270 Anke von Kügelgen
5. The Impact of Ibn Taymiyya’s Refutation of Logic
via al-Suyūṭī
In the 15th century, the encyclopedist and Shāfiʿī jurist al-Suyūṭī
(d. 911/1505) abridged Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn
(naṣīḥa) to about a fourth of its size, but kept the wording of the origi-
nal. He removed many of the repetitions and digressions, whereby he
reduced the text mainly to the critique, at the cost of some interest-
ing parts of Ibn Taymiyya’s epistemology.^68 It is entitled Kitāb Jahd
al-qarīḥa fī tajrīd al-naṣīḥa and was edited with al-Suyūṭī’s Ṣawn
al-manṭiq wal-kalām ʿan fann al-manṭiq wal-kalām,^69 which probably
represents the most comprehensive compilation of Muslim refutations
of logic until the 20th century.^70 Al-Suyūṭī mentions having obtained a
copy of al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn only after 20 years of searching.^71
Although al-Suyūṭī’s abridgement is extant in but two manuscripts, it
seems to have been more widespread than its model.^72 In his autobiogra-
phy al-Suyūṭī mentions Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s fatwa as the main reason he gave
up the study of logic.^73 However, as a major motivation for his compila-
wal-irāda, ed. by Maḥmūd Ḥasan Rabīʿ, Cairo 1358/1939, p. 172; see, however,
al-Nashshār, foreword to al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, pp. zāʾ-ḥāʾ).
68 Unless the manuscript al-Suyūṭī possessed was defective, with great likeli-
hood he intentionally omitted the chapter on causality (see below, chapter 11.2)
and the whole ninth consideration on widespread (mashhūrāt) and estimative
(wahmiyyāt) propositions, which Ibn Taymiyya, unlike the logicians, grants the
possibility of generating certainty (Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 396–437; Hal-
laq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 167, n. 307.1; see below, chapter 11.1).
69 Al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, pp. 1–2, 201–343. Since 1947 al-Suyūṭī’s summary
has been edited several times: as a reprint of al-Nashshār’s edition in Beirut 1981;
with amendments by Suʿād ʿAbd al-Rāziq in Cairo 1970 (see Hallaq, Ibn Taymiy-
ya, p. lvi) and in Ibn Taymiyya’s Majmūʿat al-Fatāwā (vol. 5, part 9, pp. 47–136
without mentioning al-Suyūṭī’s name; see Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. lv–lvi).
70 Al-Nashshār, foreword to al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, pp. alif-ḥāʾ; al-Nashshār,
Manāhij al-baḥth, p. 224.
71 Al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, pp. 1–2.
72 Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. lv. It is also known under the title Mukhtaṣar al-Suyūṭī
li-Kitāb Naṣīḥat ahl al-īmān fī al-radd ʿalā manṭiq al-yūnān. For the main editions
and their shortcomings, see Hallaq’s translation (Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. lv–lvii).
73 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, vol. 2: al-Taḥadduth bi-niʿmat Allāh, ed. by Elizabeth M.
Sartain, Cambridge 1975, p. 241; Sartain, Elizabeth M.: Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī,
vol. 1: Biography and Background, Cambridge 1975, p. 32; Goldziher already
hinted at it (Stellung der alten islamischen Orthodoxie, pp. 394–395; idem, The
Attitude of Orthodox Islam, p. 208). Al-Suyūṭi mentions neither Jahd al-qarīḥa
nor Ṣawn al-manṭiq in his autobiography; instead, he refers to a refutation of
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