al-Mallawī | The Mantiqi

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.

Life

The biography published by Egypt’s Dār al-Iftāʾ, drawing on al-Jabartī’s ʿAjāʾib al-āthār and al-Murādī’s Silk al-durar, gives his full name as Abū al-ʿAbbās Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ b. Yūsuf b. ʿUmar al-Mujayrī al-Mallawī, a Shāfiʿī of al-Azhar, and records that he was born, as he himself said, at dawn on Thursday 2 Ramaḍān 1088 (1677). He studied at al-Azhar with Shāfiʿī, Mālikī and Ḥanafī scholars, among them the Mālikīs Muḥammad al-Zurqānī and Aḥmad al-Nafrāwī and several teachers from the Maghrib, and made the pilgrimage and studied with scholars there; he also transmitted ḥadīth from Ilyās al-Kūrānī (d. 1138 in Damascus). He became, in the words of the biography, ‘the authority in the rational and the transmitted sciences’. In his last years he was ill and confined to his house, but students still came to read with him and to ask for licences. He died in the middle of Rabīʿ I 1181 (August 1767).

Khaled El-Rouayheb places him in a North African line: the works of the Moroccan logician al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī were taught to many students in Egypt, and al-Mallawī and Aḥmad al-Damanhūrī were among those who became prominent Egyptian scholars of the eighteenth century. Both wrote much-read commentaries on al-Akhḍarī’s Sullam, and both discussed in their introductions whether logic may be studied. Al-Mallawī’s answer is the passage quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: the disagreement concerns only logic mixed with philosophy; there is no disagreement about the logic of the Sullam, of the Mukhtaṣars of al-Sanūsī and Ibn ʿArafa, of al-Abharī’s , al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya, al-Khūnajī’s Jumal and al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb, and studying it is a collective duty (farḍ kifāya), since refuting heresies in theology depends on it.

Logic was the core of his writing. Besides the two Sullam commentaries he versified the modal propositions and wrote a commentary on his poem (al-Laʾāliʾ al-manthūrāt, printed Cairo 1307 and 1321), versified and explained the mixed modal syllogisms (mukhtalaṭāt) and the implications of conditional propositions, and wrote verses on the relations between external, mental and ‘real’ propositions. PIPDI also records glosses by him on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s commentary on the and on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya. He wrote on rhetoric (two commentaries on the Samarqandī treatise on metaphor), grammar and creed as well. His students included Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Ḥifnī, ʿAlī al-ʿAdawī al-Ṣaʿīdī, Ḥasan al-Jabartī, who read his Sullam commentary with him, and Muḥammad al-Amīr.

Uncertain or disputed

Year of birth: 1088/1677 (Dār al-Iftāʾ, al-Azhar’s textbook); the textbook scan gives the dates with misprinted Hijri digits.
The Dār al-Iftāʾ says he was housebound for ‘about thirty years’ before his death; this is not checked against al-Jabartī.
Which of his two Sullam commentaries the many manuscripts contain is usually not stated in the catalogues (see ‘The commentaries on the Sullam’).

Works

al-Sharḥ al-ṣaghīr ʿalā al-Sullam (the small commentary) الشَّرْحُ الصَّغِيرُ عَلَى السُّلَّمِ — atas al-Sullam al-munawraqThe commentary that spread: studied, taught and glossed at al-Azhar for decades (Dār al-Iftāʾ). Glossed by Muḥammad al-Ṣabbān and printed with his gloss at Būlāq 1285 and often afterwards. Al-Azhar’s secondary-school textbook Taysīr sharḥ al-Mallawī (2016–17) is a simplified selection from the Sullam and this commentary.syarah
al-Sharḥ al-kabīr ʿalā al-Sullam (the large commentary) الشَّرْحُ الكَبِيرُ عَلَى السُّلَّمِ — atas al-Sullam al-munawraqListed by the Dār al-Iftāʾ and PIPDI; less widely read than the small one.syarah
al-Laʾāliʾ al-manthūrāt sharḥ naẓm al-muwajjahāt اللَّآلِئُ المَنْثُورَاتُHis own poem on the modal propositions with his commentary; printed Cairo 1307 and 1321 (Dār al-Iftāʾ).nazham
Naẓm al-mukhtalaṭāt, with commentaryOn the mixed modal syllogisms; manuscript in the Azhar library (Dār al-Iftāʾ).nazham
Urjūza fī lawāzim al-sharṭiyyāt, with commentaryOn the implications of conditional propositions; manuscript in the Azhar library (Dār al-Iftāʾ).nazham
Ḥāshiya on Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī’s al-Maṭlaʿ — atas Shaykh al-Islām Zakariyyā al-AnṣārīOn al-Anṣārī’s commentary on the Īsāghūjī; listed by PIPDI.hasyiyah
Ḥāshiya on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya — atas al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaOn the standard commentary on the Shamsiyya; listed by PIPDI.hasyiyah
ʿIqd al-durar al-bahiyya fī sharḥ al-Risāla al-SamarqandiyyaOn the Samarqandī treatise on metaphor (balāgha), with glosses by his students al-Amīr and al-ʿArūsī (Dār al-Iftāʾ).karya

Reception

His small commentary on the Sullam, with al-Ṣabbān’s gloss, became one of the standard companions of the poem in Egypt and beyond; in Mecca Muḥammad Yāsīn al-Fādānī still read the Sullam with it in the twentieth century (see ‘The Malay world’).

Al-Azhar’s current secondary-school logic textbook, Taysīr sharḥ al-Mallawī (first year), is built on the Sullam and his commentary.

His statement that logic not mixed with philosophy is permitted and even a collective duty is quoted by El-Rouayheb and the Stanford Encyclopedia; El-Rouayheb shows that al-Damanhūrī and ʿAlī al-ʿAdawī said the same.

Sources (5)