Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī

Logician of the fourteenth century whose commentaries on the Shamsiyya (Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya, ‘the Quṭbī’) and on the Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (Lawāmiʿ al-asrār) became the core intermediate logic texts of the madrasas from the Ottoman lands to India.

Life

Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī was born in Varāmīn near Rayy; the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi estimates his birth at about 692/1293 from al-Subkī’s statement of his age at death. Some sources call him Maḥmūd rather than Muḥammad. In Varāmīn he read al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī’s Qawāʿid al-aḥkām with its author and received a licence (ijāza) dated 3 Shaʿbān 713/23 November 1313. He also studied with ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī, Shams al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī; Tony Street, writing on the Shamsiyya, notes that al-Shīrāzī and al-Ḥillī, both pupils of al-Kātibī, ‘had a hand in training’ him, so that he stood only one generation from the author of the book he made famous.

Street describes him as a Persian already of some standing who later travelled west. Khaled El-Rouayheb records that al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī met ‘an ageing Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’ in Herat and that the Anatolian Ḥājjī Pāshā attended his lessons in Damascus. He spent his last years in Damascus, living in the Ẓāhiriyya madrasa; because another scholar called Quṭb al-Dīn lived on the floor above, he was called al-Taḥtānī, ‘the one downstairs’. He died there on 16 Dhū l-Qaʿda 766/4 August 1365. Contemporary authors count him a Shāfiʿī (he commented on the Shāfiʿī law book al-Ḥāwī al-ṣaghīr), while later Shīʿī sources claim him as an Imāmī; the TDV notes that he wrote nothing on Shīʿism.

His logic works are commentaries and short treatises. Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya fī sharḥ al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya, finished according to Street in 1329, explains al-Kātibī’s handbook clause by clause and develops at length points the text only touches, such as the reading of propositions ‘according to the real nature’ and ‘according to the external world’. Lawāmiʿ al-asrār does the same for Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī’s much larger Maṭāliʿ al-anwār. His treatise on conception and assent (al-Risāla al-maʿmūla fī l-taṣawwur wa-l-taṣdīq) became, through Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī’s commentary, a standard advanced text in India. In al-Muḥākamāt he judged between the commentaries of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī on Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt, a work that, according to the TDV, he first planned as a gloss until al-Shīrāzī advised him otherwise.

The TDV names among his students Muḥammad b. Mubārakshāh, al-Jurjānī, Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, Ḥājjī Pāshā and al-Shahīd al-Awwal. Through al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Taḥrīr, and the glosses on that gloss, his commentary became the centre of the most layered literature in the history of the Shamsiyya.

Uncertain or disputed

Year of birth is estimated (ca. 692/1293). Year of death: 766/1365 in the TDV and El-Rouayheb; Street gives 1364 in one place and 1365 in others.
Given name: Muḥammad in most sources, Maḥmūd according to al-Isnawī and al-Suyūṭī (TDV).
Madhhab: Shāfiʿī according to contemporaries; Imāmī according to later Shīʿī sources such as al-Khwānsārī.
His students: the TDV lists al-Jurjānī and al-Taftāzānī, but El-Rouayheb describes al-Jurjānī only as meeting him in Herat in his old age; the extent of the instruction is uncertain. Street calls the story that his direct disciples settled in India legendary.

Works

Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya fī sharḥ al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya (Sharḥ al-Shamsiyya, al-Quṭbī) تَحْرِيرُ القَوَاعِدِ المَنْطِقِيَّةِ فِي شَرْحِ الرِّسَالَةِ الشَّمْسِيَّةِ — к al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaFinished in 1329 (Street). Printed in Calcutta (1815, 1842), Istanbul (1259/1843 and often), Lucknow (1283/1866) and Cairo; modern edition by Muḥsin Bīdārfar (Qom 2004). Glossed by al-Jurjānī, al-Taftāzānī, ʿIṣām al-Dīn al-Isfarāyīnī, al-Dawānī, al-Dasūqī, Dede Cöngî and others.комментарий
Lawāmiʿ al-asrār fī sharḥ Maṭāliʿ al-anwār لَوَامِعُ الأَسْرَارِ فِي شَرْحِ مَطَالِعِ الأَنْوَارِCommentary on al-Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār; printed in India (1272/1856), Istanbul (1303, 1310) and Tehran (1314). Read with al-Jurjānī’s gloss at the top of the Ottoman, Safavid and Egyptian courses.комментарий
al-Risāla al-maʿmūla fī l-taṣawwur wa-l-taṣdīq الرِّسَالَةُ المَعْمُولَةُ فِي التَّصَوُّرِ وَالتَّصْدِيقِOn whether conception and assent are each a kind of knowledge. Printed in Istanbul (1310) with Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī’s commentary, and in Qom (1995) with Mullā Ṣadrā’s treatise on the same subject; in India read as ‘Risāla Mīr Zāhid’ or al-Ḥāshiya al-Zāhidiyya al-Quṭbiyya.матн
Taḥqīq al-maḥṣūrāt تَحْقِيقُ المَحْصُورَاتِOn quantified propositions (Istanbul 1287).труд
al-Muḥākamāt bayna sharḥay al-Ishārāt المُحَاكَمَاتُ بَيْنَ شَرْحَيِ الإِشَارَاتِ — к Ибн СинаAdjudication between Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s and al-Ṭūsī’s commentaries on Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt (Istanbul 1290).труд

Reception

His commentary on the Shamsiyya appears in all three curricula that Francis Robinson compares (Ottoman, Safavid and Indian); in the Ottoman Kevâkib-i sebʿa list it is read with the glosses of al-Jurjānī and Qara Dāwūd, in India as ‘Quṭbī’ and ‘Mīr Quṭbī’, at al-Azhar as the fifth of the logic books, and in the Shīʿī ḥawza it is still read after al-Muẓaffar’s al-Manṭiq (see ‘Logic in the madrasa curriculum’ and the regional articles).

Tony Street observes that the superglosses on his commentary outnumber the commentaries on the Shamsiyya itself; El-Rouayheb notes that the later glossators concentrated on its opening parts, while its chapters on conversion, hypothetical propositions and the syllogism ‘appear not to have elicited a single gloss after the fourteenth century’.

Asad Q. Ahmed, as quoted in ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’, writes that his commentary on the Shamsiyya ‘continues to be part of the curriculum in various madāris in contemporary South Asia’.

Sources (4)