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Athir al-Din al-Abhari

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Al-Abharī
Died1262–1265
Mosul
Academic background
InfluencesKamāl al-Dīn ibn Yūnus, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Kūshyār ibn Labbān, Jābir ibn Aflaḥ
Academic work
EraIslamic Golden Age
School or traditionSunni Ashari
Main interestsAstronomy, Mathematics, Philosophy, Islam
InfluencedIbn Khallikān, al-Kātibī, al-Iṣfahānī, al-Samarqandī, al-Qazwīnī, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī.[1]

Athīr al-Dīn al-Mufaḍḍal ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Mufaḍḍal al-Samarqandī al-Abharī (Persian: اثیرالدین مُفَضَّل بن عمر بن مَفَضَّل سمرقندی ابهری; d. 1262 or 1265[2][3]) also known as Athīr al-Dīn al-Munajjim (اثیرالدین منجم) was an Iranian muslim polymath, philosopher, astronomer, astrologer and mathematician. Other than his influential writings, he had many famous disciples.

Life

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His birthplace is contested among sources. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam[2] and the Encyclopaedia Islamica,[4] he was born in Abhar, a small town between Qazvin and Zanjan in the North-West of Iran. The claim of G.C. Anawati making him a native of Mosul in Iraq, taken from the fact that al-Abharī was educated by a famous scientist from Mosul, Kamāl al-Dīn ibn Yūnus al-Mawṣilī, must also been dismissed.[3] None of his oldest biographers mentioned Mosul as his birthplace,[4] and al-Abharī himself indicated that he had gone to Mosul for this purpose.[3] Beside the city of Abhar, the epithet al-Abharī could suggest that he or his ancestors originally stem from the Abhar tribe.[1]

In his youth al-Abharī was a student of the famous theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, probably in the city of Ghazni or Herat. Ibn al-‘Ibrī (died 685/1286), in his Tārīkh Mukhtashar al-Duwal, mentions al-Abharī as being among a group of scholars all of whom had been students of al-Rāzī and who were now prominent in the fields of philosophy and logic.[5] Beside philosophy and logic, from al-Rāzī it is likely that al-Abharī received an orthodox Sunni instruction in theology (kalām), jurisprudence (fiqh), and Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr).[3] When Mongol took Khwarezmian Empire, al-Abharī, in 1228 he flew to Erbil, then to Damascus, where he studied to Muḥyī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sa‘īd b. Nadī.[3] Then he went to Mosul, where he studied mathematics, especially astronomy, under the direction of Kamāl al-Dīn al-Mawṣilī.[2][3]

Among his students were Najm al-Din al-Qazwini al-Katibi, Abū Zakariya al-Qazwini, and Ibn Khallikān.[6][2] Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282) in his Wafayāt al-A‘yān mentions that he himself studied legal disputation (‘ilm al-khilāf) with al-Abharī when the latter moved from Mosul to Erbil in the year 625/1228.[5] The modern scholar, Aydın Sayılı, includes al-Abharī among the astronomers employed at the observatory in Marāghah, which the Ilkhanate ruler Hülegü had founded in 657/1259 under the direction of another student of Kamāl al-Dīn ibn Yūnus, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tusī (died 672/1274).

The date of al-Abharī's death is uncertain. According to most accounts, al-Abharī died in Mosul between 660/1261–62 and 663/1264–65,[2] during the reign of Khān Hülegü.[3]

Works

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Astronomy
  • Risāla fī al-hayʾa (رساله الهیئة; lit. Treatise on astronomy).
  • Mukhtaṣar fī al-hayʾa (مختصر فی علم الهیئة; lit. Epitome on astronomy).
  • Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī taḥrīr al-daqāʾiq (كشف الحقائق فی تحریر الدقائق), where he accepts the view that the celestial bodies do not change and maintains that stars have volition and it is the source of their motion.[1]
Mathematics
Philosophy
  • Hidayah al-Hikmah (هدایةالحکمه; lit. Guide on Philosophy): a book dealing with the complete cycle of Hikmat, i.e., logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics.
  • Isāghūjī fi al-Manṭiq (ایساغوجی فی المنطق; Commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge), a treatise on logic. Latin Translation by Thomas Obicini; Īsāghūkhī, Isagoge. Id est, breve Introductorium Arabicum in Scientiam Logices: cum versione latina: ac theses Sanctae Fidei. R. P. F. Thomae Novariensis (1625).

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d Sarıoğlu 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d e Heidrun, Eichner (December 2008). "Al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn". Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Brill. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Terrier, Mathieu (2020), Lagerlund, Henrik (ed.), "'Allama al-Ḥillī", Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 129–139, doi:10.1007/978-94-024-1665-7_584, ISBN 978-94-024-1665-7, retrieved 2024-09-23
  4. ^ a b "Athir al-Din al-Abhari". Encyclopedia Islamica. CGIE. Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  5. ^ a b Heer, Nicholas (2009-08-10). "Al-Abhari and al-Maybudi on God's Existence: A Translation of a Part of al-Maybudi's Commentary on al-Abhari's Hidayat al-Hikmah". NELC Faculty Papers. Washington (published 2009).
  6. ^ Hockey, Thomas A.; Trimble, Virginia; Bracher, Katherine, eds. (2007). The biographical encyclopedia of astronomers. Springer reference. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. OCLC 65764986.

References

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Further reading

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  • Calverley, Edwin E. (1933). "Al-Abharī's "Isāghūjī fi l-Manṭiq"". Macdonald.
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