Safi al-Din al-Hindi al-Urmawi (Arabic: صفي الدين الهندي الأرموي) was a prominent Indian Shafi'i-Ash'ari scholar and rationalist theologian.
Al-Hindi was brought in to debate at Ibn Taymiyya during the second hearing in Damascus in 1306. Taj al-Din al-Subki, in his Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyya al-Kubra, reports him to have said: "Oh Ibn Taymiyya, I see that you are only like a sparrow. Whenever I want to grab it, it escapes from one place to another."
He was praised by Taj al-Din al-Subki, Al-Safadi, Shihab al-Din al-'Umari, Shams al-Din ibn al-Ghazzi, and 'Abd al-Hayy al-Hasani.
Biography
Safi al-Din al-Hindi was born in Delhi and completed his Islamic education there before settling in Damascus. He visited Egypt and moved to Turkey, where he stayed for eleven years; five in Konya, five in Sivas, and one in Kayseri. He arrived in Damascus in the second half of the 13th century and stayed there until he died.
Safi al-Din al-Hindi studied under Siraj al-Din Urmavi and was said to have indirectly begun his studies with Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, whom he met through his maternal grandfather. He was the teacher of mutakallim (theologian) Sadr al-Din ibn al-Wakil (d. 1317) and Kamal al-Din ibn al-Zamalkani (d. 1327).
His students, Ibn al-Wakil and Ibn al-Zamalkani and he, had been directly involved in Ibn Taymiyyah's famous 1306 Damascene trials, which were addressed to restrain Ibn Taymiyyah's relentless anti-Ash'ari polemics.
Books
Among his best-known writings:
- Al-Fa'iq fi Usul al-Fiqh (Arabic: الفائق في أصول الفقه)
- Nihayat al-Wusul fi Dirayat al-Usul (Arabic: نهاية الوصول في دراية الأصول)
- Al-Resalah al-Tis'iniyya fi al-Usul al-Diniyya (Arabic: الرسالة التسعينية في الأصول الدينية)
Al-Hindi's Tis'iniyya is a straightforward manual of Ash'ari kalam treating the traditional theological topics of God, prophecy, eschatology, and related matters.
At the beginning of the book, al-Hindi explains that the occasion for writing was a disturbance provoked by Hanbalis:
This treatise comprises ninety issues about the foundations of religion (Usul al-Din). I wrote it when I saw students from Syria devoting themselves to learning this discipline after the famous disturbance (fitna) that took place between the orthodox (Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama'a) and some Hanbalis.
This is not a direct refutation of Ibn Taymiyya, but it was most likely written in response to the challenge that he posed.
See also
- Taqi al-Din al-Subki
- 'Ala' al-Din al-Bukhari
- List of Ash'aris and Maturidis
- List of Muslim theologians
References
