Ibn Wasil

Although trained as a religious scholar, in his own time he was renowned as a logician and today is most famous as a historian, especially of the Ayyubids.

His father was the qāḍī (judge) of Ḥamā and later al-Maʿarra, and worked as a mudarris (teacher) at the school known as the Nāṣiriyya by the Golden Gate in Jerusalem.

[1] In 1234, he joined the court of al-Muẓaffar II, emir of Ḥamā, who ordered him to help ʿAlam al-Dīn Qayṣar in constructing an astronomical observatory and an astrolabe.

[1][3] In 1236, he returned to Damascus, the ruled by the Emir Ḥusām al-Dīn ibn Abī ʿAlī, who became his patron.

[3] Ibn Wāṣil belonged to the "western" school of logic associated with Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī.

[1][3] This survives in a single manuscript from 1281 under the title Nukhbat al-fikar fī tathqīf al-naẓar.

Ibn Wāṣil later revised this treatise under the title Nukhbat al-fikar fiʾl-manṭiq ('The Pick of Reflection on Logic').

[1][4] The second is Naẓm al-durar fi ʾl-ḥawādith wa ʾl-siyar, dedicated to Sultan Tūrānshāh (1249–1250).

[3] Although he received a religious education, Ibn Wāṣil's interest lay in the rational sciences.

This was the Mukhtaṣar al-arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn ('The Summary of Forty Questions on the Bases of Religion'), a commentary on a work by al-Rāzī.

[3] His work on astronomy, Nukhbat al-amlāk fī hayʾat al-aflāk, was dedicated to Tūrānshāh.