Ḥamd Allāh

Shīʿī logician of Sandīla whose commentary on the assents of Sullam al-ʿulūm became a curriculum book and drew more glosses than any other commentary on the Sullam.

Life

Nuzhat al-khawāṭir describes Ḥamd Allāh b. Shukr Allāh b. Dāniyāl b. Pīr Muḥammad as ‘a Ṣiddīqī by descent, a Shīʿī by school, and a Sandīlawī by birth, residence and burial’. He was born and grew up in Sandīla, a town of Awadh north-west of Lucknow, and studied with Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fatiḥpūrī and with Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn b. Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī, the master of Farangī Maḥall. He devoted himself, Nuzhat says, ‘entirely to logic and philosophy’, until he stood alone in the philosophical sciences and leadership in teaching passed to him. Asad Q. Ahmed adds that he also taught for a time in Delhi.

According to Nuzhat, Abū al-Manṣūr Khān, the ruler of Awadh, interceded for him with the emperor Aḥmad Shāh, who gave him the title Faḍl Allāh Khān and a grant of several villages; with this income Ḥamd Allāh built ‘a great madrasa’ in Sandīla. Ahmed points out that the grant must have come before Aḥmad Shāh’s accession in 1748, a year after Ḥamd Allāh’s death, and calls the school the Madrasa-yi Manṣūriyya. It became the first home of the tradition of his commentary: his students Bāb Allāh Jawnpūrī and Ghulām Yaḥyā b. Najm al-Dīn studied there, and his son Ḥaydar ʿAlī (d. 1225/1810), trained by his father and by two of his father’s students, taught there in turn. Ḥamd Allāh died in Delhi in 1160/1747 and, according to Nuzhat, was buried in the cemetery of the Sufi Quṭb al-Dīn al-Ūshī.

His commentary on Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm covers only the second half of the book, the assents (taṣdīqāt); ʿArshī’s Rampur catalogue reports a very small portion on the conceptualizations, which Ahmed could not check. It is undated, but Ahmed shows that it was completed after 1142/1730, when Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary had appeared, and written in conversation with it, and he quotes ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī on the rivalry between the students of Mubārak, Ḥamd Allāh and Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, each reading their own master’s commentary and criticising the others’. Nuzhat calls it his most famous work, which the scholars ‘received with acceptance and put into the programme of teaching’.

Nuzhat also lists notes (taʿlīqāt) on al-Shams al-bāzigha of Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī, notes on al-Shīrāzī’s commentary on Hidāyat al-ḥikma, and a commentary on Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s Zubdat al-uṣūl.

Works

• Sharḥ Sullam al-ʿulūm (on the assents) شَرْحُ سُلَّمِ العُلُومِ — op Sullam al-ʿulūmKnown as ‘Ḥamd Allāh’. One of the three gateway commentaries on the Sullam, with those of Qāḍī Mubārak and Mullā Ḥasan; the most glossed of all (Ahmed). Printed many times in the nineteenth century; see the catalogue.commentaar
• Taʿlīqāt ʿalā al-Shams al-bāzigha تَعْلِيقَاتٌ عَلَى الشَّمْسِ البَازِغَةِOn the philosophical handbook of Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī (Nuzhat).aantekeningen
• Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma تَعْلِيقَاتٌ عَلَى شَرْحِ هِدَايَةِ الحِكْمَةِ — op al-AbharīOn al-Shīrāzī’s commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma (Nuzhat).aantekeningen
• Sharḥ Zubdat al-uṣūl شَرْحُ زُبْدَةِ الأُصُولِOn Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s handbook of legal theory (Nuzhat).commentaar

Reception

His commentary was glossed first in Sandīla by his Shīʿī students and his son Ḥaydar ʿAlī, then by Dildār ʿAlī al-Naṣīrābādī and his sons, and in the nineteenth century by Shīʿī and Sunnī scholars of Lucknow connected with Farangī Maḥall, and later in Rampur, Tonk, Lahore and Aligarh (Ahmed).

In the Deobandi version of the Dars-i Niẓāmī recorded by Zubair Zafar Khan, ‘Ḥamd Allāh’ is one of the three Sullam commentaries near the top of the logic course, between Mullā Ḥasan and Qāḍī Mubārak.