The Last Evolution Towards the Ādāb al-Baḥth Revolution: al-Fuṣūl of Burhān al-Dīn al-Nasafī

Burhān al-Dīn al-Nasafī’s epistle entitled al-Fuṣūl is a seminal work in terms of the development, training, and teaching of the of ilm al-khilāf (science of legal disputes) in Islamic intellectual tradition. Yet the historically essential significance of this work is the fact that it had paved the way to the origination of a revolutionary discipline of argumentation called ādāb al-baḥth, which later on turned into a new field of science. Shams al-Dīn al- Samarqandī, student of al-Nasafī, developed and systematized this new way of disputation in an epistle entitled Risāla fī Ādāb al-Baḥth, thereby coining a new field of study. This particular work of al-Samarqandī was based on al-Fuṣūl of his teacher al-Nasafī. In this study, both al-Fuṣūl and Ādāb al-Baḥth are analyzed in a comparative fashion with a view to detecting traces of evolution between the two theories of disputation. At the end of the article, the first-time critical edition of the epistle of al-Fuṣūl is presented.