Kiai Maḥfūẓ al-Tarmasī

Javanese ḥadīth scholar and Shāfiʿī jurist who taught for decades in Mecca; his record of the books he studied lists no logic, which Fanani and Widigdo take as evidence that logic was not a standard pesantren subject.

Life

According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Maḥfūẓ was born on 12 Jumādā I 1285 (31 August 1868) at Tremas in the Pacitan region of East Java, into a family that ran pesantren: his grandfather ʿAbd al-Mannān Dipomenggolo founded the Tremas pesantren in 1830, and his father ʿAbd Allāh led it after him. He first studied with his father, went with him to Mecca at the age of six, studied in the late 1870s with Kiai Ṣāliḥ Darat in Semarang, and in the early 1880s returned to Mecca, never to go back to Java. He studied in Mecca, Medina and Cairo; among his teachers were Abū Bakr b. Muḥammad Shaṭṭā al-Dimyāṭī, the Shāfiʿī muftī of Mecca Muḥammad Saʿīd Bā-Baṣīl and Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Nawawī al-Bantanī.

After receiving licences in ḥadīth, law, legal theory, Sufism and the Qurʾānic sciences, he taught in the madrasas of Mecca and in the Masjid al-Ḥarām, especially students from Indonesia and Malaysia. The TDV estimates that he taught more than 4,000 students; among them were Hāshim Ashʿarī and Bisri Syansuri, two of the founders of Nahdlatul Ulama in 1926. He died in Mecca on 1 Rajab 1338 (21 March 1920). His works, some twenty in all, include a gloss on Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s commentary on the Muqaddima of Bā-Faḍl in Shāfiʿī law (Mawhibat dhī al-faḍl), a commentary on al-Suyūṭī’s verse on ḥadīth methodology still read in the pesantren, works on the Qurʾānic readings, and Kifāyat al-mustafīd, a record of his chains of transmission (asānīd) for the books he had read.

That record is why he appears in the history of logic. Ahwan Fanani and Mohammad Syifa Amin Widigdo examined Kifāyat al-mustafīd for logic texts and found that it lists works of law, exegesis, ḥadīth, the sciences of ḥadīth and of the Qurʾān, and Arabic, but ‘none of the logic work’; they conclude that logic was not a standard subject of Islamic education in the Indonesian setting. They contrast him with Muḥammad Yāsīn al-Fādānī (d. 1410/1990), whose al-Musnad al-jalī records an extensive training in logic, including the Shamsiyya with its commentaries and the Sullam with the commentaries of al-Damanhūrī and al-Mallawī. Al-Tarmasī’s chains do, however, include Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī among his Shāfiʿī authorities, the author of a much-read commentary on the Īsāghūjī.

Works

• Kifāyat al-mustafīd li-mā ʿalā min al-asānīd كِفَايَةُ المُسْتَفِيدِ لِمَا عَلَا مِنَ الأَسَانِيدِHis chains of transmission for the classical texts he read, back to their authors (Cairo 1332, TDV; Surabaya: Dār al-Saqqāf, n.d., Fanani and Widigdo). No logic text appears in it according to Fanani and Widigdo.تصنیف
• Mawhibat dhī al-faḍl ʿalā Sharḥ Ibn Ḥajar ʿalā Muqaddimat Bā-FaḍlHis main work in Shāfiʿī law (Cairo 1327, 4 vols.) (TDV).حاشیہ
• Manhaj dhawī al-naẓar bi-sharḥ Manẓūmat ʿilm al-atharOn al-Suyūṭī’s verse on ḥadīth methodology; still read in Indonesian pesantren (Cairo 1332) (TDV).شرح

Reception

Through his students he shaped the traditional scholarship of Java in the twentieth century (TDV); in the history of logic he serves as a negative witness: a leading teacher of Indonesian students whose own recorded learning contains no logic (see ‘The Malay world’).