Abstract

The second half of the tenth century marks the transfer of the Shiraz School of Philosophy to Isfahan. During this time, Muslim scholars began to research and teach logical riddles and fallacies. Foremost among these scholars was Kamal al-Din Mahmoud Bukhari, whose work was compiled and commented upon by his son, Asamullah. The explanation and categorization of fallacies, the analysis of logical riddles in addition to creating new riddles are among some of the scholarly achievements of this era.The increasing popularity of Isfahan School of Philosophy and the diminishing popularity of Shiraz School of Philosophy was affected by the social and political atmosphere of the time. The works of Mir fazulallah Astarabadi, Kamal al-Din Mahmoud Bukhari and the treatise of Fakhr al-Din Hosseini are some of the best of that era. Astarabadi's treatise, Si Muqalitat, is divided into three sections. The first section is about five fallacies in language, the second section is on twenty logical fallacies and the last section investigates five proofs on fallacies. The Riddle of the Incommensurable Root is discussed as the eleventh fallacy in the second section. In Kamal al-Din Bukhari's thesis, Muqalitat, explicates this riddle in two sections. The first section is concerned with general fallacies and the second section is concerned with specific fallacies. The second section deals with the different sciences and their specifications. The first section is further divided into two sections, the coincidence of contradictories and the removal of contradictories. Fakhr al-Din Hossein's thesis, Adab Monazerah, is based on the most important elements of argument and dispute. The treatise in its fifteen sections investigates The Riddle of the Incommensurable Root and in the eighteenth section explicates logical riddles.