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Al-Sharif al-Jurjani
Al-Sharif al-Jurjani
1340 CE–1413 CE · Astarabad
Al-Sharif al-Jurjani (ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Jurjānī, 740–816 AH / 1340–1413 CE), known as al-Sayyid al-Sharif (an honorific reflecting his claimed sayyid descent from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib), was a Persian theologian, logician, philosopher, and lexicographer active in the early Timurid period. A follower of the Ḥanafī school in law and of Ashʿarī theology, he is best known for two works that became staples of the madrasa curriculum: the Kitāb al-Taʿrīfāt, a concise dictionary of technical terms drawn from theology, philosophy, law, and grammar, and his Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, an influential commentary on al-Ījī's compendium of Ashʿarī kalam. Born in a village near Astarabad, he was educated first in Herat and then in Egypt; he spent the height of his career teaching in Shiraz, relocated to Samarqand after Timur's sack of the city in 1387, and returned to Shiraz around 1405, where he died.
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Astarabad
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About Astarabad
Astarabad is the older name of the city of Gorgan, southeast of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran (the name was officially changed to Gorgan in the 20th century). It was a medieval centre of learning; the philosopher-theologian al-Sharif al-Jurjani (d. 1413) took the nisba al-Astarabadi/al-Jurjani from this region. [NOTE: this node duplicates 'gorgan' — same coordinates 36.8456/54.4361.]
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Al-Sharif al-Jurjani’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.