Qāḍī Mubārak

Indian logician whose commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm, begun as a student and finished in Delhi in 1143/1730, became the curriculum book known simply as ‘Qāḍī’ or ‘Qāḍī Mubārak’, with his own glosses (al-Minhuyāt).

Life

Mubārak came from a family of Gūpāmaw, a town of Awadh, that traced its descent to the caliph ʿUmar (hence al-ʿUmarī, also given as al-Fārūqī). According to ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s Nuzhat al-khawāṭir he studied first in his home town with al-Qāḍī Quṭb al-Dīn al-Gūpāmawī, then elsewhere with the ḥadīth scholar Ṣifat Allāh al-Ḥusaynī al-Khayrābādī, and finally in Delhi, where he worked until he was ‘unique among the sons of his age’ and taught for a long time. Asad Q. Ahmed reconstructs his training somewhat differently: with Shihāb al-Dīn al-Gūpāmawī (d. ca. 1125/1713), a student of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī; with Ṣifat Allāh al-Khayrābādī (d. ca. 1157/1744), a student of both al-Sihālawī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shamsābādī; with al-Shamsābādī himself; and perhaps with Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī. Either way he belonged to the generation after al-Bihārī within the same line of teachers.

His commentary on al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm was a work of a quarter of a century. In its colophon, quoted by Ahmed, he says that he began it as a student, in the reign of Awrangzīb (so by 1118/1707 at the latest), stopped after the connective syllogism, and finished it only after he had moved to Delhi to earn his living and found the patronage of Nawwāb Sharīʿat Allāh Khān, in the reign of Muḥammad Shāh, in 1143. Nuzhat gives the exact day, Thursday 7 Rabīʿ I 1143 (September 1730). In the same year he wrote glosses on it in the margins of an autograph; another autograph with notes was made in Delhi in 1154/1741 for his son Muḥammad Amīr. After his death his student ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Sahāranpūrī collected these self-glosses as al-Minhuyāt.

Nuzhat says that the scholars received the commentary with acceptance and put it into the teaching programme, and Ahmed notes how quickly this happened: Baḥr al-ʿUlūm was already teaching it to one of Mubārak’s descendants. It is one of the three ‘gateway’ commentaries through which the Sullam was read, the others being those of Ḥamd Allāh al-Sandīlawī and Mullā Ḥasan. Mubārak also glossed Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī’s glosses on the Risāla quṭbiyya, on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb and on the commentary on the Mawāqif. He died on 5 Shawwāl 1162/1749 and was buried at his grandfather’s madrasa in Gūpāmaw.

Works

• Sharḥ Sullam al-ʿulūm (‘Qāḍī Mubārak’, ‘al-Qāḍī’) شَرْحُ سُلَّمِ العُلُومِ — op Sullam al-ʿulūmBegun by 1118/1707, finished in Delhi on 7 Rabīʿ I 1143/1730. Covers the whole Sullam and, according to Ahmed, carried the apparatus of Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn into the study of logic in South Asia. Many supercommentaries, first in Lucknow (Farangī Maḥall) and Rampur (the Khayrābādīs), and by Pashtun scholars.commentaar
• al-Minhuyāt المِنْهُيَاتُ — op Qāḍī MubārakHis own glosses on the commentary (‘minhu’ notes), written from 1143/1730 onwards and collected after his death by his student ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Sahāranpūrī (Ahmed). Other names for the work are recorded in the catalogue of this section.glosse
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat Mīr Zāhid ʿalā Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb — op Tahdhīb al-manṭiqGloss on Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī’s gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb (Nuzhat; Brockelmann, as cited in this section’s catalogue).glosse
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat Mīr Zāhid ʿalā al-Risāla al-quṭbiyyaGloss on Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s treatise on conception and assent (Nuzhat).glosse
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat Mīr Zāhid ʿalā Sharḥ al-MawāqifOn theology (Nuzhat).glosse

Reception

Through the Farangī Maḥallīs and their students in Lucknow, and later the Khayrābādīs in Rampur, his commentary became one of the main windows on the Sullam; Faḍl-i Imām and Faḍl-i Ḥaqq Khayrābādī were among those who wrote on it (see ‘The commentaries’ in the Sullam al-ʿulūm section).

The commentators admired the Sullam; Mubārak calls it ‘a heavenly book (ṣaḥīfa malakūtiyya), from which the rivers of the real disciplines flow’ (quoted in ‘Sullam al-ʿulūm: the book’).