160 scholars
الأَعْلام
Scholars
The logicians, commentators, teachers and modern scholars of manṭiq, from the Greek and late-antique sources to today, by the century they died in.
No scholar matches.
4th century BCE
3rd century BCE
3rd century
- Alexander of Aphrodisias · early 3rd century CEالإِسْكَنْدَرُ الأَفْرُودِيسِيُّCommentators — Peripatetic philosopher and commentator on Aristotle, active around 200 CE, whose works were widely translated into Arabic; al-Fārābī had logical writings of his in translation, and his essay On the Conversion of Propositions survives only in Arabic.
- Galen · ca. 200 CEجَالِينُوسForerunners — Greek physician and philosopher who also wrote on logic; his great work On Demonstration is known largely through Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq, al-Fārābī argued against him on modal logic, and the fourth figure of the syllogism came to be attributed to him.
4th century
- Porphyry · ca. 305 CEفُرْفُورِيُوسForerunners — Neoplatonist philosopher whose short Introduction (Eisagōgē) to Aristotle’s Categories gave the Īsāghūjī its name and its first subject, the five universals.
- Themistius · ca. 388 CEثَامِسْطِيُوسCommentators — Philosopher and orator of Constantinople whose paraphrases of Aristotle were read in Arabic; Abū Bishr Mattā translated his paraphrase of the Posterior Analytics, and his reply to Maximus on reducing the second and third figures to the first survives only in Arabic.
6th century
- Ammonius · ca. 517–526 CECommentators · Teachers — Neoplatonist teacher at Alexandria, pupil of Proclus, who established the Alexandrian tradition of commentary on Aristotle and the course that opened with Porphyry’s Isagoge; the Fihrist knows his commentaries on the Categories and the Topics.
- Boethius · ca. 524–526 CETranslators · Commentators — Roman statesman and philosopher whose Latin translation of and two commentaries on the Isagoge made Porphyry’s book the first text of logic in the medieval West.
- Paul the Persian · 6th century CEForerunners — Sixth-century scholar at the Sasanian court whose treatise on Aristotle’s logic, addressed to Khusraw I Anūshirwān, brought the Alexandrian introduction to philosophy and logic into the Persian world; Miskawayh quotes him, and his division of philosophy influenced the early Islamic philosophers.
- Sergius · 536 CETranslators · Commentators — Syriac physician, educated at Alexandria, who translated Galen and other Greek works into Syriac and wrote Syriac treatises on Aristotle’s Categories and on the aim of Aristotle’s writings, early links in the chain that carried Greek logic and medicine to Baghdad.
- Elias · late 6th century CECommentators — The name under which a sixth-century Alexandrian course on Porphyry’s Isagoge, with twelve introductory lectures on philosophy, has come down; with the parallel commentary of David it shows the form of the logic course that the Syriac and Arabic schools continued.
- Simplicius · ca. 560 CECommentators — Neoplatonist commentator, pupil of Ammonius and Damascius, whose long commentary on Aristotle’s Categories was known in Arabic to the Baghdad logician Ibn Suwār.
- Olympiodorus · ca. 570 CECommentators · Teachers — Holder of the chair of philosophy at Alexandria in the mid-sixth century and heir of Ammonius, whose Prolegomena to logic and teaching method were followed by the commentaries under the names of Elias and David; the Syriac and Arabic scholars knew some of his commentaries.
- John Philoponus · ca. 570 CEيَحْيَى النَّحْوِيُّCommentators — Christian scholar of Alexandria and pupil of Ammonius, whose commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works were translated into Arabic, and whose arguments against the eternity of the world were taken up by al-Kindī and the theologians; the Arabs called him Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī.
2nd/8th century
3rd/9th century
- al-Kindī · ca. 252/866أَبُو يُوسُفَ يَعْقُوبُForerunners — The first philosopher of Islam, at the centre of a circle of translators in ninth-century Baghdad, who wrote the first original Arabic works on logic, among them an overview of the Organon and an abridgement of Porphyry’s Isagoge.
- Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq · 260/873أَبُو زَيْدٍ حُنَيْنُTranslators · Forerunners — Nestorian Christian physician and the most famous translator of ninth-century Baghdad, who with his son Isḥāq and their circle produced complete Arabic versions of books of Aristotle’s Organon.
4th/10th century
- Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn · 298/910أَبُو يَعْقُوبَ إِسْحَاقُTranslators — Son and collaborator of Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq, who turned from medicine to philosophy and translated, among much else, Aristotle’s On Interpretation and revised the Arabic Topics and Rhetoric.
- Abū ʿUthmān al-Dimashqī · 302/914أَبُو عُثْمَانَ سَعِيدُTranslators — Physician and translator in Baghdad whose Arabic version of Porphyry’s Isagoge is the only one that survives complete.
- Abū Bishr Mattā · 328/940أَبُو بِشْرٍ مَتَّىTranslators · Commentators · Teachers — Nestorian Christian logician of Baghdad who translated Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Poetics into Arabic from Syriac, taught al-Fārābī and Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, and is remembered for his debate with the grammarian al-Sīrāfī on logic and grammar.
- al-Fārābī · 339/950–1أَبُو نَصْرٍ مُحَمَّدُForerunners · Commentators — The leading Arabic Aristotelian of the tenth century, who wrote his own Kitāb Īsāghūjī ay al-Madkhal on the five universals.
- Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī · 364/975أَبُو زَكَرِيَّا يَحْيَىTranslators · Author · Teachers — Jacobite Christian philosopher and logician of Baghdad, student of Abū Bishr Mattā and al-Fārābī and, after al-Fārābī, head of the Baghdad school of logic, who translated and commented on books of the Organon.
- al-Sīrāfī · 368/979أَبُو سَعِيدٍ الحَسَنُVoices on logic · Teachers — Grammarian of the Basran school and Ḥanafī jurist of Baghdad, remembered in the history of logic for his debate with the logician Abū Bishr Mattā on whether speakers of Arabic need Greek logic.
5th/11th century
6th/12th century
- al-Ghazālī · 505/1111أَبُو حَامِدٍ مُحَمَّدُVoices on logic — Shāfiʿī jurist and Ashʿarī theologian whose endorsement of logic as a neutral tool, needed by every scholar, opened the way for logic to become a normal part of Sunni learning.
- Ibn Rushd · 595/1198أَبُو الوَلِيدِ مُحَمَّدُCommentators · Forerunners — Andalusian philosopher, judge and physician, ‘the Commentator’ on Aristotle, the last great representative of the text-based logic of al-Fārābī, read afterwards mainly in North Africa and in Hebrew and Latin.
7th/13th century
- Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī · 606/1210أَبُو عَبْدِ اللهِForerunners · Author · Teachers — Ashʿarī theologian, exegete and philosopher who criticised and reshaped Ibn Sīnā’s logic; Ibn Khaldūn names him as the first author of the new logic of the later handbooks, and al-Kātibī wrote commentaries on his al-Mulakhkhaṣ and al-Muḥaṣṣal.
- Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ · 643/1245أَبُو عَمْرٍو تَقِيُّVoices on logic — Shāfiʿī hadith scholar of Damascus whose fatwa declaring the study of logic impermissible is the best-known statement of the opposing view; al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam names him first among those who forbade it.
- al-Khūnajī · 646/1248أَفْضَلُ الدِّينِ أَبُوAuthor · Forerunners · Teachers — Logician, physician and Shāfiʿī judge in Cairo whose Kashf al-asrār reshaped the logic of Ibn Sīnā and set the agenda for al-Abharī, al-Kātibī and the later madrasa handbooks.
- al-Abharī · 663/1265أَثِيرُ الدِّينِ المُفَضَّلُAuthor · Teachers — Logician, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician of the seventh/thirteenth century who wrote the Īsāghūjī, the short treatise that became the first logic book of the madrasas.
- Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī · 672/1274نَصِيرُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُAuthor · Commentators · Teachers — Persian philosopher, Shīʿī theologian and astronomer, founder of the Maragha observatory, who defended Ibn Sīnā’s logic against the innovations of al-Khūnajī, al-Abharī and al-Kātibī.
- al-Kātibī · 675/1277نَجْمُ الدِّينِ أَبُوAuthor · Teachers — Persian logician of the Maragha circle, pupil of al-Abharī, whose al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya became, with the Īsāghūjī, one of the two mainstays of madrasa logic.
- al-Nawawī · 676/1277أَبُو زَكَرِيَّا مُحْيِيVoices on logic — The leading Shāfiʿī scholar of thirteenth-century Damascus, named with Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ in al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam as one of those who held the study of logic to be forbidden.
- al-Urmawī · 682/1283أَبُو الثَّنَاءِ سِرَاجُAuthor · Teachers — Shāfiʿī jurist and logician of Mosul, Egypt and Seljuk Konya, author of Maṭāliʿ al-anwār, which with Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary became an advanced logic text of the Ottoman, Safavid and Indian madrasas.
- Ṣāḥib-dīwān Shams al-Dīn Juwaynī · 683/1284شَمْسُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُForerunners — Head of the civil administration (ṣāḥib-dīwān) of the Mongol Ilkhans for more than twenty years and patron of scholars, for whom al-Kātibī wrote al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya and after whom it is named.
8th/14th century
- Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī · 702/1303شَمْسُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُAuthor — Logician, theologian and mathematician of the late thirteenth century whose Qisṭās al-afkār ended with a section on the etiquette of debate, and whose short treatise on ādāb al-baḥth became the founding text of that discipline in the madrasas.
- Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī · 710/1311قُطْبُ الدِّينِ مَحْمُودُTeachers — Philosopher, astronomer and physician of the Ilkhanid period, a pupil of al-Kātibī and al-Ṭūsī and one of the teachers of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.
- al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī · 726/1325جَمَالُ الدِّينِ الحَسَنُCommentators · Teachers — The leading Imāmī scholar of his age, a pupil of al-Ṭūsī and al-Kātibī, who wrote the first commentary on the Shamsiyya, al-Qawāʿid al-jaliyya, and taught Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.
- Ibn Taymiyya · 728/1328تَقِيُّ الدِّينِ أَحْمَدُVoices on logic — Ḥanbalī theologian and jurist who wrote the most thorough critique of Aristotelian logic in Arabic, al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn.
- al-ʿAḍud · 756/1355عَضُدُ الدِّينِ عَبْدُTeachers · Author — Ashʿarī theologian, legal theorist and judge of Ilkhanid and Injuid Iran, author of al-Mawāqif, whose short treatises on disputation and on semantics became madrasa texts and whose pupils are said to have included al-Taftāzānī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.
- al-Kātī · 760/1358–9حُسَامُ الدِّينِ الحَسَنُCommentators — Author of one of the earliest known commentaries on the Īsāghūjī: a short ‘he said – I say’ commentary that became a standard companion to the text in Ottoman madrasas and the base for many glosses.
- Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī · 766/1365قُطْبُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُCommentators · Teachers — Logician of the fourteenth century whose commentaries on the Shamsiyya (Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya, ‘the Quṭbī’) and on the Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (Lawāmiʿ al-asrār) became the core intermediate logic texts of the madrasas from the Ottoman lands to India.
- Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī · 771/1370تَاجُ الدِّينِ أَبُوVoices on logic — Shāfiʿī jurist, legal theorist and biographer of Damascus whose comparison of logic to a sword, quoted by later jurists, became a standard argument for permitting its study.
- Ibn Mubārakshāh · 784/1382مِيرَكُ شَمْسُ الدِّينِCommentators · Teachers — Pupil of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī and teacher of al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī in Cairo, whose commentaries on al-Kātibī’s Ḥikmat al-ʿayn and al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma became school texts.
- al-Taftāzānī · 792/1390سَعْدُ الدِّينِ مَسْعُودُAuthor · Commentators · Teachers — Khurasanī scholar of the eighth/fourteenth century whose Tahdhīb al-manṭiq wa-l-kalām became a standard logic primer, and whose books on rhetoric, theology and legal theory were read in madrasas from Istanbul to India.
9th/15th century
- Ibn Khaldūn · 808/1406عَبْدُ الرَّحْمٰنِ ابْنُVoices on logic — North African historian, judge and author of the Muqaddima, whose chapters on the sciences describe the post-Avicennan transformation of logic and treat logic as an auxiliary science.
- al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī · 816/1413السَّيِّدُ الشَّرِيفُ عَلِيُّGlossators · Author · Teachers — Theologian, grammarian and logician whose gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya became a curriculum book in its own right, and whose Persian primers, the Ṣughrā and the Kubrā, opened the logic course of the Persian-speaking world and India.
- al-Fanārī · 834/1431شَمْسُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُCommentators · Teachers — Early Ottoman scholar and the first holder of the office of müftü in the Ottoman capital, whose commentary al-Fawāʾid al-Fanāriyya became one of the two most famous commentaries on the Īsāghūjī.
- ʿImād al-Fārisī · 850/1446عِمَادُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدِGlossators — Persian scholar of Herat whose gloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Quṭbī, nicknamed Qara Ḥāshiya, ‘the black gloss’, for its obscurity, was read and printed in the Ottoman lands.
- Mawlānā Qaraja Aḥmad · 854/1450شَمْسُ الدِّينِ قَرَهGlossators — Fifteenth-century scholar who wrote one of the early glosses on al-Kātī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī.
- ʿAlī al-ʿAjamī · 860/1456سَيِّدِي عَلِيٌّ العَجَمِيُّGlossators · Teachers — Eastern scholar, reportedly a student of al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, who settled in the Ottoman lands under Murād II and wrote a gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya and al-Jurjānī’s gloss on it.
- al-Maḥallī · 864/1459جَلَالُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُCommentators · Teachers — Egyptian Shāfiʿī jurist and exegete, co-author of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, who began a commentary on the Shamsiyya that he did not finish.
- Muṣannifak · 875/1470عَلَاءُ الدِّينِ عَلِيُّCommentators · Teachers — Persian-born scholar of the early Ottoman madrasas, a descendant of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, who taught in Konya, Bursa and Istanbul and wrote a Persian commentary on the Shamsiyya.
- al-Tālishī · 884/1479مُحْيِي الدِّينِ التَّالِشِيّGlossators — Author of one of the earliest and most widely read glosses on al-Kātī’s commentary, long part of the madrasa curriculum in Anatolia.
- al-Biqāʿī · 885/1480أَبُو الحَسَنِ بُرْهَانُAuthor · Voices on logic — Mamluk-era scholar, best known for his Qurʾān commentary on the coherence of verses and suras, who read al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya in 828/1425 and wrote an enlarged recension of the Īsāghūjī.
- al-Sanūsī · 895/1490مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ يُوسُفَCommentators — The great Ashʿarī theologian of Tlemcen, author of Umm al-Barāhīn, who also wrote a commentary on the Īsāghūjī, first printed in 2025.
- Mīr Ṣadr al-Dīn · 903/1498صَدْرُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدٌGlossators · Teachers — Philosopher of Shiraz, founder of the Dashtakī line of rational scholarship and rival of al-Dawānī, who glossed al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Quṭbī as far as the chapter on definition and wrote glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentaries on the Shamsiyya and the Maṭāliʿ.
10th/16th century
- al-Muḥaqqiq al-Dawānī · 908/1502جَلَالُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُCommentators · Glossators · Teachers — Persian theologian, philosopher and logician of Shiraz whose unfinished commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb, with the glosses of Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ and Mīr Zāhid, became the advanced route through the book in Iran, the Ottoman lands and India.
- al-Maghīlī · 909/1503–4أَبُو عَبْدِ اللهِVoices on logic — Mālikī jurist of the Maghrib and the Sahara who, in al-Suyūṭī’s lifetime, disputed his prohibition of logic in verse and in a treatise widely read in West Africa.
- Qāḍī Mīr · 909/1503–4القَاضِي مِير حُسَيْنCommentators · Teachers — Sunnī philosopher and judge of Yazd, pupil of al-Dawānī, whose commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma (‘Qāḍī Mīr’) was a madrasa textbook from Istanbul to India, and who also wrote a commentary on the Shamsiyya.
- al-Suyūṭī · 911/1505جَلَالُ الدِّينِ أَبُوVoices on logic · Author — Egyptian Shāfiʿī polymath of the late Mamluk period, the most prolific author of his age, who abridged Ibn Taymiyya’s refutation of the logicians and declared the study of logic forbidden.
- Shaykh al-Islām Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī · 926/1520زَكَرِيَّا بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍCommentators · Teachers — Leading Shāfiʿī jurist of late Mamluk Cairo, whose commentary al-Maṭlaʿ was printed many times in Egypt and attracted glosses by Egyptian scholars.
- al-Bardaʿī · 927/1521مُحْيِي الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُGlossators — Author of a well-known gloss on al-Kātī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī, itself glossed by later scholars.
- Ḥakīm Shāh al-Qazwīnī · 929/1523حَكِيم شَاه مُحَمَّدُCommentators — Scholar trained in Shiraz who became a physician at the Ottoman court and whom the reference works list among the commentators on the Īsāghūjī.
- ʿIṣām al-Dīn · 944/1537عِصَامُ الدِّينِ إِبْرَاهِيمُGlossators · Commentators · Teachers — Khurasanian master of grammar, rhetoric, logic and theology, whose glosses on standard madrasa texts, among them Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya, were printed in Istanbul and Cairo.
- al-ʿAṭūfī · 948/1541خَيْرُ الدِّينِ خِضْرُCommentators · Teachers — Ottoman teacher and preacher of the early sixteenth century whom Ḥājjī Khalīfa and TDV list among the commentators on the Īsāghūjī.
- Kara Dâvud · 948/1541قَرَه دَاوُد بْنُGlossators · Teachers — Ottoman professor and judge of Bursa to whom the TDV and Brockelmann ascribe the gloss on al-Jurjānī’s ‘small gloss’ on the Quṭbī that Ottoman medreses read with the Shamsiyya; Ḥājjī Khalīfa ascribes it to an earlier Qara Dāwūd.
- Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr · 949/1542غِيَاثُ الدِّينِ مَنْصُورُGlossators · Teachers — Philosopher of Shiraz and head of the Manṣūriyya madrasa who carried on his father’s quarrel with al-Dawānī in a series of refutations, among them glosses against al-Dawānī’s writings on the Shamsiyya commentary and the Tahdhīb.
- Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ · 950/1543مِير أَبُو الفَتْحِGlossators · Commentators — 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’.
- Qul Aḥmad · ca. 950/1543قُولْ أَحْمَدُ بْنُGlossators — Ottoman scholar whose gloss on al-Fanārī’s commentary became so closely tied to it that the two were read, printed and named together (‘Fanārī and Qul Aḥmad’).
- Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ramlī · 957/1550شِهَابُ الدِّينِ أَحْمَدُVoices on logic · Teachers — Egyptian Shāfiʿī jurist, student of Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, whose fatwā gave the standard summary of the three positions on studying logic.
- Taşköprüzâde · 968/1561عِصَامُ الدِّينِ أَبُوAuthor · Teachers — Ottoman scholar and judge, author of the encyclopaedia of the sciences Miftāḥ al-saʿāda and the biographical dictionary al-Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmāniyya, whose autobiography records the logic books an Ottoman student read.
- Sürûrî · 969/1562مُصْلِحُ الدِّينِ مُصْطَفَىGlossators · Teachers — Prolific Ottoman scholar, Sufi and poet, tutor of Prince Mustafa, who wrote a gloss on al-Kātī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī.
- Ibn Nujaym · 970/1563زَيْنُ الدِّينِ بْنُVoices on logic — Egyptian Ḥanafī jurist, author of al-Ashbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir, who counted logic, as part of philosophy, among the forbidden sciences, a view his own commentators rejected.
- Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī · 974/1567شِهَابُ الدِّينِ أَحْمَدُVoices on logic — Egyptian-born Shāfiʿī jurist of Mecca whose fatwā declared the learning and teaching of logic a collective religious duty.
- Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Yazdī · 981/1573نَجْمُ الدِّينِ عَبْدُCommentators · Teachers — Safavid-era scholar whose commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb al-manṭiq, finished in Najaf in 967/1560, became the standard way into the book in Iran, Iraq and South Asia; The Mantiqi reads it at level 4.
- al-Akhḍarī · 983/1575–76أَبُو زَيْدٍ عَبْدُVersifiers · Commentators — Algerian Mālikī scholar and poet who turned the Īsāghūjī into the rajaz poem al-Sullam al-munawraq, the most widely memorised logic primer in North Africa, Egypt and South-East Asia.
- Fatḥ Allāh Shīrāzī · 997/1589مِيرْ فَتْحُ اللهِTeachers · Glossators — Iranian polymath who came to Akbar’s court in 1583 and is credited with bringing the rational sciences, logic among them, into the madrasa course of Mughal India.
11th/17th century
- Shaykh Bahāʾī · 1031/1622بَهَاءُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُTeachers — Leading scholar of Safavid Iran, Shaykh al-Islām under Shāh ʿAbbās I, mathematician and poet, who read Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn with ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī and received an ijāza from him.
- Mīr Dāmād · 1041/1631مِير مُحَمَّد بَاقِرForerunners · Teachers — Safavid philosopher of Isfahan, teacher of Mullā Ṣadrā, whose difficult al-Ufuq al-mubīn lies beneath some of the solutions of Sullam al-ʿulūm and much of Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary, and was taught by the Khayrābādī scholars in India.
- Tommaso Obicini of Novara · 1632Translators · Editors — Franciscan Orientalist who printed the Arabic text of the Īsāghūjī with a Latin translation in Rome in 1625, the first printed edition of the book.
- al-Busnawī · 1045/1635–36مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ مُوسَىCommentators · Teachers — Bosnian Ottoman scholar and judge, author of a commentary interwoven with the text (sharḥ mamzūj) on al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya.
- al-Khabīṣī · 1050/1640عُبَيْدُ اللهِ بْنُCommentators — Author of al-Tadhhīb, a mixed commentary of middle length on the logic of al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb that became the usual commentary on the book in Egypt and al-Azhar.
- Saʿīd Qaddūra · 1066/1656أَبُو عُثْمَانَ سَعِيدُCommentators · Teachers — Mālikī muftī of Algiers and administrator of the endowments of its Great Mosque, whose commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam was the first major Maghribī commentary after the author’s own and was printed in Cairo and Fez.
- Kâtip Çelebi · 1067/1657مُصْطَفَى بْنُ عَبْدِTeachers · Voices on logic — Ottoman bibliographer, historian and geographer whose Kashf al-ẓunūn is the main early catalogue of the commentaries on the logic textbooks, and who taught logic himself while lamenting the decline of the rational sciences.
- al-Siyālkūtī · 1067/1657عَبْدُ الحَكِيمِ بْنُGlossators · Teachers — Mughal scholar of Sialkot, known as Malik al-ʿulamāʾ, whose glosses on the classic commentaries in logic, theology and rhetoric were read from India to Istanbul, above all his gloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Quṭbī.
- al-Qalyūbī · 1069/1659شِهَابُ الدِّينِ أَحْمَدُGlossators · Teachers — Shāfiʿī jurist of al-Azhar who, among many other works, wrote a gloss on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī.
- Dominicus Germanus · 26 or 28 September 1670Translators — Franciscan Orientalist, pupil of Tommaso Obicini, whose Latin translation of al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, ‘Logica Solana’, survives in manuscript in the Escorial.
- Mīr Zāhid · 1101/1689–90القَاضِي مُحَمَّدُ زَاهِدُGlossators · Teachers — Mughal scholar and official whose glosses on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb (‘Mullā Jalāl’), on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s treatise on conception and assent, and on the commentary on the Mawāqif became core advanced books of the Indian Dars-i Niẓāmī.
- al-Yūsī · 1102/1691أَبُو عَلِيٍّ الحَسَنُCommentators · Teachers · Voices on logic — Moroccan Mālikī scholar, regarded as the greatest Maghribī scholar of the seventeenth century, who glossed al-Sanūsī’s logic and theology and answered al-Suyūṭī’s case against logic.
- Mullā Quṭb al-Dīn Sihālawī · 1103/1692قُطْبُ الدِّينِ بْنُTeachers — Scholar of the rational and transmitted sciences at Sihālī near Lucknow, the founder of the Farangī Maḥall family, teacher of Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī and father of Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn.
12th/18th century
- Mullā Fīrūz · 1118/1707–1124مُلَّا فِيرُوز بْنCommentators — Author of al-Sirāj al-wahhāj, one of the earliest commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm, dedicated to the Mughal emperor Bahādur Shāh I.
- al-Bihārī · 1119/1707مُحِبُّ اللهِ بْنُAuthor — Mughal judge and scholar, author of Sullam al-ʿulūm, the most advanced logic textbook of the Indian madrasa course, and of Musallam al-thubūt in legal theory.
- Eyyûbîzâde Mustafa · 1119/1707مُصْطَفَى بْنُ يُوسُفَCommentators · Teachers — Bosnian Ḥanafī scholar and muftī of Mostar, author of ‘the new commentary’ on the Shamsiyya and of commentaries on the Īsāghūjī and the Tahdhīb.
- Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shamsābādī · 1121/1709قُطْبُ الدِّينِ الحُسَيْنِيُّTeachers — Indian teacher of the madrasa sciences, a student of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī, with whom Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī read most of his books; he also taught Amān Allāh al-Banārasī and Qāḍī Mubārak.
- al-Wallālī · 1128/1716أَبُو العَبَّاسِ أَحْمَدُCommentators — Moroccan logician, a student of al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī, who wrote the first commentary on al-Sanūsī’s logic compendium after the author’s own and a commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam (Meknes 1119/1707).
- Ḥāfiẓ Amān Allāh al-Banārasī · 1133/1721أَمَانُ اللهِ بْنُTeachers · Author — Scholar of law, legal theory and theology who was ṣadr of Lucknow while Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī was its qāḍī; their debates, and his arbitration between Mīr Dāmād and Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī, belong to the background of the Sullam al-ʿulūm.
- ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī · 1143/1731عَبْدُ الغَنِيِّ بْنُVoices on logic · Versifiers — Damascene Sufi, Ḥanafī jurist and poet, author of some three hundred works, who wrote a poem on logic with his own prose commentary and urged every would-be specialist to learn logic.
- Saçaklızâde · 1145/1732–33مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ أَبِيAuthor · Voices on logic · Teachers — Ottoman scholar of Maraş who criticised gloss-heavy madrasa teaching in his Tartīb al-ʿulūm and wrote the Waladiyya, the short handbook of disputation read after logic from Istanbul to Cairo and Kurdistan.
- al-Tahānawī · 1158/1745مُحَمَّد أَعْلَى بْنُAuthor — Indian Ḥanafī scholar, author of Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn wa-l-ʿulūm, the largest encyclopaedia of the technical terms of the madrasa sciences, which gives the standard definition, subject and rank of logic.
- Ḥamd Allāh · 1160/1747حَمْدُ اللهِ بْنُCommentators · Teachers — Shīʿī logician of Sandīla whose commentary on the assents of Sullam al-ʿulūm became a curriculum book and drew more glosses than any other commentary on the Sullam.
- Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn · 1161/1748نِظَامُ الدِّينِ بْنُTeachers · Commentators — Teacher of Farangī Maḥall in Lucknow after whom the Dars-i Niẓāmī is named, and the teacher of the first great generation of commentators on Sullam al-ʿulūm.
- Qāḍī Mubārak · 1162/1749القَاضِي مُبَارَكُ بْنُCommentators · Glossators · Teachers — Indian logician whose commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm, begun as a student and finished in Delhi in 1143/1730, became the curriculum book known simply as ‘Qāḍī’ or ‘Qāḍī Mubārak’, with his own glosses (al-Minhuyāt).
- Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Sihālawī · 1167/1754أَحْمَدُ عَبْدِ الحَقِّCommentators · Teachers — Grandson of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī of Farangī Maḥall and author of Suddat al-ʿulūm (1136/1723–24), one of the earliest commentaries on Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm.
- Dāwūd al-Qārisī · 1169/1756داوُدُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍCommentators — Ottoman logician from Kars who taught in Egypt and wrote a commentary on the Īsāghūjī as an alternative to al-Fanārī's.
- Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fatiḥpūrī · 1175/1761كَمَالُ الدِّينِ بْنُTeachers · Commentators — North Indian master of logic and philosophy, the leading pupil of Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn, who taught most of the great eighteenth-century commentators on Sullam al-ʿulūm and wrote a commentary on its difficult passages.
- al-Mallawī · 1181/1767أَبُو العَبَّاسِ شِهَابُCommentators · Teachers · Voices on logic — Shāfiʿī teacher at al-Azhar and specialist in logic who wrote a large and a small commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam; the small one became an Azhar staple and is the basis of al-Azhar’s logic textbook today.
- al-Damanhūrī · 1192/1778أَبُو العَبَّاسِ أَحْمَدُCommentators · Teachers · Voices on logic — Shaykh al-Azhar from 1182/1768, author of Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam, the best-known commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s logic poem, and of a commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s poem on rhetoric.
- İbrâhim Hakkı · 1194/1780إِبْرَاهِيمُ حَقِّي الأَرْضَرُومِيُّVoices on logic — Ottoman Sufi scholar and poet, author of the encyclopaedic Mârifetnâme, whose rhymed Turkish study plan Tertîb-i ulûm (1165/1752) records the eighteenth-century order of the logic books.
- Mullā Ḥasan · 1199/1784مُحَمَّدُ حَسَنِ بْنُCommentators · Glossators · Teachers · Author — Logician of the Farangī Maḥall family of Lucknow whose commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm became one of the three standard ways into the book and a set text of the Dars-i Niẓāmī.
- al-Kalanbawī · 1205/1791إِسْمَاعِيلُ بْنُ مُصْطَفَىCommentators · Teachers — Eighteenth-century Ottoman logician and mathematician whose demanding commentary on the Īsāghūjī was one of the last major additions to the tradition.
- Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī · 1205/1791أَبُو الفَيْضِ مُحَمَّدVoices on logic · Author — Indian-born lexicographer and hadith scholar of Cairo, author of the dictionary Tāj al-ʿarūs, who in his commentary on al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ judged logic disliked (makrūh) and lamented its hold on the scholars of Egypt.
- al-Ṣabbān · 1206/1792أَبُو العِرْفَانِ مُحَمَّدُGlossators — Cairo scholar of grammar, rhetoric and the sciences whose gloss on al-Mallawī’s small commentary on the Sullam was printed at Būlāq in 1868 and became one of the standard companions of the poem in Egypt and Indonesia.
- al-Bannānī · 1211/1796أَبُو عَبْدِ اللهِCommentators — Moroccan scholar of Fez, author of the most widely used Maghribi commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam, lithographed repeatedly in Fez and still read in Mauritania; who exactly he was is not settled.
13th/19th century
- ʿAbd al-Wājid Khayrābādī · 1216/1802عَبْدُ الوَاجِدِ الخَيْرَآبَادِيّTeachers — The teacher of Faḍl-i Imām, through whom the logic of Sandīla, Gūpāmaw and Farangī Maḥall reached the Khayrābādī school.
- al-Maghnīsāwī or al-Maghnīsī · 1222/1807–8مَحْمُودُ بْنُ حَسَنٍCommentators — Ottoman scholar whose detailed commentary Mughnī al-ṭullāb (‘What suffices the students’) became a much-used teaching commentary on the Īsāghūjī.
- Baḥr al-ʿUlūm · 1225/1810عَبْدُ العَلِيِّ بْنُCommentators · Glossators · Teachers — Son of Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn of Farangī Maḥall and one of the leading teachers of eighteenth-century India, author of a commentary on the Sullam al-ʿulūm with his own glosses (Minhuyāt) and of Fawātiḥ al-raḥamūt on al-Bihārī’s Musallam al-thubūt.
- Mullā Mubīn · 1225/1810مُبِينُ بْنُ مُحِبِّCommentators · Glossators · Teachers — Ḥanafī scholar of the Farangī Maḥall family, pupil of Mullā Ḥasan, whose Mirʾāt al-shurūḥ is the fullest and clearest commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm.
- al-Dasūqī · 1230/1815أَبُو عَبْدِ اللهِGlossators · Teachers — Mālikī jurist and theologian who taught at al-Azhar; his gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya is printed in the Cairo collection Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya.
- Dildār ʿAlī · 1235/1820السَّيِّدُ دِلْدَار عَلِيّGlossators · Teachers — Leading Shīʿī scholar of Lucknow, of the Uṣūlī school, who read Ḥamd Allāh’s commentary on the Sullam al-ʿulūm in Sandīla, wrote a gloss on it, and taught a line of Shīʿī commentators on the book.
- Faḍl-i Imām Khayrābādī · 1243/1828فَضْلِ إِمَام بْنAuthor · Teachers — Author of al-Mirqāt, the short Arabic handbook of logic still read in the second or third year of South Asian madrasas, and the founder of the Khayrābādī school of the rational sciences.
- Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, Shaykh al-Azhar · 1250/1834حَسَنُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍGlossators · Teachers — Egyptian scholar and Shaykh al-Azhar whose gloss on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s Īsāghūjī commentary is one of the Egyptian contributions to the tradition after the eighteenth century.
- Ghadīja bint al-ʿĀqil · 12th/18th centuryخَدِيجَةُ بِنْتُ العَاقِلِCommentators · Teachers — Mauritanian woman scholar and teacher whose marginal commentary (ṭurra) on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam is still glossed and studied in Mauritania.
- al-Quwaysinī · 1254/1838بُرْهَانُ الدِّينِ حَسَنُCommentators · Teachers — Blind Shāfiʿī scholar of al-Azhar and its Shaykh from 1250/1834, author of a mixed commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam that is still read in Egypt and the Indonesian pesantren.
- Ḥāfiẓ Darāz · 1263/1847مُحَمَّد أَحْسَن بْنGlossators · Teachers — Pashtun scholar of Peshawar whose gloss on Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm was printed in Delhi and Quetta.
- al-Bājūrī · 1276/1860إِبْرَاهِيمُ بْنُ مُحَمَّدِGlossators · Teachers — Shaykh al-Azhar from 1847, whose much-printed gloss on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam made the poem’s Azhar reading the standard one from Egypt to Indonesia.
- Muḥanḍ Bāba · 1277/1860مُحَنْض بَابَه بْنCommentators — Mauritanian scholar of the Daymān whose short marginal commentary (ṭurra) on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam became a teaching text of the maḥaẓra, itself copied and glossed.
- Faḍl-i Ḥaqq Khayrābādī · 1278/1861فَضْلِ حَقّ بْنTeachers · Commentators — Son and pupil of the author of al-Mirqāt, the most famous scholar of the Khayrābādī school; later commentators read a passage of al-Mirqāt as advice addressed to him.
- Turāb ʿAlī al-Laknawī · 1281/1864أَبُو البَرَكَاتِ رُكْنُGlossators · Teachers — Lucknow logician of the nineteenth century, a student of Muftī Ẓuhūr Allāh of Farangī Maḥall, who wrote glosses on all three standard commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm and trained several later commentators.
- Sabzawārī · 1289/1872هَادِي بْنُ مَهْدِيAuthor · Teachers — Persian philosopher of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā whose versified Manẓūma with his own Arabic commentary remains a basic textbook of philosophy, and of logic in verse, in the Iranian seminaries.
- ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī · 1304/1886أَبُو الحَسَنَاتِ مُحَمَّدٌAuthor · Glossators · Teachers — Scholar of the Farangī Maḥall family of Lucknow, famous above all for ḥadīth and Ḥanafī law, who also wrote on logic: a treatise on the Sullam’s puzzle of the ‘absolutely unknown’, a commentary on al-Bihārī’s treatise on fallacies and glosses on the commentaries on the Tahdhīb.
- Shihāb al-Dīn Marjānī · 28 April 1889شِهَابُ الدِّينِ هَارُونُCommentators · Teachers — Tatar scholar, historian and reformer of Kazan who taught logic in his madrasa and wrote a commentary on the introduction of the Shamsiyya.
- Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān · 1307/1890أَبُو الطَّيِّب مُحَمَّدVoices on logic · Author — Indian scholar of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth and consort of the ruler of Bhopal, whose encyclopaedia Abjad al-ʿulūm records the classical definition of logic while defending Ibn Taymiyya’s arguments against the logicians.
- Aloys · 19 December 1893Translators · Editors · Modern scholarship — Austrian-born orientalist who made the first printed translation of the Shamsiyya (English, Calcutta 1854) and supervised the first edition of al-Tahānawī’s Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn (Calcutta 1862).
- Cevdet Paşa · 26 May 1895أَحْمَد جَوْدَت پَاشَاAuthor — Ottoman scholar, historian and statesman, head of the commission that drafted the Mecelle, whose Miʿyār-ı sedād (1877) was the first Turkish logic book in the traditional manner and is counted the best of the Turkish textbooks based on the Īsāghūjī.
- al-Anbābī · 1313/1896شَمْسُ الدِّينِ مُحَمَّدُGlossators · Teachers · Voices on logic — Azhar scholar and twice Shaykh al-Azhar whose taqrīr on al-Bājūrī’s gloss on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam is a textbook example of a fourth layer of commentary, and whose fatwa of 1888 set conditions for teaching logic and other rational sciences at al-Azhar.
- ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī · 1316/1899مُحَمَّد عَبْدُ الحَقِّCommentators · Teachers — Grandson of the author and author of Sharḥ al-Mirqāt, the first full Arabic commentary on al-Mirqāt; the leading Khayrābādī logician of the later nineteenth century.
14th/20th century
- Edirne Müftüsü Mehmed Fevzi Efendi · 1318/1900مُحَمَّدُ فَوْزِي الأَدْرَنِيّGlossators · Teachers — Prolific late Ottoman scholar and teacher, long mufti of Edirne, who wrote Sayf al-ghullāb, a gloss on al-Maghnīsāwī’s Īsāghūjī commentary Mughnī al-ṭullāb.
- Muḥammad ʿAbduh · 1323/1905مُحَمَّدُ عَبْدُهVoices on logic · Editors — Egyptian reformer and muftī who criticised the rote teaching of al-Azhar, drafted its reform law of 1314/1896, and edited al-Sāwī’s logic book al-Baṣāʾir al-Naṣīriyya with notes.
- al-Shirbīnī · 1326/1908عَبْدُ الرَّحْمٰنِ بْنُGlossators · Teachers — Egyptian Shāfiʿī scholar and, for two years, Shaykh al-Azhar, whose notes (taqrīr) on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss form the top layer of the printed commentaries on the Shamsiyya.
- Shiblī · 1914شِبْلِي نُعْمَانِيVoices on logic — Indian scholar, historian and educationist, the main architect of the Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ curriculum, who argued that logic was only an aid and took too large a place in the madrasa course.
- Kiai Maḥfūẓ al-Tarmasī · 1338/1920مُحَمَّدُ مَحْفُوظُ بْنُTeachers · Voices on logic — Javanese ḥadīth scholar and Shāfiʿī jurist who taught for decades in Mecca; his record of the books he studied lists no logic, which Fanani and Widigdo take as evidence that logic was not a standard pesantren subject.
- Barakat Allāh · 1343/1925مُحَمَّدٌ بَرَكَةُ اللهِGlossators · Commentators — Scholar of the Farangī Maḥall family whose Iṣʿād al-fuhūm, printed with the text of the Sullam al-ʿulūm, is the edition most used in South Asian madrasas today and the base text of Asad Q. Ahmed’s English translation.
- Muḥammad Ḥabīb Allāh al-Shinqīṭī · 1363/1944مُحَمَّدُ حَبِيبُ اللهِCommentators · Teachers — Mauritanian scholar of hadith who taught in Morocco, the Hijaz and at al-Azhar, and wrote al-Sabk al-badīʿ al-muḥkam, a commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam.
- Said Nursi · 23 March 1960بَدِيعُ الزَّمَانِ سَعِيدCommentators — Kurdish-born Ottoman and Turkish religious scholar, author of the Risale-i Nur, who in his early years wrote Qızıl Ījāz, a very compressed Arabic commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam with its own family of glosses.
- al-Muẓaffar · 1383/1964مُحَمَّدُ رِضَا بْنُAuthor · Teachers — Reforming Shīʿī scholar of Najaf whose lectures became al-Manṭiq, the clear modern handbook that is now the first logic book of the Shīʿī ḥawza.
- Ibrāhīm Balyāwī · 1387/1967مُحَمَّد إِبْرَاهِيم البَلْيَاوِيّCommentators · Teachers — Teacher of the rational sciences at the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband whose commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm, Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm, is still used in South Asian madrasas.
- Edwin E. Calverley · 1971Translators · Modern scholarship — American missionary and Arabist who published the first English translation of the Īsāghūjī (1933).
- Kiai Bisri Mustofa of Rembang · 17 February 1977بِشْرِيّ مُصْطَفَى الرَّمْبَانِيُّTranslators · Teachers — Javanese kiai and prolific author, head of the pesantren Raudlatut Thalibin in Rembang, who made the Javanese verse translation of al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam used in the pesantren.
- al-Fādānī · 21 July 1990أَبُو الفَيْضِ عَلَمُTeachers — Meccan hadith scholar and teacher of a West Sumatran family, known as ‘musnid of the age’, whose record of his chains of transmission lists an unusually full training in logic.
15th/21st century
- ʿAllāma ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Sharaf Qādirī · 1428/2007مُحَمَّد عَبْدُ الحَكِيمِGlossators · Teachers — Pakistani teacher at the Jāmiʿa Niẓāmiyya Riḍawiyya in Lahore and author of al-Mirḍāt, an Arabic gloss on al-Mirqāt written for madrasa students.
- Muftī Saʿīd Aḥmad Pālanpūrī · 19 May 2020سَعِيد أَحْمَد پَالَنْپُورِيCommentators · Teachers — Senior teacher and later Shaykh al-Ḥadīth and principal of the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband, whose lessons on Sullam al-ʿulūm were published as the Urdu commentary Irshād al-fuhūm (1433/2012).
- Nicholas Rescher · 2024Modern scholarship — American philosopher and logician who, in the 1960s and 70s, reconstructed the temporal and modal logic of the Shamsiyya from Sprenger’s English translation.
Date unknown
- Asad Q. AhmedModern scholarship · Translators — Historian of Islamic thought at the University of California, Berkeley, whose Palimpsests of Themselves (2022) gives the first full English translation of Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm and the main study of its Indian commentaries.
- Burhān al-Dīn al-Bulghārīبُرْهَانُ الدِّينِ بْنُGlossators — Author of al-Fawāʾid (or al-Farāʾid) al-Burhāniyya, a gloss on al-Fanārī’s commentary that TDV counts, with Qul Aḥmad’s, among the important glosses on it.
- al-Kharpūtīعَبْدُ الحَمِيدِ الحَمْدِيُّGlossators — Ottoman scholar of the nineteenth century who wrote ‘the new gloss’ on al-Siyālkūtī’s gloss on the part on conceptions of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya.
- Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Jawnpūrī · youngمُحَمَّدُ عَلِيٍّ الحُسَيْنِيُّCommentators — Bengal-born logician who wrote Miʿrāj al-fuhūm, one of the earliest commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm, at the age of eighteen, and died young.
- Kiai Sahal MahfudhCommentators — Indonesian Nahdlatul Ulama scholar, later Rais Aam of the NU, who as a student at the pesantren of Sarang wrote two Arabic works on the Sullam: al-Murannaq and Izālat al-muttaham on al-Damanhūrī’s Īḍāḥ al-mubham.
- Hüseyin SarıoğluEditors · Translators · Modern scholarship — Turkish historian of Islamic philosophy who made the first critical edition of the Īsāghūjī, with a Turkish translation and study (1998; revised 2016).
- Tony StreetEditors · Translators · Modern scholarship — Historian of Arabic logic at the University of Cambridge, editor and translator of al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya for the Library of Arabic Literature (2024).