الشريف الجرجاني

الأعمال

• نحو 1400كتاب التعريفات

  معجم ألفبائي لمصطلحات الكلام والفلسفة والفقه والنحو والتصوف، يُعرَّف كل مصطلح فيه بجملة أو جملتين؛ نشره غوستاف فلوغل عام 1845، ولا يزال مرجعًا معتمدًا.

• 1405شرح المواقف

  شرح على «المواقف» للإيجي، أُتمّ في سمرقند في أبريل 1405 وأُهدي إلى الأمير التيموري بير محمد: يشرح الجرجاني الحجة ويصحّحها ويوسّعها في كل خطوة؛ وكان الكتاب قرونًا ذروة تدريس علم الكلام في المدارس العثمانية والفارسية والهندية.

الموقف

Al-Jurjani is on the map as the great commentator of the post-classical madrasa. He wrote more than fifty works, many of them commentaries and glosses on the standard textbooks: on al-Katibi’s Shamsiyya through Qutb al-Din al-Tahtani’s commentary, on al-Iji’s Stations of Theology, on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Memoir on Astronomy, on al-Sakkaki’s Key to the Sciences and, according to the SEP entry on Suhrawardi, on the Philosophy of Illumination. His Commentary on the Stations, completed in Samarqand in 1405, explains, corrects and extends al-Iji’s arguments step by step and became the summit of the kalām curriculum in Ottoman, Persian and Indian madrasas; it carries forward the theology in the tradition of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, in which the doctrines of the philosophers are examined in their own terms. His Book of Definitions, an alphabetical dictionary of the technical terms of theology, philosophy, law, grammar and Sufism, remains a standard reference. In his debates with al-Taftazani, among them one on the “representative metaphor”, he argued closely from the wording of texts and the intentions of speakers. In Shiraz he was remembered as an authority: Jalal al-Din al-Dawani and Sadr al-Din Dashtaki, students of his students, both appealed to him in their dispute over the Liar paradox, though they reported his view differently.

الحياة والسياق

ʿAli ibn Muhammad al-Jurjani, known as al-Sayyid al-Sharif, was born in 1340 in Tagu near Astarabad in Gorgan, south-east of the Caspian Sea. After his studies he taught in Shiraz, where his fame as a teacher spread. When Timur took Shiraz in 1387 he carried al-Jurjani off to Samarqand, where he met al-Taftazani and taught and wrote for many years. After Timur’s death in 1405 he returned to Shiraz and died there in 1413.

أعمال رئيسة أخرى

• Commentary on the Stations (Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, 1405)
• The Book of Definitions (Kitāb al-Taʿrīfāt)
• Glosses on Qutb al-Din al-Tahtani’s commentary on the Shamsiyya
• Commentary on al-Tusi’s Memoir on Astronomy (Sharḥ al-Tadhkira)
• Commentary on al-Sakkaki’s Key (al-Miṣbāḥ fī sharḥ al-Miftāḥ)