al-Khabīṣī | The Mantiqi

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.

Life

Almost nothing is known about al-Khabīṣī’s life. Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-ẓunūn, the earliest source consulted, gives no date or place, only a description of his book. Modern catalogues place his death around 1050/1640: the Princeton manuscript record (Garrett 5211Y) gives ‘approximately 1640’, and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Turkmānī, in the list of commentaries on the Tahdhīb in his 2018 edition of al-Yazdī’s commentary, gives 1050. His nisba refers to a place called Khabīṣ, but the sources consulted do not say where he came from or where he worked.

According to Kashf al-ẓunūn, he wrote his commentary on the logic part of al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb al-manṭiq wa-l-kalām after studying ‘the commentary on the Shamsiyya’, and mentioned a certain ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Khān in its preface. He explained his purpose there: the Tahdhīb contains most of the questions of the Shamsiyya, but students are confused by its difficult questions because of the extreme brevity of its wording, so he wrote a commentary of middle length. It is a mixed commentary (mamzūj), which weaves the words of the matn into its own sentences, and begins inna aḥaqqa mā yatazayyanu bi-nashrihi manṭiqu l-qāṣṣ wa-l-ḥāḍir.

His book became the standard commentary on the Tahdhīb in Egypt. As the page ‘Al-Azhar and Egypt’ sets out, Khaled El-Rouayheb notes that it ‘became a standard commentary at the Azhar College in Cairo’, and Heyworth-Dunne’s list of Azhar logic books names the Tahdhīb with al-Khabīṣī’s commentary between al-Sanūsī’s handbook and the Shamsiyya. Al-Turkmānī lists glosses on it by Yāsīn al-ʿUlaymī of Ḥimṣ, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿArafa al-Dasūqī (al-Tajrīd al-shāfī), Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, Muḥammad ʿUbāda al-ʿAdawī (from the lectures of Aḥmad al-Dardīr) and the Tunisian Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ḥajarī, and the twentieth-century notes of ʿAbd al-Mutaʿāl al-Ṣaʿīdī.

Uncertain or disputed

Date of death: c. 1050/1640 in modern catalogues and al-Turkmānī; no early source consulted gives a date, and Kashf al-ẓunūn lists his commentary among fifteenth-century ones without dating it.
His origin: the nisba points to a place named Khabīṣ, which the sources consulted do not identify; the background pages of The Mantiqi describe him once as ‘Central Asian’ and once (in the catalogue) infer Kirman from the nisba. Neither is stated in a source consulted here.
The ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Khān named in his preface has not been identified in the sources consulted.
Kashf al-ẓunūn, in the printed text consulted, gives the title as al-Tahdhīb, evidently for al-Tadhhīb.

Works

al-Tadhhīb fī sharḥ al-Tahdhīb التَّذْهِيبُ فِي شَرْحِ التَّهْذِيبِ — atas Tahdhīb al-manṭiqMixed commentary of middle length on the logic part of the Tahdhīb. Printed in Cairo many times, alone and with the glosses of al-Dasūqī, al-ʿAṭṭār, al-Ḥajarī and others; reissued Cairo 2015. Manuscripts include Princeton, Garrett 5211Y (seventeenth century).syarah

Reception

In Egypt the Tahdhīb was read with al-Khabīṣī, as in the Ottoman lands it was read with al-Dawānī and Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ and in Iran and India with al-Yazdī; the Azhar glosses on it are listed in the Tahdhīb catalogue.

His remark that the Tahdhīb contains most of the questions of the Shamsiyya in very few words is often quoted to explain why the book needed so many commentaries.

Sources (3)