Mīr Zāhid

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.

Life

ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s Nuzhat al-khawāṭir calls Muḥammad Zāhid b. Muḥammad Aslam al-Harawī al-Kābulī ‘one of the famous teachers of India’ who ‘had no equal in his age in logic and philosophy’. Although his nisbas point to Herat and Kabul, Nuzhat says he was born and grew up in India. He studied with his father, a qāḍī, and with Mīrzā Muḥammad Fāḍil al-Badakhshī, and was so quick that he was qualified to teach and give legal opinions at thirteen.

He served the Mughal state. Shāh Jahān appointed him in Ramaḍān 1064/1654 to record the news (taḥrīr al-sawāniḥ) at Kabul, a post he held for a long time; in 1077/1666–67 Awrangzīb made him muḥtasib (inspector of public morals) of the imperial camp, and he lived and taught for a time in Agra (Akbarābād). He then resigned and was appointed ṣadr of Kabul, where he spent the rest of his life teaching. He died in Kabul in 1101/1689–90 according to Nuzhat and al-Turkmānī; Francis Robinson, as cited in the curricula pages, gives 1699–1700.

Nuzhat names three of his works as ‘current in the madrasas’: his gloss on the commentary on al-Ījī’s Mawāqif, his gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb, and his gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s treatise on conception and assent (al-Risāla al-Quṭbiyya); it adds glosses on the commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd and on the commentary on al-Suhrawardī’s Hayākil, and quotes his views on existence and on God’s knowledge. Al-Turkmānī calls the Tahdhīb gloss ‘a very subtle gloss, which the scholars received with acceptance and included in their teaching courses’. In India the three became known as Mīr Zāhid Mullā Jalāl, Mīr Zāhid Risāla and Mīr Zāhid Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, and later scholars wrote super-glosses on all three: Nuzhat records such sets by Mullā Mubīn of Farangī Maḥall and by Ẓuhūr Allāh of Lucknow, and al-Turkmānī lists glosses on the Tahdhīb gloss by Qāḍī Mubārak, Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, Mullā Ḥasan and others.

Works

• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb li-l-Dawānī (‘Mīr Zāhid Mullā Jalāl’) حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى شَرْحِ التَّهْذِيبِ لِلدَّوَانِيِّ — atas Tahdhīb al-manṭiqOn al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb, known in India as ‘Mullā Jalāl’. Printed Lucknow 1287 and 1293, Delhi 1316 with ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī’s gloss (Brockelmann, as given in the Tahdhīb catalogue). Many Indian super-glosses.hasyiyah
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-Risāla al-Quṭbiyya (‘Mīr Zāhid Risāla’) حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى الرِّسَالَةِ القُطْبِيَّةِOn Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s treatise on conception and assent (al-Risāla al-maʿmūla fī al-taṣawwur wa-l-taṣdīq) (Nuzhat). Glossed by many Indian scholars, among them Faḍl-i Imām Khayrābādī.hasyiyah
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Mawāqif (‘Mīr Zāhid Sharḥ al-Mawāqif’)On the commentary on al-Ījī’s Mawāqif (Nuzhat).hasyiyah
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Tajrīd; Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-HayākilListed by Nuzhat as works not current in teaching.hasyiyah

Reception

In Francis Robinson’s reconstruction of the early Dars-i Niẓāmī, ‘Mullā Jalāl’ (with Mīr Zāhid’s gloss) and ‘Risāla Mīr Zāhid’ are two of the eleven logic books, and in the Deobandi version of the course Mīr Zāhid’s gloss stands at the very end of the logic sequence (see ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’).

Super-glossing his glosses became a speciality of the scholarly families of Lucknow, Farangī Maḥall and Khayrābād.