al-Bihārī

Mughal judge and scholar, author of Sullam al-ʿulūm, the most advanced logic textbook of the Indian madrasa course, and of Musallam al-thubūt in legal theory.

Life

Nuzhat al-khawāṭir gives his name as Muḥibb Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Shakūr al-ʿUthmānī al-Ṣiddīqī al-Ḥanafī al-Bihārī and calls him ‘one of the famous clever men across the lands’. He was born and grew up in Karā, a village in the district of Muḥibb ʿAlī Pūr in Bihar, in a clan known as al-Malik; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi adds that his father’s line went back to the caliph ʿUthmān and his mother’s to Abū Bakr. No source consulted gives his year of birth. He read some of the madrasa books with Quṭb al-Dīn b. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm al-Anṣārī al-Sihālawī, the founder of the Farangī Maḥall family, and most of them with Quṭb al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī al-Shamsābādī.

He became known for his learning in Ḥanafī law and in logic. According to Nuzhat he went to the camp of the emperor Awrangzīb ʿĀlamgīr in the Deccan, and Awrangzīb made him qāḍī of Lucknow and later moved him to Hyderabad (in 1097/1685–86, according to the TDV). Awrangzīb then removed him from the judgeship and made him tutor to Rafīʿ al-Qadr, son of the prince Shāh ʿĀlam, and when Shāh ʿĀlam became governor of Kabul (1109/1697–98, TDV) al-Bihārī went there with him and his son. After Awrangzīb’s death in 1118/1707 Shāh ʿĀlam took the throne as Bahādur Shāh I and gave al-Bihārī his highest office with the title Fāḍil Khān: chief ṣadr (al-ṣadāra al-ʿuẓmā) in Nuzhat, which dates the title to 1119, chief qāḍī of India in the TDV, which dates the appointment to 1118/1706–07. He died a few months later, in 1119/1707.

Nuzhat names three of his books as ‘accepted and current in the madrasas’: Sullam al-ʿulūm in logic, Musallam al-thubūt in legal theory and al-Jawhar al-fard on the indivisible part (the atom); it adds a treatise on fallacies of general application and one arguing that the Ḥanafī school is further from personal opinion (raʾy) than the Shāfiʿī. Musallam al-thubūt, whose title gives by its letters the year of writing, 1109/1697–98 (TDV), combines the methods of the jurists and the theologians, opens with a section on logic, and refers to the Sullam in its discussions of logic. The Sullam itself is a dense, advanced handbook in two parts, on conceptualizations and on assents, which absorbs the debates of the Shiraz logicians and of Mīr Dāmād; it is described on the pages of the Sullam al-ʿulūm section, which draw on Asad Q. Ahmed’s study and translation.

Works

• Sullam al-ʿulūm سُلَّمُ العُلُومِ — к Sullam al-ʿulūmAdvanced handbook of logic. Printed Lucknow 1290, Delhi 1322, Kazan 1906 (TDV). Commentaries by Qāḍī Mubārak, Ḥamd Allāh, Mullā Ḥasan, Mullā Mubīn, al-Mubārakī and many others.матн
• Ḥawāshī on Sullam al-ʿulūm — к Sullam al-ʿulūmThe author’s own glosses, quoted by the early commentators (see ‘The commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm’).глосса
• Musallam al-thubūt مُسَلَّمُ الثُّبُوتِḤanafī legal theory, written 1109/1697–98; printed Lucknow 1263, Aligarh 1297, Delhi 1311, Cairo 1322–26 (TDV). Commentaries by Niẓām al-Dīn, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (Fawātiḥ al-raḥamūt), Mullā Ḥasan and Mullā Mubīn.труд
• al-Jawhar al-fard الجَوْهَرُ الفَرْدُOn the indivisible part (atom) (Nuzhat, TDV).труд
• Risāla fī al-mughālaṭāt al-ʿāmmat al-wurūdOn fallacies of general application; printed with ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī’s commentary Muʿīn al-ghāʾiṣīn (India 1298) (TDV).труд

Reception

Within a few decades of his death the Sullam had become the most advanced logic book of the Dars-i Niẓāmī; Ahmed counts more than a hundred Indian commentaries and supercommentaries on it (see ‘Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’ and ‘Sullam al-ʿulūm in the madrasa’). It was also printed in Kazan in 1906 (TDV).

Musallam al-thubūt was commented on in India by Niẓām al-Dīn, Baḥr al-ʿUlūm, Mullā Ḥasan and Mullā Mubīn, and printed in Cairo in 1322–26 (Nuzhat, TDV).