BOḴĀRĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ŠARĪF

 

BOḴĀRĪ, ĀḴŪND MOLLĀ MOḤAMMAD-ŠARĪF b. Moḥammad Ḥosaynī ʿAlawī Ṣeddīqī, also known as Šarīf-e Boḵārī and Mollā Šarīf, the leading Koran exegete and traditionist in Transoxiana in the last half of the 11th/17th century and for a time chief scholar (aʿlam al-ʿolamāʾ) of Bukhara. Moḥammad-Šarīf was particularly noted for his analysis and study of the Meškāt at-maṣābīḥ a collection of Hadith compiled by Abū Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Bagāvī (d. 516/1122) in the rescension of Ḵaṭīb Tabrīzī (fl. 740/1340). One source gives his birthplace as Šahr-e Sabz (Badīʿ, p. 15), another his date of birth as 1026/1617 and the date of his death “Bārs yïl 1109 on the 1st of Ṣafar,” i.e., 19 August 1697 (Moḥammad­-Amīn, fol. 162a).

Boḵārī’s contribution to intellectual life in 11th/17th-century Bukhara was considerable. Writing in 1110/1699, Moḥammad-Amīn calls him the greatest Hadith specialist of his time in Transoxiana and states, perhaps symbolically, that “all the ʿolamāʾ, modarresān (instructors), and ṭalaba of Bukhara were his students” (fol. 162a). There is no direct evidence linking Moḥammad-Šarīf to Yūsof b. Moḥammad Jān Qarābāḡī (d. 1046/1636-37), the leading ʿālem of Bukha­ra in the first part of the century; he was only twenty years old when Qarābāḡī died. But he glossed a work of Qarābāḡī (below no. 3) and the inference in the state­ment of Rāqem (fol. 225b) that “all the leading scholars of Transoxiana were his [Qarābāḡī’s] pupils” indicates that Moḥammad-Šarīf was at least Qarābāḡī’s in­tellectual heir if not one of his students.

Some time after the Toghay-Timurid Sobḥānqolī Khan (r. 1091-1114/1680-1702) ascended the throne of Bukhara, Moḥammad-Šarīf resigned from the post of aʿlam al-ʿolamāʾ and from his teaching positions (farjahā-ye tadrīs), built a ḵānaqāh in the Goḏar-e Tašgarān section of Bukhara and retired there to teach and write (Badīʿ, pp. 149-150). By the time Moḥammad-Amīn wrote Moḥīṭ, Moḥammad-Šarīf had been living for “years” in the ḵānaqāh (fol. 162a). He also wrote poetry and thereby earned an entry in Badīʿ’s Moḏakker (pp. 148-51).

Boḵārī’s principal works include: 1. a gloss (ḥāšīa) on al-Fawāʾed ḏīāʾīya, a commentary by ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) on Ebn al-Ḥājeb’s (d. 646/1249) grammar of Arabic, al-Kāfīa fi’l-naḥw (ms. in Tashkent, Semenov, VI, p. 181, no. 4389a). 2. A gloss on Davānī’s (d. 907/1501) commentary on the credal work of ʿAżod-­al-Dīn Ījī (d. 756/1355), al-ʿAqdāʾed al-ʿażodīya (four mss. in Tashkent, Semenov, nos. 3326a-29, the first of which is dated Ḏu’l-qaʿda, 1100/August-September, 1689). 3. A super-gloss on his own gloss as well as the gloss of Yūsof b. Moḥammad Jān Qarābāḡī (d. 1046/1636-37) on al-ʿAqāʾed al-ʿażodīya (?) (Semenov, nos. 3330, 3332 attributes this super-gloss to Shaikh ʿEnāyat-Allāh Boḵārī, better known as Āḵūnd Šayḵ; Moḥammad-Šarīf was known to the author of Moḥīṭ as Āḵūnd Mollā, and it may be that one and the same person is being referred to here, because Moḥammad-Šarīf’s listed works include a super-gloss (ḥāšīa) on the Resāla-ye eṯbāt-e wājeb by Qarābāḡī, the title of Qarābāḡī’s gloss on Davānī’s commentary on al-­ʿAqāʾed al-ʿażodīya). 4. A gloss on the “Tahḏīb” (Badīʿ, p. 149), by which is probably meant Taftāzānī’s (d. 791/1389) Tahḏīb al-manṭeq wa’l-kalām, a widely used work on logic. Moḥammad-Šarīf’s gloss may well have been on Davānī’s (d. 907/1501) commentary.

 

Bibliography:

For what information there is on his life see Moḥammad-Amīn b. Mīrzā Moḥammad Zamān Boḵārī, Moḥīṭ al-tawārīḵ, ms. Paris Bibliothèque Nationale (Cat. Bibliothèque Nationale I, p. 472), and Moḥammad Badīʿ Samarqandī Malīḥā, Moḏak­ker al-aṣḥāb, Firdawsi State Library, Dushanbe, Ms. no. 610.

A. A. Semenov et al., eds., Sobranie vostoch­nykh rukopiseĭ, Tashkent, 1952-, vols. IV and VI provide a representational group of his works avail­able in manuscript.

(Robert D. McChesney)

Originally Published: December 15, 1989

Last Updated: December 15, 1989

This article is available in print.
Vol. IV, Fasc. 3, pp. 331-332

Cite this entry:

Robert D. McChesney, “BOḴĀRĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ŠARĪF,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, IV/3, pp. 331-332, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bokari-akund-molla-mohammad-sarif-b (accessed on 30 December 2012).