Jurjānī, al-

▪ Iranian theologian

in full ʿalī Ibn Muḥammad Al-jurjānī, also called As-sayyid Ash-sharīf

born 1339, Tājū, near Astarābād, Iran

died 1413, Shīrāz

      leading traditionalist theologian of 15th-century Iran.

      Jurjānī received a varied education, first in Harāt and then in Egypt. He visited Constantinople in 1374, and, upon his return in 1377, he was given a teaching appointment in Shīrāz. In 1387 Shīrāz fell to Timur, the famous central Asian conqueror, and Jurjānī, whose fame as a teacher and scholar had reached its height, was taken to Timur's capital of Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan). He stayed in Samarkand until Timur's death in 1405, when he returned to Shīrāz.

      Most of Jurjānī's scholarly work was written in Arabic. Of his 31 extant works and commentaries, the best-known work is the Kitāb at-taʿrīfāt (“Book of Definitions”), a short dictionary of technical terms from theology, philosophy, and philology (first edited by G. Flügel in 1845).

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