Article

A Critical Edition of the “Risālah fī sharh al-Muqaddimāt al-Arba‘a min Kitāb al-Tawdīh” of Shaykh al-Islām Muhammad al-Makkī and an Analytical Interpretation of the Work

Abstract

The literature of ‘The Four Introductions’ (al-Muqaddimāt al-Arba‘a), which began with Sadr al-Sharī‘ah (d. 747/1346) and which was also commented on with incisive and critical footnotes by Sa‘d al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 791/1390), centralizes the struggles of human beings by connecting it with the problem of good and evil (husn-qubh) amid the field of kalam (Islamic philosophy and logic) and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). In this context, there exists an important treatise in Arabic, which falls under this tradition, entitled Risālah fī sharh al-Muqaddimāt al-Arba‘a min Kitāb al-Tawdīh by Mohammed Al-Makkī, who at the time during the eighteenth century was the Shaykh al-Islām (chief justice) in the Ottoman empire. This study hopes to contribute to the body of literature by transcribing and critically analyzing the above-mentioned treatise for the first time on the basis of a single manuscript.

Keywords

al-Muqaddimāt al-Arba‘a Muhammad al-Makkī Māturīdī kalam human beings and their actions.