عَنِ المَنْطِق
About manṭiq
What manṭiq is, how it came to the madrasa, how its literature works, the debate over studying it, and where to start reading.
- 1What is manṭiq?Manṭiq, the logic of the madrasa, was defined as ‘a canonical instrument whose observance protects the mind from error in thinking’. This article explains that definition, the subject and aim of logic, the ten principles (al-mabādiʾ al-ʿashara) that the handbooks list for it, its two halves and five arts, and its place among the instrumental sciences.
- 2A history of logic in IslamArabic logic began with translations of Greek works in eighth-century Baghdad and has been taught without a break ever since. This article follows it through its main periods: the translators and the Baghdad Peripatetics, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā’s new system, the great logicians of the thirteenth century, the age of handbooks and commentaries, the regional traditions of the early modern period, and the modern age.
- 3Matn, sharḥ, ḥāshiya: how the literature worksMost of the logic written in Arabic after 1300 is commentary: commentaries (sharḥ) on short base texts (matn), glosses (ḥāshiya) on the commentaries, notes on the glosses, and verse versions for memorising. This article explains these genres, how they were read in teaching, and how to find one’s way around a printed page on which several of them share the space.
- 4Should a Muslim study logic?From the tenth century to the present, Muslim scholars have argued over whether logic is a neutral tool, a doorway to heresy or a religious duty. This article follows the debate from the grammarians’ objections through al-Ghazālī, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Ibn Taymiyya and al-Suyūṭī to the jurists of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries who called logic a collective duty, and to the modern period.
- 5Modern study of Arabic logicFor much of the twentieth century Western scholars studied Arabic logic mainly up to Ibn Sīnā and assumed that it declined afterwards. Since the 1990s a new generation has edited and analysed the later handbooks and commentaries and overturned that picture. This article introduces the main scholars and their works, the editions, tools and journals, and suggests where to start reading in English and other languages.