The Works in Logic by Bosniac Authors in Arabic.

• Author: El-Rouayheb, Khaled
• Position: Book review

The Works in Logic by Bosniac Authors in Arabic. By AMIR LJUBOVIC. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, 77. Leiden: BRILL, 2008. Pp. ix + 252. $154.

To date, the only book-length survey of the history of Arabic logic is Nicholas Rescher's The Development of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1964). This was a pioneering attempt at surveying the course of logic in Arabic from its inception until the mid-sixteenth century. Subsequent researchers are indebted to Rescher, but are nevertheless beginning to question a number of his central theses. For example, Rescher dismissed the value of work done after the thirteenth century. In later centuries, or so he claimed, "logic was dead as a branch of inquiry" and degenerated into "a purely text-oriented comment-mongering" (p. 81). However, such categorical denunciations are clearly not based on a careful study of later works. The only evidence presented by Rescher for his sweeping statement is that the predominant forms of writing in later centuries became the epitome, the commentary, and the gloss. Yet, as European medievalists discovered some time ago, there is simply no reason to believe that such literary forms must be sterile or confine themselves to pedantry and explication.

The stated aim of Amir Ljubovic's book is to show that "the end of the thirteenth century does not denote the 'final stage' and the 'stage of decay' of Arabic logic" (book jacket). He points out that a number of Ottoman scholars of Bosnian origin from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries continued to write works on logic. After a brief chapter in which he summarizes Rescher's description of the course of Arabic logic until the mid-fourteenth century, Ljubovic devotes a chapter to introducing the Bosnian logicians covered in his book, most prominently Hasan Kafi Akhisari (d. 1615), 'Allamek Mehmed Bosnavi (d. 1636), and Mustafa Mostari (d. 1707). The first of these authors wrote a short epitome on logic entitled al-Kafi. The latter two authors each wrote a commentary on the classic handbook on logic al-Risala al-shamsiyya by al-Katibi (d. 1277). The third chapter in the volume under review gives an overview of the contents of these works; chapter four compares the works to those of contemporary Croat logicians writing in Latin; and the fifth chapter discusses the position of logic vis-a-vis other scholarly disciplines that were studied in Islamic colleges.

Ljubovic's study helpfully draws attention to some hitherto neglected scholars who wrote extensive treatments of logic, and shows that the later cultivation of Arabic logic was a geographically diffuse phenomenon not confined to the core areas of the Islamic world. Nevertheless, chapters three, four, and five, which constitute the core of the book, are disappointing. Ljubovic consistently chooses a perspective that is so general that any individual contribution made by the mentioned Bosnian logicians is elided. For example, he reproduces Mostari's introductory remarks in which it is stated that...