A TANGLED WEB: THE COMMENTARY CYCLE ON SAMARQANDĪ’S TREATISE ON THE RULES OF DISPUTATION ( ĀDĀB AL-BAḤṮ )

The present article is a preliminary critical overview of the rich commentary and super-commentary tradition that grew around the widely-studied treatise on the rules of disputation ( ādāb al-baḥṯ ) by Šams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 722/1322) and its standard commentary attributed to Mas c ūd al-Širwānī or Mas c ūd al-Rūmī. It attempts to get to the bottom of some anomalies, for example dated manuscripts that are attributed to scholars who died some eighty years later, or extant glosses that are attributed to two or three different scholars. Its conclusion is that the received view about the attributions of some major commentaries and glosses is flawed. Commentaries or glosses written by obscure scholars who escaped the attention of the major biographical sources were regularly misattributed to more eminent scholars such as Mas c ūd al-Širwānī (d. 905/1499–1500), Ǧalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 907/1502), and c Iṣām al-Dīn al-Isfarāyīnī (d. 943/1536–1537).