Burhān al-dīn Nasafī as the Author of Al-Manṭiq al-kabīr (MS Aḥmad iii, no. 3401)

Abstract

Recently, in ‘An inquiry on Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s authorship of Al-manṭiq al-kab$\overline{\iota }$r (MS Aḥmad iii, no. 3401)’, we refuted the quite common view among historians of Arabic logic as to attribute Al-manṭiq al-kab$\overline{\iota }$r (Major [book on] logic) to Fakhr al-dīn Rāzī; however, in that paper, we could not identify the real author of the book. In this paper, we try to show that Al-manṭiq al-kab$\overline{\iota }$r was written by Burhān al-dīn Nasafī (1203–1288), who authored another book, Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa whose logical part is very similar to Al-manṭiq al-kab$\overline{\iota }$r in the following significant features: the titles of chapters and sections, the style of writing, some technical as well as some non-technical terms, many sentences word by word. None of these features we find in any other Arabic logical work. So, Al-manṭiq al-kab$\overline{\iota }$r and Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa are so close to each other that we might most possibly identify the authors of the books as the same scholar, i.e. Burhān al-dīn Nasafī. Fortunately, this has been verified recently by two manuscripts of a medieval Arabic logical book.

KEYWORDS:

• Al-Manṭiq al-kabīr
• Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa
• Burhān al-dīn Nasafī

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Gholamreza Dadkhah and Ali Fikri Yavuz for corrections and useful comments and suggestions they made on previous drafts of the paper. Special thanks to Ali too who contributed his findings on the historical document in the last section. He also informed me that Necmettin Pehlivan has noticed that document before him in Pehlivan 2020, without identifying Al-manṭiq al-kabīr as MS Aḥmad iii, no. 3401.

Notes

1 There are two other verses in Al-manṭiq al-kabīr and Sharḥ Asās al-kiyāsa which are not repeated in the other, however:

The left vers is for Jarīr ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Khaṭafī Al-Tamīmī (653–728) mocking Hammām ibn Ghālīb al-Farazdaq (641–732), while the right verse if for Al-Mukhabbal al-Saʿdī (d. 633).

2 For this unique exception see Quṭb al-dīn Rāzī’s Muḥākamāt, vol. 1 p. 54, where he says: It does not follow from non-implication of quiddity as being one of the conseqences, that no thing follow it.

3 For some rare exceptions see Ibn Kammūnah’s Al-jadīd fī al-ḥikmah, p. 219, where he says: It is said for the quiddity as being the quiddity that no thing is requisite.See also, Dashtakī’s Ishrāq hayākil al-nūr p. 440, where he says: The whole as being the whole that contains intellectual and external existence is necessary..See also, Al-Shaykh ʿAbd al-rahim’s Ḥashiya ʾala Ḥashiya ʾala Tahdhīb al-manṭiq p. 343, where he says: The word as being the word does not imply another word..