al-ʿAḍud | The Mantiqi

Ashʿarī theologian, legal theorist and judge of Ilkhanid and Injuid Iran, author of al-Mawāqif, whose short treatises on disputation and on semantics became madrasa texts and whose pupils are said to have included al-Taftāzānī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.

Life

ʿAḍud al-Dīn was born in 680/1281 at Īj near Shiraz, into a wealthy family said to descend from Abū Bakr; his father was qāḍī of the town. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he went first to Shiraz and then to the new Ilkhanid capital Sulṭāniyya, where he came under the patronage of the vizier Rashīd al-Dīn. Under Öljeitü (1304–1316) he was a judge at Sulṭāniyya and taught in the mobile madrasa that accompanied the ruler on campaign, and under Abū Saʿīd he became chief judge of the realm. At the wish of Rashīd al-Dīn’s son, the vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn Muḥammad, to whom he dedicated his commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib and al-Fawāʾid al-Ghiyāthiyya, he returned to Shiraz as qāḍī in 727/1327. After the end of Ilkhanid rule he became chief judge of Shiraz under the Injuid Abū Isḥāq and knew the poet Ḥāfiẓ, who counted him among the five men who made Fārs flourish. When the Muẓaffarid Mubāriz al-Dīn besieged Shiraz he left secretly for his home town (754/1353); a year later the governor of Kirman had him arrested, for reasons unknown, and he died in prison at Diraymiyān.

His teachers included al-Bayḍāwī’s pupil Fakhr al-Dīn al-Chārpardī, with whom he had famous disagreements, and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, the pupil of al-Ṭūsī. Among his students the TDV names Shams al-Dīn al-Kirmānī, Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, described as his most important pupil, who glossed his commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib, and al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, who commented on al-Mawāqif. The TDV article on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī also counts al-Ījī among the teachers of the author of the Quṭbī. Whether al-Taftāzānī really studied with him is disputed (see below).

His main work is al-Mawāqif fī ʿilm al-kalām, the systematic summary of later Ashʿarī theology, read in al-Jurjānī’s commentary; its first part treats the logical preliminaries (TDV article ‘Mantık’). For the logic course two very short treatises mattered more. Ādāb al-baḥth, also called al-Ādāb al-ʿAḍudiyya, sets out the rules of disputation in about ten lines and was memorised and taught in the madrasas for centuries, with many commentaries and glosses. Al-Risāla al-waḍʿiyya, a treatise of a page and a half on how words are assigned to meanings, founded, in the account of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the discipline of ʿilm al-waḍʿ: its problem was the pronoun ‘he’, whose meaning changes with every speech situation. His short creed al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿAḍudiyya, finished twelve days before his death, and his commentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s Mukhtaṣar of legal theory (734/1334) were also widely studied.

Uncertain or disputed

That al-Taftāzānī studied with him rests on a report that he was the dullest of al-Ījī’s pupils but outdid them by effort; Wilferd Madelung argued that al-Taftāzānī cannot have studied with him in person (TDV article ‘Teftâzânî’).
That al-Jurjānī (b. 740/1340) was his student, as the TDV article on al-Ījī says, would require him to have studied with al-Ījī as a youth; the TDV article on al-Jurjānī does not mention al-Ījī among his teachers.
The sources consulted give no reason for his arrest and death in prison.

Works

al-Mawāqif fī ʿilm al-kalām المَوَاقِفُ فِي عِلْمِ الكَلَامِHandbook of theology whose first part deals with logical preliminaries; commented on by al-Jurjānī (Sharḥ al-Mawāqif) and many others.matn
Ādāb al-baḥth (al-Ādāb al-ʿAḍudiyya, al-Risāla al-ʿAḍudiyya) آدَابُ البَحْثِTen-line treatise on the rules of disputation, memorised and taught in the madrasas for centuries, with many commentaries and glosses (Istanbul 1267, 1274; Cairo 1306, 1310; TDV). PIPDI lists commentaries by, among others, al-Bardaʿī, al-Barjandī and ʿIṣām al-Dīn al-Isfarāʾīnī.matn
al-Risāla al-waḍʿiyya الرِّسَالَةُ الوَضْعِيَّةُShort treatise on imposition (waḍʿ), the founding text of ʿilm al-waḍʿ (SEP); commented on by ʿIṣām al-Dīn al-Isfarāʾīnī.matn
Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Muntahā شَرْحُ مُخْتَصَرِ المُنْتَهَىCommentary on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s handbook of legal theory, finished 734/1334; glossed by al-Taftāzānī and al-Jurjānī (TDV).commentaar
al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿAḍudiyya العَقَائِدُ العَضُدِيَّةُShort creed written for memorisation, finished twelve days before his death (TDV); commented on by al-Dawānī in 905/1499 (Encyclopaedia Iranica) and many others.matn

Reception

The TDV notes that his Ādāb al-baḥth was memorised and taught in the madrasas for centuries; in Erzurumlu İbrâhim Hakkı’s Ottoman study plan of 1165/1752 a ‘commentary on ʿAḍud’ (Şerh Azud) is among the books on disputation (Fazlıoğlu).

He is counted the teacher both of al-Taftāzānī (if the report is accepted) and of al-Jurjānī, the two scholars whose rival ‘schools’, the TDV notes, long divided later learning in Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia and India.

Sources (9)