Faḍl-i Imām Khayrābādī

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.

Life

Faḍl-i Imām was born and grew up in Khayrābād, a small town of learning about 75 km north of Lucknow. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s biographical dictionary Nuzhat al-khawāṭir gives his full name as Faḍl Imām b. Muḥammad Arshad b. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ, from a family that traced its descent to the caliph ʿUmar (hence al-ʿUmarī) and had come to Khayrābād by way of Hargām. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi adds that he was a nephew, through his mother, of Mullā Abū al-Wāʿiẓ Hargāmī, one of the compilers of the Mughal law collection al-Fatāwā al-ʿĀlamgīriyya. Neither source gives a year of birth; the 2015 Karachi edition of al-Mirqāt says that none could be found.

He studied in Khayrābād with Muftī ʿAbd al-Wājid al-Khayrābādī (d. 1216/1802), who had himself been trained in the logic and philosophy of the Sandīla and Farangī Maḥall scholars. Asad Q. Ahmed’s study of the Indian commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm therefore places Faḍl-i Imām at the head of a new line, calling him ‘the fountainhead’ of the Khayrābādī tradition, an offshoot of Farangī Maḥall. Nuzhat al-khawāṭir says that in his time he stood alone as the leading master of logic (ṣināʿat al-mīzān) and philosophy (ḥikma), and that no rival disputed this.

Most of his working life was spent in Delhi in the service of the British East India Company. According to the TDV he was appointed muftī and ṣadr al-ṣudūr of Delhi, the senior Indian legal officer of the Company’s administration, who advised on the appointment of qāḍīs and on grants of land and stipends to scholars; he is said to have been the first Indian Muslim scholar to accept the post. Ahmed writes that he arrived in Delhi after 1218/1803. Alongside his office he taught logic and philosophy, and his students included his son Faḍl-i Ḥaqq, Ṣadr al-Dīn Āzurda (who succeeded him as ṣadr al-ṣudūr) and the Sufi Ghawth ʿAlī Shāh Pānīpatī.

He probably left the Company’s service around 1827. The TDV and an Urdu study of the family in the journal Al-Qamar report that he then served for a short time as a minister of the ruler of Patiala in the Punjab before retiring to Khayrābād, where he died and was buried. Nuzhat al-khawāṭir gives the date of death as 5 Dhū al-Qaʿda 1243 (May 1828); the TDV and Al-Qamar give 1244/1829, Al-Qamar with the same day and month (5 Dhū al-Qaʿda 1244, May 1829).

His best-known book is al-Mirqāt (‘the ladder’), a compact handbook of logic in Arabic written, as he says at its end, ‘only to teach beginners and to make things easy for students’, gathered ‘from the books of the ancients and the words of the later scholars’. His other works were mostly on logic and philosophy and remained largely in manuscript: an abridgement of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifāʾ, glosses on Mīr Zāhid’s glosses, and a commentary on Mīr Dāmād’s difficult al-Ufuq al-mubīn. He also wrote a Persian primer, Āmadnāma, whose last part contains short biographies of scholars of Awadh.

Works

• al-Mirqāt (al-Mirqāt al-mīzāniyya) المِرْقَاةُ — on al-MirqātA short handbook of logic in about ninety-five chapters (fuṣūl), from the definition of knowledge to the five arts, the causes of error and the ‘eight headings’. Printed in Delhi at least from 1286/1869 (Sayyid al-Maṭābiʿ); the TDV names Delhi prints of 1886 and 1888. Still a standard madrasa text in India and Pakistan.matn
• Talkhīṣ al-Shifāʾ تَلْخِيصُ الشِّفَاءِ — on Ibn SīnāAn abridgement of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifāʾ (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV). His son Faḍl-i Ḥaqq wrote a gloss on it.work
• Ḥāshiya on Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on the Risāla quṭbiyya (al-Ḥāshiya al-zāhidiyya al-quṭbiyya)A gloss on Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s treatise on conception and assent, a standard advanced text of the Indian logic course (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV).gloss
• Ḥāshiya on Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on Mullā Jalāl (al-Ḥāshiya al-zāhidiyya al-jalāliyya)A gloss on Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV).gloss
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-Ufuq al-mubīn حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى الأُفُقِ المُبِينِOn Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn. Asad Q. Ahmed counts it among only four premodern Indian commentaries on that work, but notes that he could not find a copy.gloss
• Tashḥīdh al-adhhān fī sharḥ (Badīʿ) al-mīzān تَشْحِيذُ الأَذْهَانِNamed by the TDV as a commentary on ‘al-Mīzān’ and by Al-Qamar as a commentary on Badīʿ al-mīzān, the commentary of ʿAbd Allāh al-Tulanbī on Mīzān al-manṭiq.commentary
• Commentary on Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūmReported by Asad Q. Ahmed (after ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī), who names Faḍl-i Imām and his son as the first Khayrābādīs to write on Mubārak.gloss
• Āmadnāma آمَدْنَامَهA Persian primer on verbal nouns (maṣādir) for beginners. Its fourth part, with short biographies of scholars of Awadh, was published as Tarājim al-fuḍalāʾ with an English translation by A. S. Bazmee Ansari (Karachi 1956).work
• Persian version of al-ʿUtbī’s Tārīkh al-YamīnīListed by the TDV as Tarjuma-yi Tārīkh-i Yamīnī; Al-Qamar describes a Persian work of his on the same Ghaznawid history under the title Khulāṣat al-tawārīkh. Whether these are one work has not been checked.translation

Reception

Nuzhat al-khawāṭir calls al-Mirqāt ‘a solid text’ (matn matīn). His grandson ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī, who wrote the first full commentary on it, called it ‘a fine little book worthy of being written in liquid gold’.

Through his son Faḍl-i Ḥaqq and grandson ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, and their students in Rampur and Tonk, his teaching became the Khayrābādī school, one of the two main lines (with Farangī Maḥall) through which logic and philosophy were taught in North India in the nineteenth century.

Jamal Malik notes that his al-Mirqāt ‘was taught approvingly for long years at Deoband’, although the Khayrābādīs and the Deobandis stood on opposite sides of several nineteenth-century controversies. Today it is printed and taught by publishers and madrasas of both the Deobandi and the Barelwi traditions.