His work on logic, the al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya (Logic for Shams al-Dīn), was commonly used as the first major text on logic in
madrasahs, right down until the twentieth century and is "perhaps the most studied logic textbook of all time".[3] Al-Katibi's logic was largely inspired by the formal
Avicennian system of
temporalmodal logic, but is more elaborate and departs from it in several ways. While Avicenna considered ten modalities and examined six of them, al-Katibi considers many more modalized propositions and examines thirteen which he considers 'customary to investigate'.[4]
This important work was published in a bilingual Arabic and English version in May 2024 as The Rules of Logic, edited and translated by Tony Street, Assistant Director of Research in Islamic Studies at the
Faculty of Divinity at the
University of Cambridge. Al-Katibi's other major work, Philosophy of the Source is a treatise about physics and
metaphysics.[5]
^
abMohaghegh, M. (1978). "al-Kātibī, Najm al-Dīn Abu'l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUmar". In E. van Donzel; et al. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 4 (New ed.). Leiden:
E. J. Brill. pp. 762a–b.
ISBN90-04-05745-5.
^Page 227 of al-Rahim, Ahmed H. (2003). "The Twelver Si'i Reception of Avicenna in the Mongol Period". In David C. Reisman; Ahmed H. al-Rahim (eds.). Before and After Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Islamic philosophy, theology and science: texts and studies. Brill.
ISBN978-90-04-12978-8.
^Street, Tony (2005). "Logic". In Peter Adamson; Richard C. Taylor (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.
Cambridge University Press. pp. 247–265, 247 & 250.
ISBN978-0-521-52069-0.
^Tony Street (2000), "Toward a History of Syllogistic After Avicenna: Notes on Rescher's Studies on Arabic Modal Logic", Journal of Islamic Studies, 11 (2): 209–228,
doi:
10.1093/jis/11.2.209