272 Anke von Kügelgen
doubts regarding logic had vanished among influential scholars, so that
the study of logic became obligatory in many madrasas (i. e. in Muslim
higher schools that prepared their students for religious posts), at least
in the Ottoman Empire.^80 In addition, renowned religious scholars
composed commentaries on logic and compiled logical handbooks well
into the 19th century. Al-Suyūṭī’s refutations, though, remained a point
of reference for supporters of logic, such as the Maghrebian scholars
al-Maghīlī (d. 909/1503–1504 or 910/1505–1506) and al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī
(d. 1102/1691),^81 and for its opponents, like the eminent encyclopedic
scholar Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791).^82 Al-Zabīdī accepted logic
as a means to defend Islamic dogmas against those who tainted it, but
was deeply disturbed by what he saw as its obvious “side effects” –
namely the vicious conviction that only logic brings perfection, which,
in his eyes, had led to an increasing neglect and ignorance of the words
and deeds of the prophet and his companions.^83 He was, of course,
aware of the high esteem in which logic was held, and he opposed,
in a quite balanced manner, refutations of logic from al-Dhahabī, Ibn
(Muqaddima, p. 48). A thorough comparison might be a challenging question
of research.
80 For the “institutionalization” of logic in higher education, see for instance the
programs of Ottoman madrasas, İzgi, Cevat: Osmanlı Medreselerinde I ̇lim,
vol. 1, pp. 163–183 et passim; El-Rouayheb, Khaled: Was there a Revival of Log-
ical Studies in Eighteenth-Century Egypt?, in: Die Welt des Islams 45 (2005),
pp. 1–19, here 5–6 (in regard to the Azhar in the 18th and 19th century). For
defences of logic in later centuries, see above, n. 43.
81 Al-Zabīdī quotes a passage from al-Maghīlī’s verse polemic addressed to
al-Suyūṭī and another from al-Yūsī’s Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-kubrā (i. e., al-Sanūsī’s
(d. 895/1490) al-ʿAqīda al-kubrā; I am indepted to Stefan Reichmuth for the
solution of this abbreviation) in which they refute al-Suyūṭī’s rejection of log-
ic in al-Ḥāwī lil-fatāwā, i. e., in his al-Qawl al-mushriq (Kitāb Itḥāf al-sāda
al-muttaqīn bi-sharḥ asrār Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (wa-bi-hāmish Kitāb al-Imlāʾ
ʿan ishkālāt al-Iḥyāʾ lil-Ghazālī), Beirut n. d. after 1970 (reprint of Egypt
1311/1894), vol. 1, pp. 177–179, 182–183; see also above or al-Qawl al-mushriq
(ibid., p. 114; al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, p. 1); edited in al-Suyūṭī, al-Ḥāwī
lil-fatāwā). Khaled El-Rouayheb has revealed the important contributions of
al-Yūsī and other Maghrebian scholars in the field of logic from the 14th Cen-
tury onwards (Was there a Revival, pp. 5, 7–14; idem: Opening the Gate of Veri-
fication. The Forgotten Arab-Islamic Florescence of the 17th Century, in: Inter-
national Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006), pp. 263–281, here 269–271).
82 Concerning this scholar, see the monograph by Reichmuth, Stefan: The World
of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (1732–1791). Studies on the Life, Networks and Writings
of an Islamic Humanist Scholar of the 18th Century, [Cambridge] 2009.
83 Al-Zabīdī, Kitāb Itḥāf al-sāda, vol. 1, pp. 179–180.
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