I am very interested in any new information, and especially texts, that may
have come to light in connection with Najm al-Din Ahmad b. Abu Bakr
al-Nakhjuwani. He was a wandering, eccentric scholar who visited Byzantium
and settled finally in Halab, where he holed up in his dwelling until his
demise. He wrote apparently two major works: Naqd Qawa'id al-Isharat
wa-Kashf Tamwih al-Shifa' wa-l-Najat which, as the title indicates, is a
critique of Ibn Sina's three major philosophical writings; and Lubab
al-Mantiq wa-Khulasat al-Hikma, a wide-ranging book in which many
philosophical issues are discussed in the form of queries and replies or, if
you wish, conjectures and refutations. Bar Hebraeus is the only medieval
biobibliographer to take notice of him. All of the information that I have
obtained was assembled by Muhammad Rida al-Shabibi in his Turathuna
al-Falsafi (Baghdad, 1965). The only known extant materials by al-Nakhjuwani
are some extracts from his books compiled by Ibn Kammuna in a manuscript
once at Najaf; al-Shabibi studied the manuscript in 1911 and copied out some
passages. This codex (an autograph by Ibn Kammuna) was apparently plundered
or lost in the Gulf War of 1991.
|