al-Siraj al-Armawi
- Died
- 682 AH
- Born in
- -
Siraj al-Din al-Armawi (594–682 AH / 1198–1283 CE) was a Shafi'i jurist, legal theorist, and logician from Azerbaijan who served as the chief judge in Konya and authored influential manuals in logic and legal theory.
Lineage and education
He was Abu al-Thana' Mahmud ibn Abi Bakr ibn Ahmad ibn Hamid al-Urmawi al-Tanukhi, carrying the honorific Siraj al-Din. He was born in 594 AH (1198 CE) in the city of Urmia in Azerbaijan, where he began his initial studies. He later traveled to Mosul, where he studied under the polymath Kamal al-Din ibn Yunus (d. 639 AH), mastering the rational and transmitted sciences.
Travels and judicial career
Al-Armawi resided for a period in Damascus and visited Egypt before traveling to Malatya. In Malatya, the Seljuk ruler 'Ala' al-Din Kayqubad received him with honor and appointed him to teach at a local madrasa. He eventually relocated to Konya, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, where he was appointed chief judge (qadi al-qudah), a post he held for an extended period.
Scholarly standing and death
Al-Armawi was recognized by contemporaries and subsequent biographers as an authority in logic (mantiq), philosophical theology (kalam), and Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh). His prominent contributions include Matali' al-Anwar (The Risings of Lights) in logic, which became a widely studied manual that generated numerous commentaries, and al-Tahsil min al-Mahsul (The Derivation from "The Yield"), an abridgment of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's fundamental work on legal theory. The contemporary historian Ibn Bibi described him as a leading scholar of his era and an acknowledged reference in the rational sciences and legal theory.
He died in Konya while serving as its judge in 682 AH (1283 CE), at the age of eighty-eight.
Answer updated
List of Works
al-Tahsil min al-Mahsul (The Derivation from "The Yield") is a treatise on Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh) composed as an abridgment of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's landmark work al-Mahsul. Formally titled Tahsil al-Usul min Kitab al-Mahsul, it condenses the wording of the original text to provide a manageable work for study while retaining its legal issues and types of evidence, alongside critical remarks and commentary on problematic or obscure passages.