Shaykh Bahāʾī

Leading scholar of Safavid Iran, Shaykh al-Islām under Shāh ʿAbbās I, mathematician and poet, who read Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn with ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī and received an ijāza from him.

Life

Bahāʾ al-Dīn was born in Baalbek in Jabal ʿĀmil in 953/1546–47 and came to Iran with his father, settling in Qazvin, then the Safavid capital. He first studied Arabic, ḥadīth, exegesis and law with his father and then, over some ten years, theology, philosophy, mathematics and medicine with the scholars of his time. Shāh ʿAbbās I gave him the title Shaykh al-Islām. He later travelled for many years in the dress of a dervish through Egypt, Iraq, the Hijaz, Syria and Anatolia, before settling in Isfahan, where he died on 13 Shawwāl 1031 (21 August 1622); he was buried in Mashhad. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi credits him with about ninety books and treatises, the best known being the anthology al-Kashkūl, the arithmetic handbook Khulāṣat al-ḥisāb, the Arabic grammar al-Fawāʾid al-Ṣamadiyya and Persian didactic poems.

For the history of logic teaching he matters as a student of ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī, the author of the standard commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb. Al-Turkmānī reports that Shaykh Bahāʾī stated in one of his books that he had read with al-Yazdī the general part (Kulliyyāt) of Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn and other works, and WikiShia names him first among al-Yazdī’s students. A modern author, quoted by al-Turkmānī, also attributes to him a gloss on al-Yazdī’s al-Kharrāra, a gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary on the Tahdhīb; this has not been confirmed.

Works

• Gloss on al-Yazdī’s al-Kharrāra (reported) — к Mullā ʿAbd Allāh YazdīAttributed to him by a modern author after a note on Amal al-āmil (al-Turkmānī); not seen.глосса
• Khulāṣat al-ḥisāb خُلَاصَةُ الحِسَابِHandbook of arithmetic, printed more than twenty times and commented on about forty times (TDV).труд
• al-Kashkūl الكَشْكُولُAnthology of sayings and texts, his best-known book (TDV).труд