Manuscripts on Logic (manṭiq) and Dialectics (jadal)
Khaled el-Rouayheb
Books on Logic (manṭiq) and Dialectics (jadal)
The ordering of subjects in the palace library inventory
prepared by ʿAtufi seems to reflect a general sense of
rank. Logic and dialectics appear toward the end of the
inventory, suggesting that they were ranked relatively
low. Nevertheless, these disciplines were regularly stud-
ied in Ottoman colleges (madrasas). The cataloguer
ʿAtufi himself contributed to them, writing a commen-
tary on Īsāghūjī (Introduction), the standard introduc-
tory handbook on logic by Athir al-Din al-Abhari
(d. 1265).1 Ottoman palace slaves (the kapıkulu) were
also taught logic, and it is explicitly for the education of
this group that a Turkish work on logic dedicated to Sul-
tan Bayezid II and entitled Zübdet ül-beyān (The Cream
of Exposition) was written. (More on this work below.)
The inventory features 116 entries in the section de-
voted to books on logic (manṭiq) and dialectics (jadal).
These appear in no discernable order. ʿAtufi will usually
provide an abbreviated title, but on a few occasions he
gives a title in full, and on some occasions he does not
give a title at all, simply writing, for example, “a treatise
on logic” or “a commentary on a book on logic” or “a
Persian book on logic.” Authors are usually identified in
abbreviated form (for example, Saʿd al-Din for Saʿd al-
Din Masʿud al-Taftazani), sometimes in fuller form (Saʿd
al-Dīn al-Taftazani), and sometimes not at all. There is
little consistency in the way a work is listed. For exam-
ple, ʿAtufi has four entries for the commentary by Qutb
al-Din al-Razi on the handbook Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (The
Dawning of Lights) by Siraj al-Din al-Urmawi (d. 1283).
The first entry reads “Commentary on the Maṭāliʿ by al-
Qutb al-Razi”; the second, “Commentary on the Maṭāliʿ
by Qutb al-Din”; the third gives the full title of the com-
mentary but without any indication of the author:
Lawāmiʿ al-asrār fī sharḥ Maṭāliʿ al-anwār (The Blazing
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi 10.1163/9789004402508_028
891
Secrets in Commenting upon the Dawning of Lights);
the fourth entry has “The Commentary on the Logic of
Maṭāliʿ al-anwār, entitled Lawāmiʿ al-asrār,” again with
no indication of the author.
To take another example, ʿAtufi has four entries on
the same Quṭb al-Din al-Razi’s commentary on another
handbook of logic, al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya (The Epistle
for Shams al-Din) by Najm al-Din al-Katibi (d. 1276). The
first three entries, which appear close together in the
list, are given as “Commentary on the Shamsiyya enti-
tled The Sea of Principles (Baḥr al-qawāʿid) by Qutb al-
Din,” which is inaccurate, for the title of Qutb al-Din’s
commentary is actually “An Explication of the Princi-
ples” (Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid). The fourth entry for this work
is simply given as “The Commentary on the Shamsiyya
by Qutb al-Din.”
ʿAtufi indicates at the end of each brief entry whether
the work is “on logic” or “on dialectics,” and on a handful
of occasions he uses the phrase min qibali al-manṭiq or
min qibali al-jadal (i.e., “pertaining to logic or dialec-
tics”), perhaps when the topic treated in a work does not
belong to one discipline in a clear-cut manner. For ex-
ample, a treatise on the impermissibility of circularity in
the acquisition of knowledge (fī imtināʿ al-dawr fī
l-iktisāb) and a treatise on “knowledge and discourse”
(ʿilm wa-nuṭq) are described as min qibali al-manṭiq, pre-
sumably because the topics could also have been treated
in a work on theology (kalām). Similarly, a treatise writ-
ten in defense of the position that a particular (as op-
posed to a universal) cannot be the predicate (maḥmūl)
of a proposition is described as min qibali al-manṭiq, pre-
sumably because the same issue could have been dis-
cussed within the science of semantics and rhetoric (ʿilm
al-maʿānī wa l-bayān).
892 Khaled el-Rouayheb
A few entries include works that are not on the sub-
ject of logic at all. Most of these are the result of a man-
uscript in which multiple works are bound together,
only some of which focus on logic. On a few occasions,
a work is misclassified. ʿAtufi lists a “treatise with que-
ries concerning the two books of the Imam that are en-
titled al-Maʿālim (Landmarks)” (Risālat al-asʾila
al-mūrada ʿalā nawʿayyi kitābi al-Imāmi al-mawsūmi bi-
al-Maʿālim). This is almost certainly identical to a simi-
larly titled manuscript in the Topkapı Palace Library
(Ahmet III 3426) that has the seal of Sultan Bayezid II.
The manuscript contains the objections written by
Najm al-Din al-Katibi (d. 1276) on the works al-Maʿālim
fī uṣūl al-dīn (Landmarks in Theology) and al-Maʿālim fī
uṣūl al-fiqh (Landmarks in Jurisprudence) by Fakhr al-
Din al-Razi (d. 1210).2 Neither Razi’s works nor Katibi’s
objections can reasonably be classified as pertaining to
logic or dialectics. It appears that the opening discus-
sion of knowledge (ʿilm), conception (taṣawwur), and
assent (taṣdīq) misled either the cataloguer or the source
he was following, since works on logic typically began
in this fashion. Also, a work by the Egyptian scholar
Shams al-Din al-Dalaji (d. 1540) is classified as being on
logic, even though it only has a very short introductory
chapter on logic, whereas the bulk of it is an abridge-
ment of another work on philosophical theology (kalām)
by the fourteenth-century Timurid scholar Saʿd al-Dīn
al-Taftazani.3
If a work is in Persian or Turkish, ʿAtufi indicates this;
the default option is clearly that a work on logic or dia-
lectics has been written in Arabic.
In what follows, the logic works included in the list
will be discussed first, the works on dialectic second,
and finally some concluding observations will be made.
Logic
The works on logic can be grouped broadly into the fol-
lowing categories:
Post-Avicennan Summas of Logic
These are extensive works devoted solely to logic. The
MS Török F. 59 list includes the major summas of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
‒ ‒ al-Baṣāʾir al-naṣīriyya (The Insights for Nasir al-Din)
by ʿUmar b. Sahlan al-Sawi (fl. 1127); three copies are
listed.
‒ ‒ al-Manṭiq al-kabīr (The Long Logic) attributed to
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210).4
‒ ‒ Kashf al-asrār (The Disclosure of Secrets) by Afdal
al-Din al-Khunaji (d. 1248); two copies are listed, as
well as a copy of the commentary on the work by
Najm al-Din al-Katibi (d. 1276).
‒ ‒ Asās al-iqtibās (The Principle of Acquisition) by Nasir
al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274); nine copies are listed.
‒ ‒ Jāmiʿ al-daqāʾiq (The Collected Subtleties) by Najm
al-Din al-Katibi (d. 1276).
‒ ‒ Qisṭās al-afkār (The Measure of Thoughts) by Shams
al-Din al-Samarqandi (d.1322) with the author’s own
commentary; three copies are listed.
It is particularly noteworthy that there are nine copies
of Tusi’s summa Asās al-iqtibās in the inventory. All of
these copies are indicated as being in Persian, implying
that they are not copies of the Arabic translation pre-
pared by Molla Hüsrev (d. 1480) and dedicated to Sultan
Mehmed II.5 The number of copies of the work is unex-
pected and suggests that it was popular among the users
of the library, perhaps primarily scribes and palace pag-
es (kapıkulu) who might have found Persian more acces-
sible than Arabic. Apart from being written in Persian,
Tusi’s work is also unusual in that it retains an archaic
feature that makes it quite different from the standard
works on logic that were taught and studied in Ottoman
madrasas: Its material is arranged in accordance with
the books of the old Peripatetic Organon, rather than
being divided into two main parts dealing with concep-
tions (taṣawwurāt) and assents (taṣdīqāt), as was typical
of later post-Avicennian logicians.6 Ottoman ulama
who wrote on logic from the fifteenth century to the
eighteenth appear not to have been particularly influ-
enced by Tusi’s summa.
Handbooks on Logic and Their Commentaries (shurūḥ)
and Glosses (ḥawāshī)
MS Török F. 59 also lists multiple copies of the stan-
dard logic handbooks taught in Ottoman colleges (and
­colleges in the Turco-Persianate world in general).7
At the introductory level, the standard handbook was­