This research project, funded by the DFG, focuses on logic and ontology in the works of Afḍal al-dīn al-Khūnajī and his successors. Its aims are to investigate Khūnajī's logic, its ontological implications and its influence on later logicians in the Islamic world.
Khūnajī is known as the second greatest Arabic logician (Avicenna being the first). In his main logical work, Kašf al-Asrār ʿan Ghawāmiḍ al-Afkār (The Disclosure of Secrets as to the Obscurities of Thoughts), Khūnajī pushed the boundaries of Arabic logic and made a major departure from Avicennan logic by either challenging it or modifying it in numerous points. As a consequence of his innovations, Khūnajī’s logic had a great impact on later Arabic logicians as well.
Thus, in this project, we aim to provide a systematic exposition of Khūnajī’s logic and its place in the history of logic in the Islamic world. On the one hand, we will provide a commentary of Khūnajī’s Kašf, and explore the reception of his logic by some of the most important Arabic logicians of the 13th century, among whom is Kātibī Ghazwīnī (d. 1276) whose Šamsīya became an important handbook of logic in madrasa. On the other hand, we will also bring Khūnajī’s logic into conversation with modern logic by applying the formal machinery of contemporary logic.