Athīr al-Dīn Abharī (d. 663/1265) is the author of at least seventeen logical treatises and books spanning his intellectual career. While the first four of these works have been examined in previous studies, this paper investigates four intermediate treatises—Bayān al-Asrār, Talkhīṣ al-Ḥaqāʾiq, al-Maṭāliʿ, and Zubdat al-Ḥaqāʾiq—which have survived together in two manuscript collections (Fazıl Ahmed Paşa 1618 and Murad Molla 1406). These manuscripts bear colophons indicating that the young Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī read them with Abharī in 627/1230, a process spanning approximately five months of transcription and recitation.

Textual evidence establishes these four treatises as an intermediate phase in Abharī's logical development. Their scientific content, while containing numerous innovations, never reaches the sophistication of Abharī's later works, positioning them chronologically between his first four elementary treatises and his nine mature compositions. Crucially, these four treatises mark the first instance where Abharī comes under the influence of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191), following him in at least four significant areas:

First, Abharī adopts Suhrawardī's definitions of conception (taṣawwur) and assent (taṣdīq). Conception is defined as “the acquisition of the form of a thing in the intellect” (ḥuṣūl ṣūrat al-shayʾ fī al-ʿaql), while assent is “judgment concerning a thing by negation or affirmation” (al-ḥukm ʿalā al-shayʾ bi-nafy aw ithbāt). These definitions, absent from Abharī's earlier works, appear verbatim in all four intermediate treatises and derive directly from Suhrawardī's al-Lamaḥāt.

Second, in three of these treatises, Abharī replaces the standard terms “self-evident” (badīhī) and “theoretical/acquired” (naẓarī/kasbī) with Suhrawardī's terminology of “innate” (fiṭrī) and “non-innate” (ghayr fiṭrī). The examples provided—such as the conception of existence and the judgment that the whole is greater than the part for the innate, and the conception of the soul and the judgment that God is one for the non-innate—mirror Suhrawardī's al-Lamaḥāt almost exactly. Interestingly, Zubdat al-Ḥaqāʾiq reverts to the conventional terminology, possibly reflecting Abharī's commitment to presenting the “ancients'“ view to a specific requester.

Third, Abharī follows Suhrawardī in defining the subject matter of logic as conception and assent. In al-Maṭāliʿ, he states: “Its subject is that thing concerning which the logician investigates its accidents that pertain to it qua itself; it is conception and assent insofar as they are suitable for the states (hayʾāt) through which one arrives at an unknown conception or assent.” This formulation derives from Suhrawardī's al-Mashāriʿ wa-l-Muṭāraḥāt, where he presents both “secondary intelligibles” and “conception and assent” as alternative formulations for logic's subject matter. This demonstrates that Abharī, like Suhrawardī, did not view this as a departure from Avicenna but rather as an interpretation of his position—contrary to later scholars who perceived a conflict.

Fourth, Abharī adopts Suhrawardī's reduction of the ten Aristotelian categories to five: substance, quantity, quality, relation, and motion. Following Suhrawardī's al-Talwīḥāt, Abharī subsumes the categories of “when” (matā), “where” (ayn), “possession” (milk), and “position” (waḍʿ) under relation, and “action” (fiʿl) and “passion” (infiʿāl) under motion. This five-category scheme appears consistently across the intermediate treatises.

The paper also examines Abharī's novel positions regarding the categories, particularly in his later works. In Marāṣid al-Maqāṣid, he briefly proposes adding unity and the point to the categories, resulting in six accidental categories (and seven total). This innovation, which appears only in this work and lacks Suhrawardian precedent, was subsequently abandoned. In Kashf al-Daqāʾiq, Abharī expresses skepticism about whether these concepts genuinely constitute genera, adopting a position of suspension (tawaqquf) rather than affirmation or denial.

Beyond documenting Suhrawardī's influence, this study contributes to the chronology of Abharī's logical works. The four treatises show internal development: Talkhīṣ al-Ḥaqāʾiq and Zubdat al-Ḥaqāʾiq preserve an earlier formulation of conversion (ʿaks mustawī) requiring preservation of truth-value, while Bayān al-Asrār and al-Maṭāliʿ replace this with preservation of truth and quality—suggesting a possible ordering. However, conflicting evidence prevents definitive conclusions about their chronological sequence.

The manuscript analysis reveals that the widely-copied Fazıl Ahmed Paşa manuscript, despite bearing Kātibī's name, contains numerous errors and lacunae that preclude its being Kātibī's personal copy. Comparison with the Murad Molla manuscript, which preserves superior readings, demonstrates that both derive from a now-lost common source.

This paper establishes Abharī as perhaps the first philosopher to receive Suhrawardī's ideas favorably, preceding well-known commentators such as Ibn Kammūna and Shahrazūrī. His adoption of Suhrawardian positions on these four key logical issues, combined with his subsequent influence on the Islamic logical tradition, positions him as a crucial conduit for the transmission and integration of Illuminationist thought into mainstream Islamic philosophy and logic. The investigation of Abharī's physics and metaphysics in these treatises, which may reveal further Suhrawardian influences, remains a task for future research.