al-Siyālkūtī

Mughal scholar of Sialkot, known as Malik al-ʿulamāʾ, whose glosses on the classic commentaries in logic, theology and rhetoric were read from India to Istanbul, above all his gloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on the Quṭbī.

Life

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi places his birth, probably in 968/1561, in Sialkot in the Punjab, where his father, Shaykh Muḥammad Shams al-Dīn, had settled from Kashmir. His most important teacher was Mawlānā Kamāl al-Dīn Kashmīrī (d. 1017/1608–9), who taught in Sialkot and Lahore and also trained Aḥmad Sirhindī and Saʿd Allāh Khān, later Shāh Jahān’s vizier. Other teachers named are the hadith scholar ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlawī, ʿAbd al-Salām Kirmānī Dīwī, a student of Fatḥ Allāh Shīrāzī, and Shaykh Dānyāl Jawrāsī.

He probably began teaching in Lahore, where he was known for lessons in kalām, logic and exegesis, became head teacher of a state school in Agra, and was invited to Delhi by Shāh Jahān, who gave him a land grant (jāgīr) of 125,000 rupees a year and the title Malik al-ʿulamāʾ, ‘king of the scholars’. He founded a madrasa in Sialkot and taught for about sixty years; his son ʿAbd Allāh Labīb (d. 1094/1683), with whom he read many of the classic texts and for whom several glosses were written, succeeded him there. He died in Sialkot on 18 Rabīʿ I 1067 (4 January 1657).

Almost all his works are glosses (ḥawāshī) on the commentaries that were read at the advanced stages of the madrasa course, on books of al-Bayḍāwī, al-Taftāzānī, al-Jurjānī and al-Dawānī. The TDV calls him the most important seventeenth-century representative of the ‘verifying’ (muḥaqqiq) tradition that grew up after Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. His only independent treatise, al-Risāla al-Khāqāniyya on God’s knowledge, was written in 1057/1647 at Shāh Jahān’s request as an answer to a question put to an Indian embassy in Safavid Iran.

In logic his chief work is the gloss on al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya, the commentary on al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya; it was also known as the Ḥāshiya ʿalā Mīr Quṭbī. A copy dated 22 Rajab 1100 (12 May 1689) in Istanbul suggests that it reached the Ottoman lands early, and in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was printed more than forty times in Istanbul, Delhi, Lucknow and Cairo, often divided into the part on conceptions (taṣawwurāt) and the part on assents (taṣdīqāt). He also wrote an early gloss, probably around 1600, on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn’s commentary on al-Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār, and a gloss on al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya. In philosophy he glossed al-Maybudī’s commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma and Mīrak al-Bukhārī’s commentary on al-Kātibī’s Ḥikmat al-ʿayn.

Works

• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat al-Sayyid ʿalā Sharḥ al-Shamsiyya (Ḥāshiya ʿalā Mīr Quṭbī) حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى حَاشِيَةِ السَّيِّدِ عَلَى القُطْبِيِّ — بر al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-JurjānīGloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Taḥrīr; printed Istanbul 1259 and 1310, Delhi 1870, Lucknow 1878 and 1308/1890–91 (GAL S I 846), and in the Cairo collection Shurūḥ al-Shamsiyya. Glossed in turn by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kharpūtī and annotated by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shirbīnī (TDV).حاشیہ
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Shamsiyya li-l-Taftāzānī — بر al-TaftāzānīGloss on al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya, known in India as al-Saʿdiyya; Istanbul 1238 (TDV; GAL S I 846).حاشیہ
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat al-Sayyid ʿalā Sharḥ Maṭāliʿ al-anwār — بر al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-JurjānīGloss on al-Jurjānī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on al-Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār; an early work, probably around 1600; manuscripts in Patna and the India Office (TDV).حاشیہ
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat al-Khayālī ʿalā Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya (Zubdat al-afkār)His most important work in theology; the TDV counts twenty-four Istanbul printings, besides Delhi and Kanpur.حاشیہ
• al-Risāla al-Khāqāniyya (al-Durra al-thamīna) الرِّسَالَةُ الخَاقَانِيَّةُTreatise on God’s knowledge written for Shāh Jahān in 1057/1647; Delhi 1877; ed. Amman 1444.تصنیف
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-MuṭawwalGloss on al-Taftāzānī’s commentary on the Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (rhetoric); several Istanbul, Bulaq and Cairo printings. Al-Shirbīnī wrote notes on it.حاشیہ

Reception

The TDV notes that his glosses reached the Hijaz, Damascus, Cairo and Istanbul in his lifetime and that some became basic texts of the Ottoman madrasa; it adds that he was better known in the Ottoman lands than in the subcontinent itself.

In India Mīr Zāhid al-Harawī and Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī built on his work, and al-Tahānawī used his books as a main source of the Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn (TDV). Asad Q. Ahmed counts his glosses on the Shamsiyya and the Maṭāliʿ among the seventeenth-century works that shaped the Indian logic course before Sullam al-ʿulūm.

El-Rouayheb names him with al-Taftāzānī, al-Jurjānī, al-Sanūsī, al-Dawānī and al-Yūsī as one of the Sunni masters of kalām and logic whose outlook the later Salafīs rejected.