Ḥaml al-Shay‘ ‘alā Nafsihī: Awwalī predication, shāyi‘ predication or tautology

Predication is one of the main instruments in Logical analyses. Among all kinds of predication, ḥaml al-shay’ ‘alā nafsihī (predicating a thing of itself) is considered a contentious one in Islamic philosophy. One of these is what we can name by the help of post-Ṣadrīan terminology taking ḥaml al-shay’ ‘alā nafsihī as awwalī predication or take it as shāyi‘ predication, or by the help of mathematical terms, taking ḥaml al-shay’ ‘alā nafsihī as tautology. But with close inspection in Islamic predecessor’s ideas we can understand that it is naïve to think that ḥaml al-shay’ ‘alā nafsihī can be simply fallen under any of these kinds: awwalī predication, shāyi‘ predication, or tautology. In this article we try to show the problems of enforcing this predication into the framework of all the aforementioned predications. In our analyses, I am using “mā bihī al-ittihād” and “mā bihī al-Ikhtilāf” as two necessary conditions of each predication accepted by almost all of the Islamic thinkers, and used by them as a criteria for analyzing predications.