The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received ... more The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the grand narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. The bulk of twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that the present Handbook gives roughly equal weight to every century from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook differs from previous overviews in another significant way: It is work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered. This format is intended to give readers a better sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like, and of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at play in works belonging to various periods and subfields within Islamic philosophy.
Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought. By Ahmad S . Da... more Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought. By Ahmad S . Dallal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 421. $100 (cloth); $34.95 (paper); $27.99 (ebook).
A relatively well-known medieval Latin innovation is the doctrine of distributive supposition. Th... more A relatively well-known medieval Latin innovation is the doctrine of distributive supposition. This notion came to be used in syllogistic theory in the late medieval and early modern periods, as Latin logicians sought to establish general rules for syllogistic productivity across the various figures. It is much less well-known that some logicians in the medieval Arabic tradition also attempted to establish general rules for the syllogism, appealing to what they called “subject generality.” In the present article, I introduce this use of “subject generality” in some influential Arabic works on logic from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, specifically Al-ǧumal by Afḍal al-Dīn al-Ḫūnaǧī (d. 1248) and Tahḏīb al-manṭiq by Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and some of their commentators. I also compare this concept of “subject generality” to the Latin concept of “distribution.”
Bu makalede, Goldziher’in son donem literaturde oldukca yanki bulmus olan on ucuncu ve on dordunc... more Bu makalede, Goldziher’in son donem literaturde oldukca yanki bulmus olan on ucuncu ve on dorduncu yuzyildan itibaren Sunni Musluman âlimlerin git gide mantik gibi akli ilimlere dusman olduklari yonundeki gorusunu tartisacak; altinci, yedinci ve sekizinci yuzyildaki fetvalar ve tartismalar uzerinden bu gorusun ne kadar yanlis oldugunu ortaya koymaya calisacagim. Magrib, Misir ve Turkiye’deki âlimler arasindaki yaygin kanaat, mantik ilminin caiz olmasinin da otesinde mantikla ilgilenmenin mustehap, hatta farz-i kifâye oldugu yonundeydi. Her ne kadar o donemde, Kâdizâdeliller gibi aykiri sesler bulunsa da on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yuzyillarda Selefiyye akiminin ortaya cikisina kadar Sunni âlimler arasinda ana akim bu gibi gorunmektedir.
The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received ... more The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the grand narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. The bulk of twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that the present Handbook gives roughly equal weight to every century from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook differs from previous overviews in another significant way: It is work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered. This format is intended to give readers a better sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like, and of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at play in works belonging to various periods and subfields within Islamic philosophy.
The Egyptian scholar Aḥmad al-Mallawī (d.1767) penned perhaps the most detailed treatment of the ... more The Egyptian scholar Aḥmad al-Mallawī (d.1767) penned perhaps the most detailed treatment of the topic of the immediate implications of hypothetical propositions since the fourteenth century. His work, written when he was a mere eighteen years old, is a commentary on his own versification of the relevant section of a fifteenth-century handbook on logic. This often critical work highlights a number of historically significant points: that the Arabic logical tradition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cannot be dismissed as dogmatic and uncritical exposition of received views; that interest in the formal implications of disjunctions and conditionals was alive and well in North Africa, at a time when interest in that topic has largely ceased in the eastern parts of the Islamic world; and that the literary genres of versification and commentary do not preclude critical reflection on received scholarly views.
Recent years have seen a dramatic change in scholarly views of the later career of Arabic and Isl... more Recent years have seen a dramatic change in scholarly views of the later career of Arabic and Islamic philosophy. For much of the twentieth century, researchers tended to dismiss the value of Arabic writings on philosophy and logic after the twelfth century, often on the basis of the prejudice that handbooks, commentaries and glosses are of necessity pedantic and unoriginal. This assumption has now been abandoned. As a consequence, a vast amount of later Arabic writings on philosophy and logic, hitherto neglected, are now being studied and edited. The present work is an attempt at giving an overview of the development of Arabic logic from 1200 to 1800, identifying major themes, figures and works in this period, while taking into account regional differences within the Islamic world. It offers a corrective to Nicholas Rescher’s seminal but now outdated The Development of Arabic Logic, published in 1964.
A scholar known as “Mubārakshāh” features in sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a... more A scholar known as “Mubārakshāh” features in sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a teacher of a number of prominent early Ottoman scholars, and of the influential Persian scholar al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413). According to these sources, Mubārakshāh taught in Cairo in the mid- to late fourteenth century. Yet, despite the large number of Mamluk historical works covering this period, the precise identity of this scholar has so far proven elusive. The present article reviews the evidence and makes an identification that, though circumstantial, may be more satisfying than those that have been offered so far. It suggests that “Mubārakshāh” was a nickname, and that he can plausibly be identified with Maḥmūd b. Quṭlūshāh al-Sarāʾī, who taught in Cairo from 1358 until his death in 1373.
The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existenti... more The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existential propositions between the two rivals from Shiraz, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 1502) and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498), a dispute that continued to echo down to the nineteenth century, especially in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The controversy was elicited by a passage from a discussion in the commentary by Qūshjī (d. 1474) on Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd in which Qūshjī had briefly suggested that perhaps the predicates “existent” (mawjūd) and “nonexistent” (maʿdūm) are unusual in not needing a copula to link them to the subject. Dashtakī thought that a copula is needed in both existential and non-existential predications, but that in existential predications the copula is simply the union of subject and predicate, whereas in non-existential predications there is an additional copula that signifies the existence or nonexistence of the predicate for the subject. Dawānī’s position was that exist...
The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received ... more The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the grand narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. The bulk of twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that the present Handbook gives roughly equal weight to every century from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook differs from previous overviews in another significant way: It is work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered. This format is intended to give readers a better sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like, and of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at play in works belonging to various periods and subfields within Islamic philosophy.
Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought. By Ahmad S . Da... more Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought. By Ahmad S . Dallal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 421. $100 (cloth); $34.95 (paper); $27.99 (ebook).
A relatively well-known medieval Latin innovation is the doctrine of distributive supposition. Th... more A relatively well-known medieval Latin innovation is the doctrine of distributive supposition. This notion came to be used in syllogistic theory in the late medieval and early modern periods, as Latin logicians sought to establish general rules for syllogistic productivity across the various figures. It is much less well-known that some logicians in the medieval Arabic tradition also attempted to establish general rules for the syllogism, appealing to what they called “subject generality.” In the present article, I introduce this use of “subject generality” in some influential Arabic works on logic from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, specifically Al-ǧumal by Afḍal al-Dīn al-Ḫūnaǧī (d. 1248) and Tahḏīb al-manṭiq by Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and some of their commentators. I also compare this concept of “subject generality” to the Latin concept of “distribution.”
Bu makalede, Goldziher’in son donem literaturde oldukca yanki bulmus olan on ucuncu ve on dordunc... more Bu makalede, Goldziher’in son donem literaturde oldukca yanki bulmus olan on ucuncu ve on dorduncu yuzyildan itibaren Sunni Musluman âlimlerin git gide mantik gibi akli ilimlere dusman olduklari yonundeki gorusunu tartisacak; altinci, yedinci ve sekizinci yuzyildaki fetvalar ve tartismalar uzerinden bu gorusun ne kadar yanlis oldugunu ortaya koymaya calisacagim. Magrib, Misir ve Turkiye’deki âlimler arasindaki yaygin kanaat, mantik ilminin caiz olmasinin da otesinde mantikla ilgilenmenin mustehap, hatta farz-i kifâye oldugu yonundeydi. Her ne kadar o donemde, Kâdizâdeliller gibi aykiri sesler bulunsa da on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yuzyillarda Selefiyye akiminin ortaya cikisina kadar Sunni âlimler arasinda ana akim bu gibi gorunmektedir.
The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received ... more The study of Islamic philosophy has recently entered a new and exciting phase. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the grand narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. The bulk of twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that the present Handbook gives roughly equal weight to every century from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook differs from previous overviews in another significant way: It is work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered. This format is intended to give readers a better sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like, and of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at play in works belonging to various periods and subfields within Islamic philosophy.
The Egyptian scholar Aḥmad al-Mallawī (d.1767) penned perhaps the most detailed treatment of the ... more The Egyptian scholar Aḥmad al-Mallawī (d.1767) penned perhaps the most detailed treatment of the topic of the immediate implications of hypothetical propositions since the fourteenth century. His work, written when he was a mere eighteen years old, is a commentary on his own versification of the relevant section of a fifteenth-century handbook on logic. This often critical work highlights a number of historically significant points: that the Arabic logical tradition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cannot be dismissed as dogmatic and uncritical exposition of received views; that interest in the formal implications of disjunctions and conditionals was alive and well in North Africa, at a time when interest in that topic has largely ceased in the eastern parts of the Islamic world; and that the literary genres of versification and commentary do not preclude critical reflection on received scholarly views.
Recent years have seen a dramatic change in scholarly views of the later career of Arabic and Isl... more Recent years have seen a dramatic change in scholarly views of the later career of Arabic and Islamic philosophy. For much of the twentieth century, researchers tended to dismiss the value of Arabic writings on philosophy and logic after the twelfth century, often on the basis of the prejudice that handbooks, commentaries and glosses are of necessity pedantic and unoriginal. This assumption has now been abandoned. As a consequence, a vast amount of later Arabic writings on philosophy and logic, hitherto neglected, are now being studied and edited. The present work is an attempt at giving an overview of the development of Arabic logic from 1200 to 1800, identifying major themes, figures and works in this period, while taking into account regional differences within the Islamic world. It offers a corrective to Nicholas Rescher’s seminal but now outdated The Development of Arabic Logic, published in 1964.
A scholar known as “Mubārakshāh” features in sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a... more A scholar known as “Mubārakshāh” features in sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a teacher of a number of prominent early Ottoman scholars, and of the influential Persian scholar al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413). According to these sources, Mubārakshāh taught in Cairo in the mid- to late fourteenth century. Yet, despite the large number of Mamluk historical works covering this period, the precise identity of this scholar has so far proven elusive. The present article reviews the evidence and makes an identification that, though circumstantial, may be more satisfying than those that have been offered so far. It suggests that “Mubārakshāh” was a nickname, and that he can plausibly be identified with Maḥmūd b. Quṭlūshāh al-Sarāʾī, who taught in Cairo from 1358 until his death in 1373.
The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existenti... more The present article is a reconstruction of a logical dispute concerning the analysis of existential propositions between the two rivals from Shiraz, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 1502) and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498), a dispute that continued to echo down to the nineteenth century, especially in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The controversy was elicited by a passage from a discussion in the commentary by Qūshjī (d. 1474) on Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd in which Qūshjī had briefly suggested that perhaps the predicates “existent” (mawjūd) and “nonexistent” (maʿdūm) are unusual in not needing a copula to link them to the subject. Dashtakī thought that a copula is needed in both existential and non-existential predications, but that in existential predications the copula is simply the union of subject and predicate, whereas in non-existential predications there is an additional copula that signifies the existence or nonexistence of the predicate for the subject. Dawānī’s position was that exist...
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