al-Muḥaqqiq al-Dawānī

Persian theologian, philosopher and logician of Shiraz whose unfinished commentary on al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb, with the glosses of Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ and Mīr Zāhid, became the advanced route through the book in Iran, the Ottoman lands and India.

Life

Al-Dawānī was born between 827 and 830 (1424–27) in the village of Dawān near Kāzarūn in Fārs, into a learned family; his father Asʿad, a pupil of al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, taught him morphology, grammar and logic. In Shiraz he studied with scholars, many of them al-Jurjānī’s pupils, among them Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ījī, Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Kūshkanārī and Humām al-Dīn Gulbārī. He served the Qaraqoyunlu and Aqqoyunlu rulers: he began teaching at the Gökmedrese in Tabriz around 1465, and Sultan Yaʿqūb made him chief judge of Fārs, based in Shiraz. He corresponded with the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II. In the turmoil of the last Aqqoyunlu years he was imprisoned, fled to Lār and to the island of Jarūn (Hormuz), and died on the way home in 908/1502; he was buried in Dawān.

Students came to him in Shiraz from many lands, and through them a ‘Dawānī school’ spread. Among his best-known pupils were Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Shīrāzī, later the teacher of ʿAbd Allāh al-Yazdī, Qāḍī Mīr Ḥusayn al-Maybudī, Ḥakīm Shāh al-Qazwīnī, and Müeyyedzâde ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who brought his works to the Ottoman court. His long rivalry with Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī and his son Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr, carried on in successive glosses on the same books, shaped the philosophy of Shiraz for a generation. In theology he was an Ashʿarī, but his works also draw on philosophy, illuminationism and the thought of Ibn ʿArabī; his Akhlāq-i Jalālī on ethics was widely read.

In logic his most important work is his commentary on the logic part of al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb al-manṭiq. Kashf al-ẓunūn calls it a commentary by lemmata, ‘useful, famous, but not completed’; it breaks off after the simple modal propositions. In it al-Dawānī claims to bring ‘investigations not found in the books in circulation’, though he dictated it ‘in haste, extemporaneously’, and the work became known as al-ʿUjāla, ‘the hasty piece’. Glosses by Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ al-Saʿīdī, who also completed it, and by Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī made it a classic of the advanced course. He also wrote a gloss on the part on conceptions of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya and al-Jurjānī’s gloss on it, printed in Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya, and his view of the liar paradox, from the Tahdhīb commentary, is the first one the Sullam al-ʿulūm rejects.

Asad Q. Ahmed shows that in sixteenth-century India scholars in the line of al-Dawānī and the Dashtakīs made his Tahdhīb commentary, with that of his intellectual heir al-Yazdī, part of the core of logic teaching; in the Dars-i Niẓāmī ‘Mullā Jalāl’, read with Mīr Zāhid’s gloss, remained the advanced text on the Tahdhīb.

Works

• Sharḥ Tahdhīb al-manṭiq (‘Mullā Jalāl’; al-ʿUjāla) شَرْحُ تَهْذِيبِ المَنْطِقِ — к Tahdhīb al-manṭiqUnfinished commentary by lemmata, ending after the simple modal propositions. Printed Lucknow 1288, 1293; Istanbul 1305, 1312 (TDV); Kanpur 1317 (Brockelmann). Glossed by Mīr Abū al-Fatḥ, Mīr Zāhid, al-Yazdī and many Indian scholars.комментарий
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Shamsiyya — к Quṭb al-Dīn al-RāzīOn the part on conceptions of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary and al-Jurjānī’s gloss; printed Istanbul 1290, 1292, 1307, 1309; Cairo 1323, 1328 (TDV), and in Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya.глосса
• Shawākil al-ḥūr fī sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr شَوَاكِلُ الحُورِ فِي شَرْحِ هَيَاكِلِ النُّورِEarly commentary on Suhrawardī’s Hayākil al-nūr (Madras 1953); answered by Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr Dashtakī.комментарий
• Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿAḍudiyyaOn al-Ījī’s creed, written on Jarūn in 905/1499; a long-lived Ottoman textbook.комментарий
• Ḥawāshī ʿalā Sharḥ al-TajrīdThree successive glosses (old, new, newest) on al-Qūshjī’s commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd, in debate with Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī.глосса
• Akhlāq-i Jalālī (Lawāmiʿ al-ishrāq fī makārim al-akhlāq)Persian treatise on ethics and politics.труд

Reception

In the Ottoman lands and Iran his Tahdhīb commentary with its glosses was the advanced route through the book; in India ‘Mullā Jalāl’ and Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on it were standard texts of the Dars-i Niẓāmī.

Indian scholars from Qāḍī Mubārak to Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Faḍl-i Imām and ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī wrote glosses on his commentary or on Mīr Zāhid’s gloss on it.