Qāḍī Mīr

Sunnī philosopher and judge of Yazd, pupil of al-Dawānī, whose commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma (‘Qāḍī Mīr’) was a madrasa textbook from Istanbul to India, and who also wrote a commentary on the Shamsiyya.

Life

According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Ḥusayn b. Muʿīn al-Dīn was born in Maybud in the province of Yazd in Iran; he is called in some sources Kamāl al-Dīn Amīr Ḥusayn Yazdī and is generally known as Qāḍī Mīr. In Shiraz he attended the lessons of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī, through whom he came to know the Aq Qoyunlu prince Yaʿqūb Beg, who appointed him judge of Yazd. His letters show that he was a Sunnī scholar who taught for more than forty years in various madrasas of Iran and served as judge of Yazd for over six years, until accusations about his philosophical views and his strictness in office led him to resign and devote himself to writing. In those letters he also complains that the madrasas had abandoned both the religious and the rational sciences.

When Shāh Ismāʿīl, founder of the Safavid dynasty, defeated the Aq Qoyunlu in 1503 and took Shiraz and Kāzarūn, he is reported to have put to death the Sunnī scholars who refused to curse the first three caliphs, and al-Maybudī is thought to have been among them. Ḥasan Rūmlū records his death among the events of 909/1503–4; Brockelmann and Sarkīs give 904/1498, and Robert Wisnovsky’s PIPDI handlist 910/1504–5 (and, in one entry, ca. 890/1485).

Al-Maybudī worked in theology, philosophy, logic, grammar, geometry and astronomy, and wrote Persian poetry under the pen-name Manṭiqī (‘the logician’). The TDV describes his thought as following his teacher al-Dawānī in combining Ibn Sīnā, al-Suhrawardī and Ibn ʿArabī. His most influential book was his commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma, known simply as ‘Qāḍī Mīr’, read in Iran, India and the Ottoman madrasas until recent times. He also wrote a commentary on the Shamsiyya: in its preface, as the TDV reports, he explains that the many commentaries and glosses on the book contradicted one another and that the resulting disputes kept students from profiting from it, so he wrote, at the insistence of others, a concise commentary drawing on al-Jurjānī and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.

Works

• Sharḥ al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya شَرْحُ الرِّسَالَةِ الشَّمْسِيَّةِ — بر al-Risāla al-ShamsiyyaPrinted Istanbul 1289 and 1327 (TDV) and Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2021.شرح
• Sharḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma (‘Qāḍī Mīr’) شَرْحُ هِدَايَةِ الحِكْمَةِ — بر ابہریOn al-Abharī’s handbook of philosophy; many glosses, among them by Muṣliḥ al-Dīn al-Lārī, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Khwājazāda and Gelenbevî; Turkish translation by Akkirmânî (İklîlü’t-terâcim). Printed Istanbul 1263, 1321; Lucknow 1281, 1309, 1325 and elsewhere in India (TDV).شرح
• Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ʿayn شَرْحُ حِكْمَةِ العَيْنِ — بر al-KātibīOn al-Kātibī’s Ḥikmat al-ʿayn (TDV).شرح
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-ṬawāliʿOn al-Bayḍāwī’s theological Ṭawāliʿ al-anwār (TDV).حاشیہ
• Jām-i gītīnumāA Persian treatise relating theology, philosophy and Sufism (TDV).تصنیف
• MunshaʾātA collection of eighty letters, the main source for his life (TDV).تصنیف

Reception

Kâtip Çelebi read ‘Qāḍī Mīr’ in 1638 and remarked that most scholars of his time knew nothing of the rational sciences beyond this book (TDV, citing Mīzān al-ḥaqq and Kashf al-ẓunūn); according to his Mīzān al-ḥaqq, as reported by Pattabanoğlu, he taught it himself in 1649–50.

His commentary on Hidāyat al-ḥikma is still in the sixth year of the current course of the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband (see ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’); his commentary on the Shamsiyya is less known but has been reprinted.