Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Yazdī

Safavid-era scholar whose commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb al-manṭiq, finished in Najaf in 967/1560, became the standard way into the book in Iran, Iraq and South Asia; The Mantiqi reads it at level 4.

Life

Al-Yazdī’s nisba Bahābādī refers to Bahābād, a village about 210 km south-east of Yazd. Some older sources write it ‘Shahābādī’ or ‘Shāhābādī’; ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Turkmānī, in the biography that opens his 2018 edition, follows modern writers who regard this as a copyist’s error, and notes that al-Yazdī himself writes ‘Bahābādī’ at the head of one of his glosses. Kâtib Çelebi’s Kashf al-ẓunūn calls him ‘Najm b. Shihāb, called ʿAbd Allāh’.

He left home to study in Shiraz and Isfahan. In Shiraz he studied with Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr al-Dashtakī at his Manṣūriyya madrasa, where he also taught for a time. According to al-Turkmānī he read the rational sciences in Isfahan with Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Shīrāzī, a pupil of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī, together with al-Muqaddas al-Ardabīlī and Mīrzā Jān Ḥabīb Allāh al-Bāghnawī; passages from his commentary on al-Shahīd al-Awwal’s al-Alfiyya, cited by Āghā Buzurg, show that he also studied with al-Muḥaqqiq al-Karakī. Asad Q. Ahmed accordingly places him ‘in the intellectual lineage of al-Dawānī’.

He settled in Najaf. The Arabic WikiShia article reports that the Safavid rulers made him keeper of the treasury and library of the shrine of ʿAlī, an office that stayed in his family for generations. There, on the forenoon of Wednesday 27 Dhū al-Qaʿda 967 (August 1560), he finished his commentary on the logic part of al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb. His students included Shaykh Bahāʾī, who said that he read the general part of Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn with him; WikiShia adds Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī and Sayyid Muḥammad al-Mūsawī al-ʿĀmilī.

The commentary goes by two names: in Iran it is al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā Tahdhīb al-manṭiq or simply ‘the Ḥāshiya’; in Indian prints and curricula it is Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb. Kashf al-ẓunūn calls it a commentary by lemmata (sharḥ bi-l-qawl). Unlike al-Dawānī’s commentary, which breaks off after the simple modal propositions, it covers the whole logic part. Al-Yazdī returned to the Tahdhīb several times: he commented separately on al-Taftāzānī’s rule for the conditions of the four figures at his teacher Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd’s request, glossed al-Dawānī’s commentary while teaching it (al-Kharrāra fī sharḥ al-ʿUjāla), and wrote on its discussion of the subject of a science. Al-Turkmānī also lists glosses on al-Jurjānī’s and al-Dawānī’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentaries on the Shamsiyya and the Maṭāliʿ, and works on rhetoric, theology and exegesis.

His dates are uncertain (see below). Al-Turkmānī prefers 981/1573, ‘late in the reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp’, as most sources give it; Brockelmann has 1015/1606. Ahmed notes that five different death dates are recorded and suggests that some may have arisen from stories meant to tie later scholars to his authority.

Works

• al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā Tahdhīb al-manṭiq / Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb (Ḥāshiya-yi Mullā ʿAbd Allāh) الحَاشِيَةُ عَلَى تَهْذِيبِ المَنْطِقِ — op Tahdhīb al-manṭiqCommentary by lemmata on the whole logic part, finished in Najaf on 27 Dhū al-Qaʿda 967/August 1560. Printed in India from 1269/1852–53, in Madras, Kanpur, Hyderabad and Lucknow (with ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī’s gloss), in Iran and in many modern editions, among them al-Turkmānī’s (Amman 2018). Al-Turkmānī counts some fifty glosses and commentaries on it.commentaar
• Sharḥ ḍābiṭat al-ashkāl al-arbaʿa شَرْحُ ضَابِطَةِ الأَشْكَالِ الأَرْبَعَةِ — op Tahdhīb al-manṭiqOn al-Taftāzānī’s rule of the conditions of the four figures, written at the request of his teacher Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd; printed by al-Turkmānī (2018).commentaar
• al-Kharrāra fī sharḥ al-ʿUjāla الخَرَّارَةُ فِي شَرْحِ العُجَالَةِ — op al-Muḥaqqiq al-DawānīGloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb, which al-Dawānī called ‘a hasty piece’ (ʿujāla); written while al-Yazdī was teaching it. Manuscript.glosse
• Gloss on the discussion of the subject of a science in al-Dawānī’s commentary — op al-Muḥaqqiq al-DawānīBegins ‘baʿd al-ḥamd wa-l-ṣalāt’; he signs himself al-Bahābādī in it (al-Turkmānī).glosse
• Persian commentary on the Tahdhīb — op Tahdhīb al-manṭiqListed by WikiShia and al-Turkmānī; not seen.commentaar
• Gloss on al-Jurjānī’s and al-Dawānī’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya — op al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaManuscript (al-Turkmānī; also in Brockelmann).glosse
• Gloss on al-Jurjānī’s and al-Dawānī’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn’s commentary on the MaṭāliʿReported as seen by the author of Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ (al-Turkmānī).glosse

Reception

The commentary crossed the line between Shiʿi and Sunni schools: it is on Francis Robinson’s list of the Safavid logic course and, as ‘Sharḥ-i Tahdhīb’, on his list of the Indian Dars-i Niẓāmī; Deoband still teaches it in the third year.

WikiShia says it has been studied more than the Tahdhīb itself and is a main reason for the Tahdhīb’s fame; in the Iranian ḥawza it is known simply as ‘the Ḥāshiya’.

A long line of glosses followed in Safavid and Qajar Iran, in India (Ilāhī Bakhsh Fayḍābādī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī) and in Kurdistan (al-Binjuwīnī, al-Kalārī).