ABĪVARDĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ḤOSĀM-AL-DĪN ḤASAN B. ʿALĪ B. ḤASAN, much traveled Shafeʿite jurisconsult, mathematician and logician, born 761/1360, died 816/1413.
Ḥosām-al-dīn was born and reared in Abīvard in Khorasan, where his grandfather had come to settle from Saraḵs. Both Ḥosām-al-dīn and his father had reputations as eloquent preachers and were nicknamed al-Ḵaṭībī. His father forbade him to study rational sciences, but later relented, and Ḥosām-al-dīn became a disciple of Saʿd-al-dīn Masʿūd b. ʿOmar al-Taftāzānī (q.v., b. 722/1322), the celebrated authority on rhetoric, logic, metaphysics, theology, and law. Ḥosām-al-dīn is one of only two disciples of Taftāzānī mentioned by Ḵᵛānsārī (Rawżāt al-ǰannāt, Tehran, 1947, p. 309).
When he was about twenty-two, in 783/1381-82, he traveled to Baghdad, where he studied Islamic law and went on pilgrimage. In 793/1391 he again headed for the holy cities but was unable to complete the journey and stayed in Baghdad to study with certain scholars. He returned to Khorasan in 797/1394-95 and then journeyed to Qazvīn to study, spending time also with Shaikh al-Nūr al-Šālakānī, a Sufi who is known for kašf (unveiling). He studied mathematics and astronomy in Isfahan, and, according to Saḵāvī, also traveled to Bokhara, Samarqand, and Turkestan, and other places. (He may have visited Taftāzānī, who was in Samarqand about 781-812/1379-1409 and died there.) In 814/1411-12, after a pilgrimage, he journeyed south to Zabīd in the Yemen, where the Rasulid Sultan al-Nāṣer received him well and entrusted to him several schools in Taʿezz. (Zabīd had a long tradition as a center of Shafeʿite tradition which has cared for the needs of the Sunni communities continuing among the Zaidis of the Yemen; see EI1 s.v. “Zabīd.”) The newly appointed shaikh had scarcely reached his post in Taʿezz, however, in Jomādā II, 816/1413, when he fell ill and died in a matter of days.
Abīvardī wrote a commentary on the commentary by Qoṭb-al-dīn Rāzī (d. 766/1364; Brockelmann, GAL II, p. 209, S. II, p. 293) on Ormavī’s Maṭāleʿ al-anwār fi’l-manṭeq (GAL I, p. 467; S. I, p. 848), a treatise on logic as the title indicates. He was also author of a work entitled Rabīʿ al-ǰenān fi’l-maʿānī wa’l-bayān and other works unnamed.
Bibliography:
Saḵāvī, Żawʾ III, Cairo, 1354/1935, pp. 109-10.
Soyūṭī, Boḡya I, Cairo, 1964, p. 514 (no. 1010).
Ebn al-ʿEmād, Šaḏarāt al-da²hab VII, Cairo, 1351/1932, p. 120.
Kašf al-ẓonūn (Istanbul), pp. 833, 1716.
(L. A. Giffen)
Originally Published: December 15, 1982
Last Updated: July 15, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 2, p. 221
L. A. Giffen, “ABĪVARDĪ, ḤOSĀM-AL-DĪN,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/2, p. 221; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abivardi-hosam-al-din-jurisconsult-mathematician-and-logician-d-1413 (accessed on 25 January 2014).
