Indian Ḥanafī scholar, author of Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn wa-l-ʿulūm, the largest encyclopaedia of the technical terms of the madrasa sciences, which gives the standard definition, subject and rank of logic.
Life
Almost all that is known of him comes from the preface of his book. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives his full name as Muḥammad Aʿlā b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Ḥāmid b. Muḥammad Ṣābir al-ʿUmarī al-Fārūqī al-Tahānawī and places his birth at Tahāna, about 170 km from Delhi. His nisbas show a family claiming descent from the caliph ʿUmar, Sunni in creed and Ḥanafī in law; the honorifics of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather point to a known scholarly family, and according to ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī he served as qāḍī of Tahāna late in the reign of Awrangzīb (d. 1707).
After studying Arabic and the religious sciences with his father he had no other teachers, but taught himself logic, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic and geometry from the books he collected. Struck by how much depends on knowing each science’s terms, he resolved to write a dictionary of the terms of all the sciences, so that, as he put it, teachers would then be needed only for the blessing. The draft was finished in 1158/1745. He died around the middle of the eighteenth century and was buried at Tahāna, where his grave is still visited.
The Kashshāf opens with a long introduction on the sciences, divided into the Arabic sciences, the religious sciences and the ‘real’ (rational) sciences, which include logic, philosophy, mathematics and the natural sciences; some fifty-five sciences are described with their parts, aims and benefits. The main body explains 3,045 Arabic and Persian terms in their ordinary and technical senses. Among his sources the TDV names al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt, al-Taftāzānī’s Tahdhīb and his commentary on the Shamsiyya, al-Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār and al-Ṭūsī’s commentary on the Ishārāt; the TDV article on al-Siyālkūtī adds that al-Tahānawī used al-Siyālkūtī’s glosses as a main source. The section on logic treats it among the instrumental sciences and discusses its aim, its place in the order of study, and whether logic is a science at all.
The Kashshāf was first printed in Calcutta in two volumes in 1278/1862 under the supervision of Aloys Sprenger and W. Nassau Lees, with al-Kātibī’s Shamsiyya and Sprenger’s English translation appended; the TDV regards this as the best edition. Later editions include Istanbul 1317/1899 and Cairo 1382/1963 (both only to the letter ṣād), the latter based on the author’s copy at Aligarh, and Beirut editions by ʿAlī Daḥrūj (1416/1995) and Aḥmad Ḥasan Basaj (1418/1998).
Uncertain or disputed
- Dates of birth and death are not known; the TDV gives ‘after 1158/1745’.
- Name: he is sometimes called ‘Muḥammad ʿAlī’; the TDV gives Muḥammad Aʿlā b. ʿAlī, ʿAlī being his father’s name.
Works
- Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn wa-l-ʿulūm كَشَّافُ اصْطِلَاحَاتِ الفُنُونِ وَالعُلُومِEncyclopaedia of the technical terms of the sciences, drafted by 1158/1745; first ed. Calcutta 1862 (Sprenger and Lees).تصنیف
- Aḥkām al-arāḍī أَحْكَامُ الأَرَاضِيOn land ownership and taxation, with India in view; manuscript (TDV).تصنیف
- Sabq al-ghāyāt fī nasq al-āyāt سَبْقُ الغَايَاتِ فِي نَسْقِ الآيَاتِOn Qurʾānic exegesis; printed in India in 1316/1898 according to Sarkis (TDV).تصنیف
Reception
The TDV calls the Kashshāf the most comprehensive of the encyclopaedias of the sciences that began with al-Fārābī’s Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm and al-Khwārazmī’s Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm.
Its entries are a standard reference for the classical definition of logic as an instrument that protects the mind from error, and its first edition carried the first printed European translation of the Shamsiyya.
Sources (3)