al-Damanhūrī

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.

Life

Al-Damanhūrī was born in Damanhūr in Lower Egypt in 1101/1690. Orphaned young, he went to Cairo and studied at al-Azhar with many teachers, among them ʿAbd al-Jawād al-Mayyānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shinwānī and ʿAbd al-Dāʾim al-Ujhūrī. He studied the law of all four schools well enough to give fatwas in each, which earned him the name al-Madhāhibī, and he also studied medicine, chemistry, arithmetic and engineering. He went on pilgrimage in 1177/1764. In 1182/1768, on the death of Muḥammad al-Ḥifnī, he became Shaykh al-Azhar and held the office until his death; governors consulted him and some took refuge in his house during disturbances. Brockelmann dates his death to 10 Rajab 1192 (4 August 1778). His students included ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī, later Shaykh al-Azhar.

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi credits him with more than forty works, on creed, law of several schools, Qurʾān readings and the natural sciences. In logic and rhetoric he wrote Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam, which the TDV calls the most famous of its commentaries; Ḥilyat al-lubb al-maṣūn on al-Akhḍarī’s al-Jawhar al-maknūn; and a commentary on the Samarqandiyya on metaphor. In his commentary on the Sullam he took up the poem’s question whether logic may be studied, holding, as summarised on this site, that the disagreement concerns only logic mixed with the philosophers’ teachings, not the logic used in the scholars’ own books.

The Īḍāḥ was printed in Cairo in 1293/1876 and 1308/1890, the latter with al-Bājūrī’s glosses, and many times since. It travelled far beyond Egypt: a fifteen-year-old Dagestani student, ʿAlī al-Ghumūqī, copied it in 1311/1894, and in Indonesia van Bruinessen found it the second most used logic text in the pesantren, usually printed with al-Akhḍarī’s own commentary in the margin.

Works

• Īḍāḥ al-mubham min maʿānī al-Sullam إِيضَاحُ المُبْهَمِ مِنْ مَعَانِي السُّلَّمِ — بر al-Sullam al-munawraqThe best-known commentary on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam (TDV). Printed Cairo 1293/1876 and 1308/1890 (with al-Bājūrī’s glosses), Mecca 1312, and in many modern editions (Beirut 1996, Damascus 2001, Cairo 2008).شرح
• Ḥilyat al-lubb al-maṣūn bi-sharḥ al-Jawhar al-maknūn حِلْيَةُ اللُّبِّ المَصُونِ بِشَرْحِ الجَوْهَرِ المَكْنُونِ — بر اخضریOn al-Akhḍarī’s poem on rhetoric (Cairo 1285, 1305).شرح
• Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Samarqandiyya (Laqṭ al-jawāhir al-saniyya)On Abū al-Qāsim al-Samarqandī’s treatise on metaphor (Cairo 1273).شرح

Reception

Through the Īḍāḥ the Azhar reading of the Sullam reached Dagestan and the Malay world; in Indonesia it is still reprinted for the pesantren.

It is one of the four standard Azhar commentaries on the Sullam, with those of al-Mallawī, al-Quwaysinī and al-Bājūrī.