Najm al-Din al-Katibi

Works

• c. 1265The Treatise for Shams al-Din on the Rules of Logic

  Compact textbook of logic written for a patron named Shams al-Din: terms and definitions, propositions with their modalities, conversion and contradiction, syllogisms; with the commentary of Qutb al-Din al-Tahtani and the glosses of al-Jurjani it was a standard text of logic in the madrasas for centuries.

• c. 1270The Philosophy of the Source

  Treatise on metaphysics and natural philosophy – being and its divisions, the Necessary Existent, bodies, souls and intellects – in the framework of Ibn Sina; it was widely read in the madrasas together with its commentaries.

Position

Al-Katibi is on the map for the Treatise for Shams al-Din (al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya), a compact textbook of logic that madrasa students have read from the fourteenth century to the present. It defines logic as a rule whose observance guards the mind from error in thinking and moves from terms, definitions and propositions to conversion, contradiction and the syllogism. Its system rests on Ibn Sina’s temporal modal logic but goes further: where Ibn Sina had examined six modalities, al-Katibi treats thirteen modal propositions as customary to investigate. In reading propositions he took over al-Abhari’s framework, in which the subject may exist outside the mind, be merely possible or exist only in the mind. With the commentary of Qutb al-Din al-Razi al-Tahtani and the glosses of al-Sharif al-Jurjani the Shamsiyya became a standard text from Anatolia to India; al-Taftazani wrote a commentary of his own on it. His Philosophy of the Source (Ḥikmat al-ʿayn) presented metaphysics and natural philosophy largely in Ibn Sina’s terms and was, with al-Abhari’s Guide to Philosophy, one of the channels through which Avicennan metaphysics reached the schools; like al-Abhari, he also responded to Suhrawardi’s criticism of the distinction between essence and existence. He put critical questions to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s compendium of theology, al-Maʿālim, to which Ibn Kammuna added notes, and he analysed the Liar paradox, as al-Abhari did, as a self-contradiction. A complete edition and English translation of the Shamsiyya by Tony Street appeared in 2024.

Life & context

Najm al-Din ʿAli ibn ʿUmar al-Katibi al-Qazwini was born in Qazvin around 1203 and belonged to the Shafiʿi school of law. He studied with Athir al-Din al-Abhari; there is some evidence that the two later fell out. In the Mongol period he became one of the most respected logicians and philosophers of Iran and worked at the observatory of Maragha, founded by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in 1259, in the circle of scholars around al-Tusi. He exchanged letters on logic and metaphysics with the Jewish philosopher Ibn Kammuna in Baghdad. Among his students was Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi. He died in 1276 or 1277; Wikidata gives 1277.

Further main works

• Jāmiʿ al-daqāʾiq fī kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq, on logic
• Questions on Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s al-Maʿālim (with notes by Ibn Kammuna)
• Commentary on al-Khunaji’s Kashf al-asrār