ABHARĪ SAMARQANDĪ, AṮĪR-AL-DĪN AL-MOFAŻŻAL B. ʿOMAR B. AL-MOFAŻŻAL (d. 663/1264), logician, mathematician, and astronomer. The only facts known about his life are that he was born and educated in Mosul but moved to Erbel (Arbela) in 625/1228. He was the disciple of Kamāl-al-dīn b. Yūnos and the teacher of Ebn Ḵallekān.
His Arabic works include the following: 1. Hedāyat al-ḥekma, philosophical work divided into sections on logic (al-manṭeq), physics (al-ṭabīʿīyāt), and metaphysics (al-elāhīyāt). There are many commentaries on this text (see list in Brockelmann, GAL S. I, pp. 839-44). The most famous commentaries are by Mīr Ḥosayn b. Moʿīn-al-dīn Maybodī (several editions; see Brockelmann, GAL S. I, p. 840) and by Ṣadr-al-dīn Moḥammad Šīrāzī. 2. Ketāb al-Īsāḡūǰī, or Resāla al-Aṯīrīya fi’l-manṭeq, one of the most popular Arabic elaborations of Porphyry’s Isagogues. Among the numerous commentaries, and commentaries on commentaries, of this work are one by Moḥammad b. Ḥamza Fanārī (d. 834/1430-31) and one by Zakarīyāʾ b. Moḥammad al-Anṣārī (d. 927/1520). Ṣadr b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān al-Aḵżarī summarized the work in 94 lines of raǰaz poetry under the title al-Sollam al-morawnaq fi’l-manṭeq (Cairo, 1318/1900, and other editions). This resāla was first published in Rome in 1625 by P. Thomas Novariensis with a Latin translation, entitled Isagoge, i.e. breve introductorium arabum in scientiam logicae cum versione latina. E. Calverly has given an English version of it in the D. B. Macdonald Memorial Volume, Princeton, 1933, pp. 75-85; see also C. F. Seybold, “Al-Abharī’s Īsaghūjī und al-Fanārī’s Kommentar dazu,” Der Islam 92, 1919, pp. 112-15.
Other works on logic include Tanzīl al-afkār fī taʿdīl al-asrār and Jāmeʿ al-daqāʾeq fī kašf al-ḥaqāʾeq. Among his works on astronomy are: Moḵtaṣar fī ʿelm al-hayʾa; Resālat al-asṭorlāb; Derāyat al-aflāk; al-Zīǰ al-šāmel, and al-Zīǰ al-eḵtīārī, known as al-Zīǰ al-Aṯīrī.
Abu Ali Muhammad Bal'ami the Historian, Politician and Essayist
