Download PDF | Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī, Khaled El-Rouayheb - Commentary on the Jumal on Logic by Khūnajī-Brill 2022.
253 Pages
Introduction
Ibn Wāṣil (1208–1298) is perhaps best known today as a chronicler of the Ayyubid dynasty in Syria and Egypt. But he was a true polymath who also wrote works on logic, astronomy, rational theology, prosody and belles-lettres. He was a judge and a teacher, as well as a diplomat who in 1261 was sent by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars to King Manfred of Sicily and reportedly impressed his host with his command of the philosophical sciences. The present volume presents an edition of his most widely studied work on logic, his commentary on al-Jumal—a short and dense handbook by his teacher Afḍal al-Dīn alKhūnajī (d. 646/1248). Especially in North Africa, this commentary continued to be studied and copied for centuries.
The influential theologian and logician Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490), from Tlemcen in present-day Algeria, quoted regularly from it in his own logical writings, thus ensuring that IbnWāṣil’s ideas would continue to be known in subsequent centuries in North Africa. In some areas of the Islamic world, at least, Ibn Wāṣil the logician was for many centuries better known than Ibn Wāṣil the historian. In recent decades, received assumptions about the career of Arabic logic and the genre of commentary have been overthrown. According to an older prejudice, commentaries are essentially unoriginal and pedantic, and the popularity of the genre after the twelfth century is linked to a stifling of intellectual dynamism in theIslamic world. Such a view has been thoroughly discredited by recent research. It does not require reading many pages of Ibn Wāṣil’s commentary to see its inadequacy.
Ibn Wāṣil was charitable toward Khūnajī, to be sure, but regularly qualified or corrected the doctrines expounded in the Jumal and was eager to highlight his own interventions in discussions that had arisen in the approximately four decades that separated his commentary from the composition of the handbook. The thirteenth century is emerging from recent scholarship as a particularly dynamic chapter in the history of Arabic logic.
Ibn Wāṣil was one of the major figures of that chapter. His influence was perhaps more immediately apparent in the later North African logical tradition that emerged in the fourteenth and fifteenth century and continued down to the modern period. But even in the Turco-Persianate East, there are intriguing suggestions that Ibn Wāṣil’s work was known to some later logicians, as will be seen below.
Sources for the Life of Ibn Wāṣil
The earliest obituaries of Ibn Wāṣil are by his younger contemporaries. These include the following four Damascene chroniclers: Quṭb al-Dīn al-Yūnīnī (d. 726/1326), Shams al-Dīn al-Jazarī (d. 739/1338), ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Birzālī (d. 739 /1339), and Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348).1
These chroniclers appear to have been acquainted with each other, and their accounts are very similar.2 The following obituary by al-Dhahabī is representative: He was born in Hama on the 2nd of Shawwāl 604 [= April 20, 1208] and lived to a great age. He excelled in the sciences, including philosophy, mathematics, chronicles, and historical anecdotes. He wrote, taught, and issued fatwas, and his reputation flourished, and his name spread, and he was one of the intelligent people of the world. He assumed judgeship for a long time. He heard hadith from al-Ḥāfiẓ [Zakī al-Dīn] al-Birzālī [d. 636/1239], both in Damascus and in his hometown [i.e., in Hama].
A number of people studied with him, and he remained eager to teach. Contemplationwould get the better of him, so that he would become oblivious of himself and those around him. He died on Friday the 22nd of Shawwāl [in the year 697 = August 2, 1298] and was buried in his private burial ground in Naqīrīn [presumably modern-day Naqīrah, a town just southwest of Hama] at the age of 94.3 An independent and equally early source is the chronicle of the Ayyubid emir Abū l-Fidāʾ (d. 732/1331).4 Abū l-Fidāʾ was a native of Hama, and as a young man frequented an ageing Ibn Wāṣil and studied with him. Whereas the Damascene historians have no reference to the episode, Abū l-Fidāʾ reproduced asection from Ibn Wāṣil’s own chronicle of the Ayyubids stating that in 659/1261 he was sent by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars as an emissary to the Hohenstaufen ruler Manfred in southern Italy. Abū l-Fidāʾ added that Ibn Wāṣil wrote a work on logic for Manfred, entitled al-Anbarūriyya, a detail not found in Ibn Wāṣil’s own account. He also mentioned some of Ibn Wāṣil’s other works: a chronicle of the Ayyubids, an abridgment of the Kitāb al-Aghānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. 356/967), and a commentary on a didactic poem on prosody by Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249). He gave a slightly different date of death for Ibn Wāṣil. Whereas the Damascene obituaries gave it as Friday, Shawwāl 22, 697/August 2,1298, Abū l-Fidāʾ gave it as Shawwāl 28/August 8 of the same year.
The last-mentioned day seems to be right, for the 28th actually fell on a Friday, whereas the 22nd fell on a Saturday. The Aleppine historian Ibn al-Wardī (d. 749/1349), who wrote an abridgment and continuation of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s chronicle, naturally relied on Abū l-Fidāʾ’s obituary of Ibn Wāṣil.5 Most later historians, however, relied on the early Damascene obituaries. Ibn al-Wardī’s contemporary, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/ 1363) included entries on Ibn Wāṣil in three different works.6 He relied on the account of his teacher al-Dhahabī but added anecdotes that he had heard from Ibn Wāṣil’s students in Cairo. One of these anecdotes relates Ibn Wāṣil’s trip to the Hohenstaufen court, though Ṣafadī seems not to have known Ibn Wāṣil’s (and Abū l-Fidāʾ’s) account and surmised—falsely—that the embassy took place during the reign of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ (r. 637/1240–647/1249). Ṣafadī gave a list of Ibn Wāṣil’s works, a list that is fuller than, and independent of, Abū lFidāʾ’s. He also added that Ibn Wāṣil became blind toward the end of his life, thus earning an entry in Ṣafadī’s pioneering biographical dictionary of blind notables, Nakt al-himyān fī nukat al-ʿumyān. In one of Ṣafadī’s three obituary notices, he gave the same date of death as Dhahabī, namely Friday, Shawwāl 22, 697. But in the two others the date is given as Friday, Shawwāl 24, 697, which is clearly an error given that the 24th fell on a Monday.
Later Mamluk authors who have obituaries or biographical entries on Ibn Wāṣil mainly rely on earlier, available sources, and are hence of limited value. This applies to the works of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Isnawī (d. 772/1370), Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 779/1377), Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442), Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (d. 851/1448), Ibn Taghrībirdī (d. 874/1470), and Jalāl al-Dīn alSuyūṭī (d. 911/1505).7 Biographical information on Ibn Wāṣil can be supplemented by numerous, passing remarks in his own historical works. CharisWaddy carefully sifted such information in an unpublished dissertation from 1934 at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Her account of Ibn Wāṣil’s life remains the fullest to date and is all the more impressive for having been written at a time when so many major sources were still in manuscript form.8 Shorter but more recent overviews are offered by Gamal al-Din El-Shayyal in his article on Ibn Wāṣil in The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Konrad Hirschler in the relevant sections of his carefully researched Medieval Arabic Historiography (2006), and D.S. Richards in his short but rich article “Ibn Wāṣil: Historian of the Ayyubids” (2009).
Life
Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Ḥamawī, known as Ibn Wāṣil, was born in Hama in 604/1208. He pursued his advanced studies in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo with, among others, the historian Ibn Shaddād (d. 632/1234), the hadith-scholar Zakī al-Dīn al-Birzālī (d. 636/1239), the jurist and theologian Ibn al-Khabbāz (d. 631/1234), the grammarian Ibn Yaʿīsh (d. 643/1246), and the jurist, grammarian and prosodist Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249). In 629/1232, he joined the entourage of the Ayyubid emir of Karak (in present-day Jordan) al-Nāṣir Dāʾūd (r. 626/1229–647/1249), where he met and studied the philosophical sciences with Shams al-Dīn al-Khusrawshāhī (d. 652/1254), a student of the great theologian and polymath Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210).
Two years later, he was back in Hama in the entourage of al-Muẓaffarii(r. 626/1229–642/1244) and helped the astronomer and mathematician ʿAlam al-Dīn Qayṣar (d. 649/1251) construct a celestial globe (kura) for that ruler.10 In 641/1244, Ibn Wāṣil went to Cairo, where he enjoyed the patronage of the reigning al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, to whom he dedicated a universal chronicle entitled al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥī. In 644/1246, Ibn Wāṣil was appointed by al-Ṣāliḥ as teacher at the Aqmar Mosque. In his first years in Cairo, he must have frequented the logician and Chief Judge Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī (d. 646/1248). The two may well have met earlier in Syria.11
Ibn Wāṣil would later refer to Khūnajī as his teacher (shaykhunā). He was influenced by Khūnajī’s innovative ideas in logic, most of which he would defend in his own works. Ibn Wāṣil managed to retain the patronage of later rulers of Egypt. In 655/ 1257, al-Manṣūr Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī (r. 655/1257–657/1259) appointed him judge of Giza. In 658/1260, Baybars (r. 658/1260–676/1277) appointed him to the Shāfiʿī teaching corner at the Old Mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ in Cairo. A year later, Baybars sent him as an envoy to Manfred’s court in southern Italy. The sending of eminent scholars as emissaries was common in the period. The Ayyubid ruler al-Malik al-Kāmil (r. 615/1218–635/1238) had sent Ibn Wāṣil’s just-mentioned teacher Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī as an emissary to the court of the Seljuks of Anatolia, and al-Kāmil’s son al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ had sent Sirāj al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 682/1283) to Manfred’s father Frederick ii.
In some modern studies, it is assumed thatIbnWāṣil’s stay at Manfred’s court was lengthy, and in one recent publication it is said to have lasted two years.13 The basis for such assertions is not clear.14 There is nothing in Ibn Wāṣil’s own account, or in the account of Abū l-Fidāʾ which follows Ibn Wāṣil’s closely, or in Ṣafadī’s independent account, to suggest that his stay lasted a couple of years, and it is not what one would expect from a self-described “emissary” (rasūl) from Baybars to Manfred. IbnWāṣil mentioned that he met Manfred a “number of times” (mirāran), which of course does not imply or even suggest a residence of a year or more. Ibn Wāṣil’s account of the downfall of Manfred, which he dated to “around 663/1264–5” is clearly not based on first-hand evidence.
Indeed, he explicitly stated that the invasion of Manfred’s kingdom by an alliance of the Papacy and Charles of Anjou (whom Ibn Wāṣil called “the brother of Roi de France”) occurred after his return from Italy.15 This allows us to infer that Ibn Wāṣil was not in southern Italy in 663/1264–1265. But it obviously does not tell us that he stayed there until just before that date. There is, in short, no positive evidence that Ibn Wāṣil stayed with Manfred for a couple of years, and it is difficult to see what purpose would be served by an emissary staying so long. The contemporary or near-contemporary Arabic sources are compatible with the more natural assumption that he stayed with Manfred for a few weeks, perhaps one or two months, before returning with a reply. The historian Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir (d. 692/1292) noted the return to Cairo of two emissaries from Baybars to Manfred in Shaʿbān 660/June–July 1262.16 The emissaries are named, and Ibn Wāṣil is not one of them, suggesting that he had completed a different embassy the year before. At some point after his trip to Manfred’s court, Ibn Wāṣil returned to Hama where he joined the entourage of its ruler al-Manṣūr ii (r. 642/1244–683/1284).
The date of his relocation is not clear. It was probably soon after his return from Italy, for in his chronicle he reported meeting al-Manṣūr ii in Cairo just before the historic battle of ʿAyn Jālūt in 658/1260 and predicting that the emir and his Mamluk overlords would be victorious against the Mongols and that he—Ibn Wāṣil—would thereafter return to his hometown and enter the service of the emir.17 He was certainly in Hama by 666/1268, which is the date of an extant manuscript—copied in Hama—of his abridgment of Kitāb al-Aghānī, dedicated to al-Manṣūr ii.18 The date of his appointment as chief judge in Hama is probably 669/1271, after the death of Shams al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Bārizī who had been chief judge there since 652/1254.19 By 671/1272, he had begun writing Mufarrij al-kurūb, his monumental chronicle of the Ayyubids, also dedicated to al-Manṣūr ii. He remained chief judge after the death of al-Manṣūr ii, and in 690/1291 he revisited Cairo with al-Manṣūr’s son and successor al-Muẓaffar iii (r. 683/1284– 699/1300). There, he met the great Andalusian-born grammarian Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī (d. 745/1344) to whom he granted a certificate (ijāza).20 All early sources agree that Ibn Wāṣil died in Hama in the year 697/1298, though differing slightly regarding the precise day. As mentioned above, the correct date appears to be the one given by his student and compatriot Abū l-Fidāʾ, namely Shawwāl 28, i.e., August 8.
Logical Works
The Mamluk biographer al-Ṣafadī, writing in the mid-fourteenth century, first attempted to list all IbnWāṣil’s works. In the field of logic, he mentioned a commentary on Khūnajī’s Mūjaz, a commentary on Khūnajī’s Jumal, and a work entitled Hidāyat al-albāb. Of these, the latter two are extant.21 There are no traces of the first work, and no references to it in later logical writings. If indeed Ibn Wāṣil wrote a commentary on the Mūjaz then it must have been a late work, written after his commentary on the Jumal. In the latter commentary, he referred to “the commentators” (shāriḥī) on the Mūjaz without giving any indication that he had written a commentary himself.22 Abū l-Fidāʾ mentioned that Ibn Wāṣil wrote a treatise on logic for Manfred called al-Anbarūriyya. This does not appear in Ṣafadī’s list of works. Another work on logic that is not listed by Ṣafadī (or by later sources that rely on him) is Nukhbat al-fikar. This work is mentioned by the Kurdish-born, Cairene physician and encyclopedist Ibn al-Akfānī (d. 749/1348) who referred to Ibn Wāṣil as his teacher. In his encyclopedia of the sciences Irshād al-ṭālib, Ibn al-Akfānī listed it as an “intermediate-length” book on logic, along with Kashf al-asrār by Khūnajī and Jāmiʿ al-daqāʾiq by Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī (d. 675/1276).23 The apparently sole extant manuscript of Nukhbat al-fikar bears out this description.It consists of 133 folios with17 lines per page, copied in Hama in 680/1281.24 The full title given in the extant manuscript is not attested elsewhere: Nukhbat al-fikar fī tathqīf al-naẓar.
The Ottoman scribe and polymath Kātib Çelebī (d.1068/1657) listed Nukhbat al-fikar fī l-manṭiq in his bibliographic compendium Kashf al-ẓunūn.25 Kātib Çelebī did not give an incipit, indicating that he had not seen a copy of the work. His source was almost certainly Ibn al-Akfānī, with whose Irshād al-ṭālib he was familiar. Carl Brockelmann, in his monumental and influential Geschichte der arabischen Literatur (1937–1949), listed the “Emperuriya” written for Manfred as one of Ibn Wāṣil’s works, and then added that it circulated in the East with the title Nukhbat al-fikar fī l-manṭiq.26 The claim that Nukhbat al-fikar is identical to the Anbarūriyya written for Manfred has since been repeated regularly.27 Yet, the basis for the identification is surprisingly elusive. Brockelmann’s source is Ferdinand Wüstenfeld’s Die Geschichtschreiber der Araber und ihre Werke (1882), whose entry on Ibn Wāṣil Brockelmann followed closely.28 Wüstenfeld wrote that the “Emperoria” was known in the Orient as Selectae cogitationes de logica, giving as reference Kātib Çelebī’s entry on Nukhbat al-fikar.
However, that entry is a bare listing of Nukhbat al-fikar by Ibn Wāṣil and has nothing to suggest that the work is identical to the Anbarūriyya dedicated to Manfred. The other sources on Ibn Wāṣil that Wüstenfeld cited, namely the chronicle of Abū l-Fidāʾ and a biographical dictionary of Shāfiʿī scholars by Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (d. 851/1448), also do not support the identification of Nukhbat al-fikar and al-Anbarūriyya. As far as I can establish, no premodern Arabic source supports this identification.Wüstenfeld’s claim seems, in other words, to have been based on sheer speculation. Having found a reference in Abū l-Fidāʾ to a work on logic for Manfred, he simply assumed that it is identical to the Nukhbat al-fikar fī l-manṭiq mentioned by Kātib Çelebī. The introduction to Nukhbat alfikar does not bear a dedication nor does it include any indication that it was written at the request of anyone or that it was a reworking of a previous work. The reliability of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s attribution of al-Anbarūriyya to Ibn Wāṣil is, moreover, open to question. Manfred, unlike his father Frederick ii, was never Holy Roman Emperor, merely King of Sicily. Some Mamluk historians, such as Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir, Abū l-Fidāʾ and al-Ṣafadī, were not alive to this distinction and assumed that Manfred was an emperor (Anbarūr) like his father. But IbnWāṣil, in his own account of his visit to Italy, was careful to use the title “Anbarūr” of Frederick ii only, referring to Manfred as “Manfrīdā” or “Manfrīdā the son of the Anbarūr”.
This makes it very unlikely that Ibn Wāṣil would have named a work dedicated to Manfred al-Anbarūriyya.30 Ṣafadī, in his independent account of the embassy to the Hohenstaufen court in Italy, mentioned that IbnWāṣil wrote a short volume (mujallad ṣaghīr) with answers to a set of questions posed by Manfred in optics (ʿilm al-manāẓir) and other philosophical sciences. He added that Manfred was impressed byIbn Wāṣil’s ability to answer these questions overnight, while far from his books.31 Ṣafadī did not give a title to this“volume”, but it is possible that this is a reference to the same work mentioned by Abū l-Fidāʾ, in which case it was only partially devoted to logic. In sum, there is reason to believe that the work to which Abū l-Fidāʾ referred was not titled al-Anbarūriyya at all and was a short, “occasional” work, consisting of Ibn Wāṣil’s replies to a set of questions by Manfred. On this account, it is not identical to any of Ibn Wāṣil’s extant writings.
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