order commentaries of the Farangī Maḥall line. See also his treatise Ḥall al-mughlaq.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

On the Sullam’s puzzle of the ‘absolutely unknown’; written, he says, when his student reached that discussion (Ahmed).

Editions

• Kanpur: Maṭbaʿ-yi Niẓāmī, 1286/1869–70 (Ahmed)
• Kanpur, [1870], appended to Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary (Penn record)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sharḥ Mullā Ḥasan lil-Sullam … followed by Ḥall al-mughlaq (Kanpur, 1870)

According to a note in the print, written so that it could accompany the press’s edition of the Sullam (Ahmed). The TDV lists it as İntâḳu’l-mefhûm.

Editions

• Delhi: Maṭbaʿ-yi Mujtabāʾī, 1322/1904, with the matn

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139

One of the earliest Deobandi commentaries, first quarter of the 14th/20th century (Ahmed).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Ahmed calls it ‘the latest non-mamzūj text-cum-commentary of the Sullam to gain wide acceptance in South Asia’ and used it as the base text of his translation. Barakat Allāh also commented on Ḥamd Allāh and Mullā Ḥasan.

Editions

• Kanpur: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Qawmiyya, n.d., lithograph with the matn (Ahmed; scan)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Internet Archive: Sullam al-ʿulūm maʿa ḥāshiyat Iṣʿād al-fuhūm

By a Deoband teacher who was a student of a student of Faḍl-i Ḥaqq al-Khayrābādī. Ahmed calls it ‘highly influential’ and ‘regularly used in South Asian madāris’. Language not checked; Ahmed implies Arabic.

Editions

• Multan: Maktaba Ḥaqqāniyya, n.d. (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Deobandi commentary in Urdu (Ahmed). Ahmed’s bibliography lists Ḍumām al-fuhūm under al-Pishāwarī, but his note and the Penn catalogue credit it to Mumtāz al-Dīn; see that entry.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Deobandi commentary (Ahmed).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Urdu commentary by a Deobandi scholar.

Editions

• Gujranwala: al-Maktaba al-Sharʿiyya, 1422/2002 (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Listed by Ahmed with the remark that nothing more is known about the author, probably of the Kirānawī cousins of Kamāl al-Dīn al-Sihālawī.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

By a student of Ghulām Ḥusayn Ilāhābādī; manuscript Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, MS Manṭiq 109/6501 (Ahmed).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Minor commentary by a student of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Rāmpūrī and Mullā Ḥasan, later qāḍī in Tonk (Ahmed). See also his treatise on the liar paradox.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Deobandi Urdu commentary (Ahmed).

Editions

• Dhaka: Imdādiyya Library, 1947–61 (Ahmed)
• [n.p., 196-?], 169 pp., Arabic text with Urdu commentary (Penn record)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Penn Libraries catalogue (Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library): Sullam al-ʿulūm with Mumtāz al-Dīn’s Ẓumām al-fuhūm

Urdu commentary based on the lessons of a senior teacher of the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband. The death year of Pālanpūrī is not given in the sources consulted here and should be checked.

Editions

• Deoband: Maktabat Ḥijāz, 1433/2012 (Ahmed); the scanned copy is dated 2013 and opens with an account of al-Bihārī’s life

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Internet Archive: Irshad ul Fuhoom, Urdu sharh Sullam ul Uloom

The learned culture of Lucknow, 15th–20th centuries; cited by Ahmed for the careers of Farangī Maḥall scholars.

Editions

• Leiden: Brill (Islamic History and Civilization 19), 1997

Sources

• Lehmanns, publisher’s description
• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Urdu commentary.

Editions

• Karachi: Majlis-i Nashriyāt-i Islām, ca. 1400/1980 (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Editions

• Journal of South Asian Intellectual History 1.2 (2018), 183–220

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• David Sanson, ‘The Liar Paradox in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy’, SEP (2026), bibliography

Urdu commentary.

Editions

• Karachi: Maṭbaʿ-yi ʿUmar Fārūq, 1422/2001–02 (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Includes trees of the teacher–student lines behind the commentaries.

Editions

• In M. Cook et al. (eds.), Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 227–45

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Deobandi Urdu commentary.

Editions

• Karachi: Qadīmī Kutubkhāna, n.d. (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Written after 1121/1709, when the author was eighteen (Nuzhat; Ahmed). Born and raised in Dhaka, trained in Delhi, died young and was buried in Dhaka. Manuscript: Rampur, Raza Library MS 3401/8196M. TDV lists it among the commentaries.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:831, entry on Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Jawnpūrī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Rahmi Yaran, ‘Bihârî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 6 (1992), 139

The main study: history of the commentaries and their networks (ch. 1), contents and orientation of the Sullam (ch. 2), a theory of the commentary based on the Rampur debate of 1916 and the Sullam tradition (ch. 3–4). Reviewed by Yusuf Daşdemir, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi 56 (2026).

Editions

• University of California Press, 2022 (open access)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Yusuf Daşdemir, review, İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi 56 (2026)

Editions

• Oriens 41.3–4 (2013), 317–48

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Composed 1150/1737–38 according to Nuzhat, 1151/1739 according to Ahmed (who notes Wisnovsky’s dating to 1146–1150). The author, from Bengal, studied with Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, a student of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Gūpāmawī. A copy dated 1270 AH is among the Indian Ministry of Culture scans.

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:803, entry on Mullā Muḥammad Ashraf (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)
• Internet Archive: Sharh Sullam al-Ulum, Muhammad Ashraf al-Barduwani (copy dated 1270 AH)

A ‘sharḥ basīṭ’; Nuzhat quotes Muftī Walī Allāh’s Tārīkh Farrukhābād that it is ‘the best of the commentaries’. The author studied with Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shamsābādī and was qāḍī of Mārahra. Not in Ahmed’s survey.

Sources

• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:788, entry on al-Qāḍī Qawām al-Dīn al-Mārahrawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Recorded in Nuzhat after Tārīkh Farrukhābād; the author studied with Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shamsābādī and was qāḍī of Farrukhabad. Not in Ahmed’s survey.

Sources

• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 6:845, entry on al-Qāḍī Murabbī al-Bhānawī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

On the part on assents; the author was a student of ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ al-Qannawjī (Nuzhat, after Abjad al-ʿulūm; Ahmed).

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• Nuzhat al-khawāṭir 7:1126, entry on Naʿīm al-Dīn al-Qannawjī (al-Maktaba al-Shāmila)

Treatise on the liar paradox as treated in the Sullam.

Editions

• al-Maṭbaʿ al-Ḥanafī, 1268/1851–52 (Ahmed)

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

Discusses Indian logic of the 17th–18th centuries, including Qāḍī Mubārak’s teachers and Mullā Ḥasan’s defence of al-Dawānī on the liar (as cited by Ahmed); Sanson’s SEP entry cites it for al-Bihārī’s treatment of the liar.

Editions

• Basel: Schwabe, 2019

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• David Sanson, ‘The Liar Paradox in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy’, SEP (2026)

First full English translation, with extended explanatory notes drawn mainly from Mullā Mubīn’s Mirʾāt al-shurūḥ; based on the text printed with Barakat Allāh’s Iṣʿād al-fuhūm.

Editions

• Oakland: University of California Press (Berkeley Series in Postclassical Islamic Scholarship 5), 2022, ISBN 978-0-520-34465-5; open access (Luminos), DOI 10.1525/luminos.127

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography
• OAPEN Library record

On the name jadhr al-aṣamm and the later reception of the liar, including the Indo-Muslim tradition.

Editions

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 21 May 2026

Sources

• SEP entry

Editions

• In K. El-Rouayheb and S. Schmidtke (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 488–508

Sources

• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography

History of the family to whose network most early Sullam commentators belonged.

Editions

• Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001; London: C. Hurst, 2001

Sources

• CiNii record
• Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves (University of California Press, 2022), ch. 1 and bibliography