Al-Yazdī’s Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb (Ḥāshiya Mullā ʿAbd Allāh)

1The author

The author’s name is Najm al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh b. Shihāb al-Dīn Ḥusayn al-Yazdī al-Bahābādī. Kâtib Çelebi’s Kashf al-ẓunūn, which lists his work among the commentaries on the Tahdhīb, calls him ‘Najm b. Shihāb, called ʿAbd Allāh’. His nisba Bahābādī refers to Bahābād, a village about 210 km south-east of Yazd. Some older sources write it ‘Shahābādī’ or ‘Shāhābādī’; modern writers, followed by the Arabic WikiShia article and by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Turkmānī in his 2018 edition, regard this as a copyist’s error, and al-Yazdī himself writes ‘Bahābādī’ at the beginning of one of his glosses.

He was born in the early tenth/sixteenth century, studied first in Bahābād and then in Shiraz and Isfahan. In Shiraz he studied with Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr al-Dashtakī at his Manṣūriyya madrasa, and, according to al-Turkmānī, he read the rational sciences in Isfahan with Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Shīrāzī, a pupil of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī, together with al-Muqaddas al-Ardabīlī and Mīrzā Jān Ḥabīb Allāh al-Bāghnawī. Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī also cites passages from his commentary on al-Shahīd al-Awwal’s al-Alfiyya which show that he studied with al-Muḥaqqiq al-Karakī. He taught at the Manṣūriyya and then settled in Najaf.

In Najaf, according to WikiShia, the Safavid rulers made him keeper of the library of the shrine of ʿAlī, an office that remained in his family for generations. His students included Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (Shaykh Bahāʾī), who read the general part of Ibn Sīnā’s Qānūn with him and received an ijāza from him, Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī, author of Maʿālim al-dīn, and Sayyid Muḥammad al-ʿĀmilī, author of Madārik al-aḥkām.

2981 or 1015?

Most Shiʿi biographical sources, as al-Turkmānī notes, give his death as 981/1573, ‘late in the reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp’; WikiShia, Roy Mottahedeh’s study of the Najaf curriculum and the title page of the 2013 Gujarat edition use this date. Another tradition gives 1015/1606: Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur has ‘d. 1015/1606’, as do al-Ziriklī’s al-Aʿlām (according to al-Turkmānī), Francis Robinson’s list of the Indian curriculum (‘d. 1606’) and bookseller and library descriptions of current South Asian printings. Al-Turkmānī considers 981 the more likely date.

The place of death and burial is also disputed. Āghā Buzurg, citing the Safavid chronicle Aḥsan al-tawārīkh and al-Khwānsārī, says he died in Iraq, and al-Khwānsārī adds that he was buried near the Imams there; al-Ziriklī says he died in Isfahan; and a tomb in Bahābād is attributed to him today, which some modern writers accept.

3Sharḥ or ḥāshiya?

The work goes by two names. The Iranian editions call it al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā Tahdhīb al-manṭiq, ‘the gloss on the Tahdhīb’, and in the ḥawza it is simply ‘the Ḥāshiya’ or Ḥāshiya-yi Mullā ʿAbd Allāh. Indian prints and Robinson’s list call it Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb, ‘the commentary’. Kashf al-ẓunūn describes it as ‘a commentary by lemmata’ (sharḥ bi-l-qawl): it quotes a phrase of the text, introduced by ‘his words’ (qawluhu), and then explains it. Unlike a gloss in the strict sense, it comments directly on the matn, not on an earlier commentary.

According to Āghā Buzurg and Afandī’s Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ, as quoted by al-Turkmānī, al-Yazdī finished it ‘in the forenoon of Wednesday, 27 Dhū al-Qaʿda 967’ (August 1560) in ‘the holy shrine of al-Gharī’, that is, Najaf; Brockelmann also gives 967 as the year of composition. The commentary covers the whole logic part of the Tahdhīb, from the preface to the conclusion on the parts of the sciences. In his comment on the conclusion al-Yazdī adds the ‘eight headings’ (al-ruʾūs al-thamāniya), the traditional preliminary topics of a book, such as its rank among the sciences and its division into parts; a gloss printed with it in the Amman edition illustrates the division with the Tahdhīb itself: ‘the first part, on logic, is arranged in an introduction, two aims and a conclusion’.

One Persian reference work gives Tuḥfa-yi Shāhjahānī as another name of the book. In the Indian prints this is the name of a gloss on it by Ilāhī Bakhsh Fayḍābādī (see below), and the two have probably been confused.

4Why it became the standard text

The sources consulted explain its success by its qualities as a teaching book. WikiShia describes it as precise, comprehensive and concise, and says that it has been studied more than the Tahdhīb itself and is one of the main reasons for the Tahdhīb’s fame. Al-Turkmānī writes that it ‘has found acceptance among scholars for centuries’ and that, with its glosses, it is the edition in use for teaching in several countries of the non-Arab East. Where al-Dawānī’s commentary breaks off after the simple modal propositions, al-Yazdī’s covers the whole logic part.

It also crossed the line between Sunni and Shiʿi schools. Robinson’s comparison of the curricula lists it in the logic course of Safavid Iran and, as ‘Sharḥ-i Tahdhīb’, in the Indian Dars-i Niẓāmī, whose teachers were Sunni. Mottahedeh identifies a book in a list of the Najaf curriculum as most likely al-Yazdī’s Ḥāshiya. The Persian WikiShia article names Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as countries where it has been taught. In South Asia the Dār al-ʿUlūm at Deoband still reads Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb in the third year of its eight-year course, after Taysīr al-manṭiq and al-Mirqāt. Kurdish madrasas used it as well, as the glosses written there show.

In Iran, many generations of ḥawza students learnt their logic from it. A recent Iranian article argues that the rule-based style of argument of ʿAllāma Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī owes much to the logic teaching that al-Yazdī’s commentary shaped, and an international conference on al-Yazdī’s logic was held in Iran in May 2025.

5Al-Yazdī’s other writings on the Tahdhīb

Al-Yazdī returned to the Tahdhīb several times. Al-Turkmānī lists, from Āghā Buzurg’s al-Dharīʿa and Afandī: a commentary on the ‘rule of the conditions of the four figures’ (ḍābiṭa), written at the request of his teacher Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd, which al-Turkmānī prints with other commentaries on the same passage; a gloss on al-Dawānī’s commentary written while he was teaching it and called al-Kharrāra fī sharḥ al-ʿUjāla (‘the gushing spring, on the hasty piece’), for al-Dawānī had called his own commentary ‘a hasty piece’ (ʿujāla); and a gloss on the discussion of the subject of a science in al-Dawānī’s commentary. WikiShia and al-Turkmānī also mention a Persian commentary on the Tahdhīb by him. Beyond logic he wrote glosses on al-Taftāzānī’s al-Mukhtaṣar and al-Muṭawwal, on al-Jurjānī’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya, on al-Qūshjī’s commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd, on al-Bayḍāwī’s Qurʾān commentary, and works of law and exegesis.

6Glosses on the commentary

Al-Turkmānī counts some fifty glosses and commentaries on al-Yazdī’s work. In Safavid and Qajar Iran they include a gloss by ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī (d. 1072/1662), who also wrote a Persian commentary on the Tahdhīb; a Persian gloss by the poet Mīrzā ʿAlī Riḍā Ardakānī Shīrāzī, ‘Tajallī’ (d. 1085/1674), written for his pupil Ibrāhīm Khān; a gloss by Muḥsin al-Qazwīnī ‘al-Naḥwī’, gathered in 1132/1720; glosses by Muḥammad ʿAlī Ardabīlī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ardistānī (d. 1272/1856), Mīrzā Muḥammad Tunukābunī (d. 1302/1885), Muḥammad ʿAlī Qarāchadāghī (d. 1310/1893) and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Marāghī; and twentieth-century works such as Rafʿ al-ghāshiya ʿan wajh al-ḥāshiya by Shihāb al-Dīn Tabrīzī (1339/1920) and Saʿādat al-mutaʾannaq by Muḥammad Ḥasan Ṭāliqānī. The Persian WikiShia article lists several of these and more, including the Persian Shīr u shakar of Mīrzā Ḥusayn Lāhījī.

In India, glosses were written by ʿAbd al-Nabī Aḥmadnagarī, author of the dictionary Dustūr al-ʿulamāʾ, by Ilāhī Bakhsh Fayḍābādī, whose large gloss Tuḥfa-yi Shāhjahānī was printed with a ‘logical parsing’ (ḥall-i tarkīb-i manṭiqī) of the commentary that he devised on the model of grammatical parsing, and by ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī (1264–1304/1848–1886), whose gloss accompanies widely used Indian and Pakistani printings. In Kurdistan, glosses by Mullā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Binjuwīnī and Mullā ʿUmar al-Kalārī circulated; al-Binjuwīnī’s was published in 2023. Modern commentaries in Persian and Urdu continue the series; they are listed in ‘The commentaries on the Tahdhīb’ and in the catalogue.

7Printing history

Brockelmann records Indian printings of 1269/1852–53, Madras 1273/1856–57, Kanpur 1291/1874–75 and Hyderabad 1300 and 1301 (1882–84). Al-Turkmānī based his edition on two Indian prints with al-Laknawī’s glosses: one from the ʿAlawī press of Muḥammad Bakhsh Khān in Lucknow, corrected by Sayyid Muḥammad Maʿshūq ʿAlī in 1300/1882–83, whose title page names al-Laknawī, and a photographic reprint by Qadīmī Kutub Khāna, Karachi, of a print of 1350/1931, which omits al-Laknawī’s name, adds further glosses and calls the gloss Tadhhīb al-tahdhīb. He also used a print with Ilāhī Bakhsh’s Tuḥfa-yi Shāhjahānī dated 1290/1873 (Brockelmann gives Kanpur 1296/1879 for an edition of the Tahdhīb with this gloss). The Bibliotheca Alexandrina holds an undated ʿAlawī press print of the commentary and a Lucknow edition of 1882 entered under al-Laknawī.

In Iran the commentary was printed in Tehran with marginal glosses; al-Turkmānī mentions a print of 1323/1905 that carried selections from the glosses of Qarāchadāghī, Marāghī and others, and the anonymous Kashf al-astār. The standard modern Iranian edition, al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā Tahdhīb al-manṭiq, is published in Qom by Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmī of the Jamāʿat al-Mudarrisīn; WikiShia gives 1405/1984–85 for its first printing and cites a fifteenth printing of 1433/2012. Al-Turkmānī mentions a Beirut reprint of it by Muʾassasat al-Tārīkh al-ʿArabī (2010). A Persian translation of the commentary was published in Tehran by Ṣabā in 1394 Sh/2015–16.

Recent South Asian and Arab editions include the edition of Idārat al-Ṣiddīq, Dābhel (Gujarat), 1434/2013, with new notes compiled by Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad Ilyās al-Ghadawī and checked by teachers including one of the Dār al-ʿUlūm, Deoband; ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Turkmānī’s critical edition with al-Laknawī’s glosses and the commentaries on the ḍābiṭa (Amman: Dār al-Nūr, 2018), which also used manuscripts in Tehran (dated 20 Rajab 1053/1643) and Istanbul; and the Maktaba al-Bushrā edition (Karachi, 1443/2021) with Tuḥfa-yi Shāhjahānī. The Mantiqi reads the commentary at level 4; its text and translation are drafts for review.