Philosophy in Qajar Iran

Handbook of Oriental Studies

Handbuch der Orientalistik

section one

The Near and Middle East

Edited by

Maribel Fierro (Madrid)

M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Princeton)
Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania)
Florian Schwarz (Vienna)

VOLUME 127

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho1

Philosophy in
Qajar Iran
Edited by

Reza Pourjavady

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: The Mausoleum of Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa (d. 1314/1897) in Ibn Bābawayh Cemetery of Tehran.
Photograph by Janis Esots.

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Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Contributors viii

Introduction 1
Reza Pourjavady

1 Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 36

Reza Pourjavady

2 Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 66

Idris Samawi Hamid

3 Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī 125

Sajjad Rizvi

4 Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 179

Fatemeh Fana

5 Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 231

Mohsen Kadivar

6 Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī 259

Hamed Naji Esfahani

7 Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 283

Encieh Barkhah

8 The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 313

Roman Seidel

Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 373

Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms 384
Index of Madrasas and Academies 389
Index of Manuscripts 390
Acknowledgements

This volume would not be possible in the state it is presented without the col-
lective patience and persistence of the outstanding contributors. My foremost
gratitude goes to Sabine Schmidtke who initially supported my vision for the
volume and set off as its coeditor. Several articles of the book received her in-
sightful comments, and she proved attentive to various editorial tasks at the
early stage of the project. Moreover, the project received the generous financial
support of the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant Project, “Redis-
covery of theological Rationalism in the Medieval World of Islam”, conducted
by her. Aun Hassan Ali, Keven Brown, Janis Esots, and Joep Lameer each trans-
lated an article of this volume from Persian (and Arabic) into English. Being
experts in Islamic intellectual history, their translations are highly accurate.
I would also like to thank Sajjad Rizvi, Catherina Wenzel, Joep Lameer, and
above all Leila Rahimi Bahmany with whom I consulted on various editorial
matters.
I would also extend my sincere thanks to the two anonymous referees of the
original manuscript and their constructive comments, which led to consider-
able improvements to the volume. The editorial task of this volume would not
have been finished without the intellectual generosity of Isabel Miller. She pa-
tiently read the drafts of each article and meticulously edited their English. I
also wish to express my gratitude to Maribel Fierro, M. Sükrü Hanioğlu, Renata
Holod and Florian Schwarz, the editors of Handbook of Oriental Studies Series
(Section 1 the Near and Middle East), as well as Kathy van Vliet and her team at
Brill Publishers particularly Dinah Rapliza.

Reza Pourjavady
Contributors

Encieh Barkhah
is Assistant Professor and Director of the Department of Philosophy at Ency-
clopaedia Islamica Foundation in Tehran. She received her Ph.D. in Islamic
Philosophy from Shahid Motahhari University (2014). Her dissertation was
on the emanation of the world according to Avicenna and Abu l-Barakāt al-
Baghdādī. She has written several articles on philosophy for The Encyclopaedia
of the World of Islam. She has also edited Ibn Kammūna’s three treatises on the
soul (Azaliyyat al-nafs wa-baqāʾihā, Tehran 2006).

Fatemeh Fana
is Associate Professor at Encyclopaedia Islamica Foundation in Tehran. She is
the author of numerous articles on philosophical concepts (in The Encyclopae-
dia of the World of Islam) on the Metaphysics of Avicenna, comparative studies
between Avicenna and St Thomas Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Sabzawārī,
such as ‘Hājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī and the Ghurar al-farā’id’ in The Oxford
Handbook of Islamic Philosophy (New York, 2016). She has also edited several
philosophical texts, including Alī Qulī b. Qarachghāy’s (d. after 1686) Iḥyāʾ-i
Ḥikmat (Tehran, 1988) and Naṣīr al-Din Tūsī’s Risāla Iʿtiqādī (Tehran, 2000).

Idris Samawi Hamid

is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo-
rado. After completing a Master’s degree in Physics, he received his Ph.D. in
philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His specialisa-
tions include Islamic and Islamaic Philosophy, Metaphysics, Islamic Econom-
ics, and Philosophy of Logic. He is the author of Islām, Sign and Creation: The
Cosmology of Walāyah and its sequel Islām, Station and Process: The Spirituality
of Walāyah (New York, 2011). Concurrently he is in the process of finalising The
Logical Foundations of Islamic Economics: Objective Logic and Phenomenology
of Consciousness and Action, co-authored with Abbas Mirakhor.

Mohsen Kadivar
is Research Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University (Durham, NC, US).
He studied at the Islamic Seminary at Qom, where he received his certificate of
Ijtihad. He also obtained a Ph.D. in Islamic philosophy and theology from Tarbi-
at Modares University in Tehran. His extensive list of publications includes his
editions of Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Tihrānī’s works in three volumes (Tehran, 1999),
Contributors ix

and a Persian monograph on Ākhūnd Mullā Muhammad Kāzim Khurāsānī’s

political philosophy (Tehran, 2008).

Hamed Naji Esfahani

is Associate Professor of Islamic Philosophy at the University of Isfahan. He
is the editor of the journal Hawza-yi Iṣfahān and the author of several arti-
cles on philosophy. His main contribution to the field of Islamic philosophy,
however, is his editions of numerous philosophical writings, including Mullā
Ṣadrā’s philosophical treatises (Tehran, 1996), Ibn Kammūna’s al-Kāshif (Teh-
ran, 2008), Mīr Dāmād’s Ufuq al-mubīn (Tehran, 2013) and Avicenna’s Meta-
physics of the Shifāʾ together with Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on it (Tehran,
forthcoming).

Reza Pourjavady
is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Islamic and Oriental Studies at the Ruhr
University Bochum. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at Freie Universität Berlin
in 2008. His publications include Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran: Najm al-Dīn
Maḥmūd Nayrīzī and His Writings (Leiden, 2011) and, coauthored with Sabine
Schmidtke, A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad: ʿIzz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d.
683/1284) and His Writings (Leiden, 2006).

Sajjad Rizvi
is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the University of Exeter.
Trained at Oxford and Cambridge as a specialist on the intellectual history of
philosophical traditions in the later Persianate East, he is the author of Mullā
Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (Oxford, 2007), and Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics (Routledge,
2009). He is currently completing a monograph on Islamic philosophy in the
eighteenth century.

Roman Seidel
is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and So-
cieties, Freie Universität Berlin. His primary research interest is the study of
modern philosophy in the Middle East. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies
in 2011 from the University of Zurich, where he was Lecturer on Islamic Studies
focussing on Persian and Modern Iran at the Institute for Asian and Oriental
Studies from 2011 to 2014. His doctoral dissertation, Kant in Teheran: Anfänge,
Ansätze und Kontexte der Kantrezeption in Iran, was published by De Gruyter
(Berlin) in 2014.
Introduction
Reza Pourjavady

1 Early Scholarship on the Philosophers of the Qajar Era

The first European scholar who showed interest in the indigenous philosophi-
cal thought of Qajar Iran was the French romantic race theorist, Joseph Arthur
Comte de Gobineau (d. 1882). Working as a French diplomat, Gobineau trav-
elled twice to Iran, first as a chargé d’affaires (1856–8) and then as ambassador
(minister) (1862–3). It seems that it was during his second trip that Gobineau
pursued his intellectual interests, first with the help of some of the students of
the distinguished philosopher Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1289/1873), and then
with the help of a philosopher living in Tehran, Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī (d. 1305/1888).
In his Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, published first in 1865,
Gobineau provided a descriptive account of the latest philosophical trends in
“Persia”.1 Presumably, under the influence of Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī, Gobineau points
to Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1045/1635–36) as the person who revived the philosophical
tradition in Safavid Iran.2 Following Mullā Ṣadrā, Gobineau named and gave
short biographical accounts of forty-nine other philosophers. Of these, only
three were from the Safavid period, a few were active at the late eighteenth
century at the cusp of the Qajar period, and the rest were Qajar philosophers
who were either active in the early nineteenth century or were Gobineau’s
contemporaries, including the aforementioned Sabzawārī and Āqā ʿAlī. The
author generally refrains from mentioning his source. However, he indicates
on one occasion that Āqā ʿAlī was his source of information.3 Apart from his
verbal exchange with the latter, Āqā ʿAlī wrote for Gobineau a short treatise,
containing biographical accounts of the philosophers of Iran from the late fif-
teenth century onwards.4 Despite his interest in mapping this ­philosophical

1  Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris:
Leroux, 1900), pp. 63–112.
2  Ibid., pp. 86–91.
3  Ibid., p. 98.
4  See Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī Jamālzāda, “Mīrāth-i Gubīnu (Sanad-i Chahārum u Panjum),”
Yaghmā 154 (1340 Sh./1961), pp. 63–68. According to Jamālzāda the work is preserved in
two pieces in the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg, files no. 66 and 68.
Jamālzāda presented transcription of one of these pieces (file no. 68) in the article mentioned
above. Sayyid Ibrāhīm Ashkishīrīn has published these two pieces together. See “Ṭabaqāt-i

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_002

2 Pourjavady

tradition in Iran and the significance of the biographical accounts that he pro-
vided, Gobineau knew almost nothing about the ideas of these individuals.
In the early 20th century, Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) in his doctoral dis-
sertation, titled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, devoted a chapter to
“Later Persian Thought”.5 Iqbal maintained there that Mullā Ṣadrā’s metaphys-
ics was the “the final step which the Persian intellect took towards complete
monism”.6 He further identified this development as a “movement towards Pla-
tonism” which was best illustrated in philosophical works of Sabzawārī.7 Iqbal
provided an account of Sabzawārī’s metaphysics and psychology based on the
latter’s book Asrār al-ḥikam.8 He also referred to Bābī and Bahā’ī movement
and traced its roots back to the thoughts of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī. The latter
was introduced as “an enthusiastic student of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy”.9 A
few years later, in 1912 and 1913, the German orientalist, Max Horten (d. 1945)
studied the works of two philosophers of Safavid Iran, namely Mullā Ṣadrā
and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī (d. 1072/1661–62).10 However, apart from a few refer-
ences to Sabzawārī, Horten did not show interest in the writings of the Qajar
philosophers.11
Studies on the philosophical tradition of the Qajar period resumed in the
second half of the 20th century. One of the pioneers was Henry Corbin (d. 1978).
Corbin’s interest in the intellectual history of this period was initially limited
to Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826) and his followers. This interest can

ḥukamāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhirīn,” in Muḥammad Ra‌ʾīszāda, Fāṭima Mīnāʾī, Sayyid Aḥmad

Hāshimī (ed.), Jashnnāma-yi Duktur Muḥsin Jahāngīrī (Tehran: Nashr-i Kitāb-i Hirmis,
1386 Sh./2007), pp. 35–58.
5  Muhammad Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia: A Contribution to the History
of Muslim Philosophy (London: Luzac and Company, 1908).
6  M. Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, p. 175.
7  Ibid., p. 175.
8  Ibid., pp. 175–186. Iqbal used the lithograph edition of Asrār al-ḥikam (Tehran, 1286/1869).
It is notable that Iqbal falsely assumed Sabzawārī lived in the 18th century. See M. Iqbal,
The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, p. 175.
9  Ibid., p. 187.
10  See Max Horten, Die Gottesbeweise bei Schirazi (1640 [gest.]): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Philosophie und Theologie im Islam (Bonn: Cohen, 1912); idem. Das philosophische System
von Schirázi (1640 [gest.]): übersetzt und erläutert (Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1913); idem,
“Die philosophischen und theologischen Ansichten von Lahígi (ca. 1670): nach seinem
Werke, „die aufgehenden Sterne der Offenbarung“, einem Kommentare zur Dogmatik des
Ṭūsī (1273 [gest.]),” Der Islam 3 (1912): 91–131.
11  M. Horten, Das philosophische System von Schirázi (1640 [gest.]), pp. 1 (fn. 2), 6 (fn. 25),
17 (fn. 11), 197–199. Horton’s Das philosophische System von Schirázi consists of a partial
translation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa based on
its 1282/1865 Tehran lithograph edition. This lithograph edition contains, on the margins,
Sabzawārī’s gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s work. Horton sometimes consulted this gloss.
Introduction 3

be traced back as early as 1954, when Corbin wrote an article on resurrection

according to the Mazdeans, the Ishrāqīs and the Shaykhīs, i.e., the followers
of Shaykh Aḥmad.12 He later developed the ideas discussed in the article into
an extensive chapter on Shaykh Aḥmad and his followers in his Terre céleste et
corps de résurrection: de l’Iran mazdéen à l’Iran shi’ite, first published in 1960.13
Corbin continued his studies on the Shaykhīs in the following years.14 Particu-
larly noteworthy here is his discussion on the Shaykhiyya School in volume
four of his En Islam iranien: aspects spirituels et philosophiques, first published
in 1973.15
A broader study of the philosophers of the Qajar period was started in
the 1960s in Iran by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (d. 1384 Sh./2005). In 1964,
Āshtiyānī edited Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī’s (d. ca. 1251/1835–36) commentary
on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Risālat al-Mashāʿir. Āshtiyānī asked Jalāl al-Dīn Humāʾī (d.
1359 Sh./1980) to write an introduction to this work, which was the first attempt
to elucidate developments in philosophy in the Qajar period.16 Later Āsh-
tiyānī himself acknowledged that he had followed in the footsteps of Humāʾī
in the introduction he wrote on the work as well as in his later publications.17
The significance of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī’s studies and his editions of
philosophical works of this period can hardly be exaggerated. However, while
reading his related works, one needs to be conscious about his deliberate
exclusion, or at times debasement, of the thought of Shaykh Aḥmad and his

12  Henry Corbin, “Terre céleste et corps de résurrection d’après quelques traditions irani-
ennes (Mazdéisme, Ishrâq, Shaykhisme),” Eranos-Jahrbuch XXII 1953 (Zurich: Rhein-­
Verlag, 1954), pp. 97–194.
13  This book has been translated into English by Nancy Pearson, under the following title:
Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shiʿite Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princ-
eton University Press, 1977).
14  In 1961 Corbin published “L’École shaykhie en théologie shî’ite,” Annuaire de l’ École pra-
tique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses 68 (1960–1961): 3–59. In the fol-
lowing years, Corbin continued to publish writings on Aḥsāʾī and his school. See Henry
Corbin, “Le commentaire de Qâzî Sa’îd Qommî sur le Tawhîd de Shaykh Sadûq, livre III
et commentaire du Hadîth du Nuage blanc,” and “L’École shaykhie: Le livre des enseigne-
ments de Shaykh Ahmad Aḥsâ’î (suite)” (Rapport sur les cours 1966–1967), Annuaire de l’
École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences religieuses 75 (1966): 138–146; idem,
“La gnose islamique dans le recueil des traditions (Mashâriq al-Anwâr) de Rajab Borsî”
and “Le pèlerinage spirituel aux douze Imâms (al-Ziyârat al-Jâmi’a) et le commentaire de
Shaykh Ahmad Ahsâ’î”(Rapport sur les cours 1967–1968), Annuaire de l’ École Pratique des
Hautes Études, Section des Sciences religieuses 77 (1968): 148–156.
15  Paris: Gallimard, 1973, pp. 232–255. This volume was republished in 1978 and 1991.
16  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī, Sharḥ Risālat al-Mashāʿir, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī
(Mashhad: Zuwār, 1384 /1964).
17  Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, “Ḥakīm-i Muḥaqqiq Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” Muṭālaʿāt-i
Islāmī 1 (1347 Sh./1968): 9–22 (11–12).
4 Pourjavady

followers. In 1966, Āshtiyānī published the edition of al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya

together with glosses by Sabzawārī.18 In the introduction to this edition,
Āshtiyānī mapped the reception of Ṣadrian philosophy in the period following
Mullā Ṣadrā’s death, particularly in the Qajar era. Two years later, in 1968,
Āshtiyānī wrote an article on the life and works of Sabzawārī.19 Āshtiyānī’s
Anthologie des philosophes iraniens depuis le XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours,
published in 1980, contains editions of several philosophical works by Qajar
philosophers, namely, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn by Mullā Mahdī Narāqī (d. 1209/1795),20
Taḥqīq fī qāʿidat basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa and Risāla fi waḥdat al-wujūd by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī
(d. 1246/1831), and Kitāb al-Tuḥfa by Mullā Naẓār ʿAlī Gīlānī (d. 1206/1791–92
or 1217/1802). Besides this volume, Āshtiyānī edited numerous other works by
Qajar philosophers. These include a collection of treatises by Sabzawārī (1969),21
Mullā ʿAbd Allah Zunūzī’s (d. 1257/1841–42) Anwār-i jaliyya (1976),22 Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1306/1888) and Āqā Mīrzā Maḥmūd Burūjirdī’s
(d. 1337/1918–19) glosses on Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka’s (d. 835/1432) Tamhīd al-qawāʿid
(1976),23 Narāqī’s al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya wa-l-kalimāt al-wajīza (1978),24 Zunūzī’s
Lamaʿāt al-ilāhiyya (1982),25 and Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī’s (d. 1332/1914) gloss-
es on Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s (d. 673/1274) al-Nuṣūṣ (1983).26
With the exception of Shaykh Aḥmad, Corbin did not conduct research on
the philosophers of this period. However, his writings in the last fifteen years
of his life reflect Āshtiyānī’s studies on the Qajar philosophers. This can be
discerned in his writings as early as 1964, when he published his French trans-
lation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mashāʿir along with its Persian translation, which

18  Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manāhij al-sulūkiyya, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Dānishgāh-i Mashhad, 1346 Sh./1967).
19  See above fn. 17.
20  This work was also published separately. See Mullā Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Qurrat al-
ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān,
1357 Sh./1978).
21  See Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, 2 vols., ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Intishārāt-i Idāra-yi Kull-i Awqāf-i Khurāsān, 1348 sh./1969; repr. Te-
hran: Intishārāt-i Uswa, 1376 Sh./1997).
22  Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī, Anwār-i jaliyya, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: McGill
Institute of Islamic Studies, 1354 Sh./1976).
23  Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka, Tamhīd al-qawāʿid: ḥawāshī az Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī u Mīrzā
Maḥmūd-i Qummī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i
Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1357 Sh./1976).
24  Muḥammad Mahdī al-Narāqī, al-Lumʿat al-ilāhiyya wa-l-kalimāt al-wajīza, ed. Sayyid Jalāl
al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Anjuman-i Falsafa, 1357 Sh./1978).
25  Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī, Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya u maʿārif-i rubūbiyya, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1355 Sh./1976).
26  Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, Risālat al-Nuṣūṣ (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1362 Sh./1983).
Introduction 5

was done by the Qajar prince, Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā (d. after 1324/1906).27 In the
introduction to this book, Corbin provided a short survey of the philosophers
of this period, primarily based on Āshtiyānī’s aforementioned introduction to
Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, published earlier in the same year.28 In
his second part of his Histoire de la philosophie islamique (i.e., depuis la mort
d’Averroës jusqu’à nos jours), first published in 1974, Corbin briefly introduced
some major philosophers of the Qajar era.29 Āshtiyānī also asked him to write
a French introduction for each volume of his editions of Anthologie des philos-
ophes iraniens (published between 1972 and 1980).30 Three of four projected vol-
umes of this anthology were published, together with Corbin’s introductions.31
The manuscript of the fourth volume, on the Qajar philosophers, was complet-
ed only after Corbin’s death and hence published without his introduction.
From the mid-1960s, Sabzawārī attracted the attention of several scholars.
In 1966, Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote an article on Sabzawārī for A History of
Muslim Philosophy edited by M. M. Sharif.32 Three years later, in 1969, Mehdi
Muhaghegh and Toshihiko Izutsu edited the first part of Sabzawārī’s Sharḥ
Ghurar al-farāʾid, better known in Iran as Sharḥ-i Manẓūma. The volume con-
tains an extensive introduction to Sabzawārī’s thought by Izutsu titled “The
Fundamental Structure of Sabzawāri’s Metaphysics”.33 In 1973, ʿAbd al-Jawād
Falāṭūrī and Mehdi Muhaghegh edited Mīrzā Mahdī Āshtiyānī’s (d. 1372/1952–
53) ­glosses on Sharḥ-i Manẓūma, which came out together with an English

27  Mullā Ṣadrā, Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques: Kitāb al-mashāʿir, ed. H. Corbin
(Tehran/Paris: L’Institut français, 1342 Sh./1964).
28  See ibid., pp. 21 (n. 4), 31, 32, 50, where the author gives references to Āshtiyānī.
29  Henry Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie islamique: depuis la mort d’Averroës jusqu’à nos
jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), pp. 476–496.
30  Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Anthologie des philosophes iraniens: depuis le XVIIe siècle
jusqu’à nos jours (Tehran: Département d’iranologie de l’Institut franco-iranien de recher-
che, 4 vols., 1350–1359 Sh./ 1971–1980).
31  These French prolegomena have been assembled in Corbin’s posthumous work La
philosophie iranienne islamique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1981).
32  Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Renaissance in Iran: Ḥājī Mullā Hādī Sabziwārī”, in Mian Moham-
mad Sharif (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy: With Short Accounts of Other Disciplines
and the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966),
vol. 2, pp. 1543–56.
33  Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid yā sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi ḥikmat. Qis-
mat-i umūr-i ʿāmma u jawhar u ʿaraḍ, ed. Toshihiko Izutsu and Mehdi Mohaghegh (Te-
hran: McGill University [Tehran Branch], 1348 Sh./1969). Izutsu at the time also dealt with
some philosophers of the Qajar period, particularly Sabzawārī, in his The Concept and the
Reality of Existence (Tokyo: Institute of Cultural and Linguistic studies of Keio Unversity,
1971).
6 Pourjavady

introduction by Izutsu.34 In 1977, Mohaghegh and Izutsu published The Meta-

physics of Sabzavari, which contains their translation of parts one and two of
Sabzawārī’s commentary on his own Ghurar al-farāʾid.35
Along with Corbin, Nasr also collaborated with Āshtiyānī. In 1976, Nasr
wrote an introduction to the edition of Zunūzī’s Lamaʿāt al-ilāhiyya prepared
by Āshtiyānī.36 In this introduction, Nasr produced an English translation of
the autobiography of Aqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī. In 1983, Nasr wrote another article titled
“The Metaphysics of Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī and Islamic Philosophy in Qajar Iran”.37
The article mainly dealt with Mullā Ṣadrā. Nevertheless, it contains some
valuable insights on the period after Mullā Sadrā. In this article, Nasr asserts,
probably for the first time, that the philosophical tradition of this period is
not homogeneous and it is wrong to assume that it is merely a continuation or
repetition of the ideas of Mullā Ṣadrā.38
In addition to the above editions and studies, two biographical works on
the Qajar philosophers are noteworthy. One of them is Muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ
composed by Murtaḍā Mudarris Gīlānī (d. 1378 Sh./1999). The first draft of
this work, titled Tadhkirat al-ḥukamāʾ, was completed in Najaf in 1358/1939. In
his al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa, Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī (d. 1389/1970) referred to
this work, mentioning its inclusion of three hundred biographical entries on

34  Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris Āshtiyānī, Taʿlīqa bar sharḥ-i manẓūma-yi ḥikmat-i Sabzawārī, ed.
ʿAbd al-Jawād Falāṭūrī and Mehdi Mohaghegh, English Introduction by Toshihiko Izutsu
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1367 Sh./1988–1989).
35  Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī. Trans. Mehdi Mohaghegh and
Toshihiko Izutsu (Delmar, New York: Caravan Books, 1977).
36  See above fn. 25.
37  Published in Clifford Edmund Bosworth and Carole Hillenbrand (ed.), Qajar Iran: Politi-
cal, Social, and Cultural Change, 1800–1925 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983),
pp. 177–98.
38  In the recent years, Nasr has used the term “the School of Tehran” to refer to philosophy in
Tehran during Qajar period. This can be found for instance in his Islamic Philosophy from
its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy (New York: State University
of New York Press, 2006), which includes a chapter titled “From the School of Isfahan to
the School of Tehran”. Nasr’s main purpose in writing this chapter was to show that there
has been a continuity of philosophical tradition from the time of Mullā Ṣadrā to the pres-
ent. Nasr also wrote, “Hādi Sabzavāri, Shaikh Mollā” for Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan
Yarshater (2003—online edition), vol. 11/4, pp. 437–441 and “Tihrān: Ḥawza-yi falsafī”, for
Dānishnāma-yi Jahān-i Islām, ed. Ghulām-ʿAlī Ḥaddād ʿĀdil (Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-
maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1382 Sh./2004), vol. 8, pp. 749–753. More recently Nasr and Mehdi Amin-
razavi have published An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia in five volumes (London and
New York: I. B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1999–2015). Part 3
of volume 5 contains selected translations of the works of several philosophers of the
Qajar period and the period preceding it. This part starts with an introduction by Nasr
as well.
Introduction 7

Qajar philosophers.39 The book then was subject to two more revisions. The
first revision was completed in 1370/1950–51 in Najaf, when it was expanded
and given the title of Muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ. Then again in 1380/1960, Gīlānī re-
vised and finalized the work, which by then contained around one thousand
two hundred entries.40 The book, however, was never published in its entirety.
It is now preserved in the Majlis Library in Tehran (MS Majlis 16651). A selec-
tion from it, consisting of about three hundred entries was published with the
annotations by Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā.41 The other work, Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ
u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhirīn-i Ṣadr al-muta‌ʾallihīn, was written by Manūchihr
Ṣadūqī Suhā himself. The title reveals its inclusion of biographical accounts
of the philosophers after Mullā Ṣadrā. However, with a few exceptions, it pro-
vides biographies of Qajar philosophers only.42 Published in 1359 Sh./1980, this
work, unlike Muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ, was well received and its classifications of the
Qajar philosophers was echoed in later scholarship for decades.43 In the last
three decades, many works by the philosophers of this period have been edited
and the philosophers, particularly Shaykh Aḥmad and Sabzawārī, have been
the subject of studies. The details of these editions and studies are beyond the
scope of this introduction. However, they are referred to in the various chap-
ters of this book.

2 The Pre-Qajar Period

There can be no doubt that for the last two centuries the major authoritative
philosopher of Iran has been Mullā Ṣadrā. This was not a position, however,
that he acquired during his life. When Mullā Ṣadrā died in 1045/1635–36, the
only scholars known to have remained faithful to his system of thought were
his son-in-law and student, Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1090/1681) and another
supposed student of his, Āqā Ḥusayn Tunikābunī (d. 1101/1690 or 1105/1694).
Other philosophers of the time, including Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī (d. 1080/1669) and

39  Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa, 25 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1403–
6/1983–86), vol. 4, p. 31.
40  See Murtaḍā Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab-i Muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ, edited and annotated by
Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1384
Sh./2005), pp. xx–xxi, 206–207.
41  For the bibliographical details of this publication, see the above footnote.
42  Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhirīn-i Ṣadr al-muta‌ʾallihīn
(Tehran: Anjuman-i Islāmī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1359 Sh./1980).
43  The second edition of this book, which has some revisions, was published in 2002. See
Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir (Tehran:
Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002).
8 Pourjavady

Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī (d. 1099/1688) who were then the leading philosophers,
were critics of Mullā Ṣadrā.44
In the early 18th century, which corresponds to the reign of the last Safavid
ruler, Shāh Sulṭān Ḥusayn (r. 1105–1135/1694–1722), any thought associated with
the idea of the unity of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd), including Mullā Ṣadrā’s, was
prohibited. Teaching Avicennan philosophy, however, was permissible. When
the renowned Shaykh al-Islām of Isfahan, Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, died in
1110/1699, Shaykh Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kamara‌ʾī (d. 1115/1704) was appointed his
successor. Kamara‌ʾī was himself a philosopher who had studied Avicennan phi-
losophy with Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī.45 Mīr Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Khātūnābādī (d.
1126/1714) who took the office after him, was likewise a student of Āqā Ḥusayn
Khwānsārī. His cousin Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Khātūnābādī (d. 1127/1715), who was
appointed as the Mullā Bāshī, was also teaching Avicenna’s Shifāʾ and Ishārāt.46
However, it seems all these religious authorities were in principle opposed to the
idea of the unity of existence and made efforts to prevent its promulgation.
The leading philosophers of the time were Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713),
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (d. 1137/1725), known as Fāḍil-i Hindī, and Muḥammad
Ṣādiq Ardistānī (d. 1134/1722). They all taught philosophy in Isfahan, the leading
intellectual centre of the period. Avicenna’s Shifāʾ (particularly the part on meta-
physics) and the Ishārāt (with Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Commentary or Quṭb al-Dīn
Rāzī’s Muḥākamāt) seem to have been the primary philosophical texts taught in
this period. Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī wrote glosses on the Physics of the Shifāʾ (books
one and two),47 Bahāʾ al-Dīn Iṣfahānī wrote a commentary on the Logic, Physics,
and Metaphysics, titled ʿAwn ikhwān al-ṣafā ʿalā fahm kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Understand-
ing the Book of the Shifāʾ with the Help of the Brethren of Purity).48 The other

44  For Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī’s criticism of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, see Muhammad U. Faruque
and Mohammed Rustom, “Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī’s Refutation of Ṣadrian Metaphysics,” in Sa-
jjad Rizvi and Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad (ed.), Philosophy and the Intellectual Life in
Shīʿah Islam (London: The Shiʿah Institute, 2017); For Khwānsārī’s criticism (one of the
instances), see chapter 1 in this book, pp. 56–57.
45  Kamara‌ʾī composed a work on physics and metaphysics, titled Tuḥfa-yi sulṭānī, ed.
Muḥammad Ramaḍānī (Tehran: Khāwar, 1339 Sh./1960).
46  See ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm Amal al-āmil, ed. Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī (Qom:
Kitābkhāna-yi Āyat Allāh Marʿashī, 1407/1986), pp. 66 and 78.
47  Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī, al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā l-Shifāʾ, ed. Riḍā Ustādī (Qom: Kungira-yi
Buzurgdāsht-i Āqā Ḥusayn-i Khwānsārī, 1378 Sh./1999). Āqā Jamāl also wrote glosses on
Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Muḥākamāt ʿalā Sharḥay al-Ishārāt as well as Mīrzā-Jān Bāghnawī’s
(d. 995/1587) glosses on this work.
48  ʿAlī Awjabī has edited the first part of this commentary on logic. See Bahāʾ al-Dīn
Iṣfahānī, ʿAwn ikhwān al-ṣafā ʿalā fahm kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. ʿAlī Awjabī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-
yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1393 Sh./2014). Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī also edited
a portion of the part on metaphysics. See Avicenna, al-Shifāʾ: al-Ilāhiyyāt wa-taʿlīqāt Ṣadr
Introduction 9

major philosopher, Muḥammad Ṣādiq Ardistānī, is not known to have written a

commentary on the Shifāʾ. However, his closest disciple, Mullā Ḥamza Gīlānī (d.
1134/1722), reportedly wrote glosses on the Shifāʾ, which makes it likely that his
teacher also regarded it as the authoritative text in philosophy.49 ʿAlī Qulī Jadīd
al-Islām (d. after 1135/1722), who lived at the time in Isfahan, attests to the popu-
larity of Avicenna’s philosophical works as follows:

Far too often it has occurred that I have been in the company of a group
of them [madrasa students] who, having spent years in the madrasas
in pursuit of knowledge, believed they knew something and numbered
themselves amongst the knowledgeable (ahl-i ʿilm). Even as a recent con-
vert at the time with no thorough knowledge of the ḥadīths, when I asked
them about a tradition that dealt with the most fundamental matters of
religion, they did not know anything, and I was the one who taught them
on the subject. They said, “We study philosophy (ḥikma); it is a num-
ber of years now that we have been busy with books like [Mīr Ḥusayn
Maybudī’s] commentary on [Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s] Hidāyat [al-ḥikma]
and [Avicenna’s] Shifāʾ and Ishārāt. Hence we could not find any spare
time for studying ḥadīth”, which is worse than the offence itself!50

At most, the subjects which were discussed at this time were the origination
of the world, God’s knowledge, the question of human free will, and the resur-
rection. These enquiries were refashioned at the time by Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī,
which impelled the scholars to deal with them again.51 Another subject of

al-muta‌ʾallihīn ʿalayhā, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār u Mafākhir-i
Farhangī, 1383 Sh./2004), pp. 261–296, 471–485.
49  See Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī’s introduction to his edition of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid
al-rubūbiyya, pp. 3–4.
50  This passage is quoted by Rasūl Jaʿfariyān from ʿAlī Qulī’s Hidāya al-ḍāllīn (still unedited)
in his introduction to ʿAlī Qulī Jadīd al-Islām’s Sayf al-muʾminīn fī qitāl al-mushrikīn, pu-
blished under the title Tarjuma, sharḥ u naqd sifr-i paydāyish-i Tawrāt: Sayf al-muʿminīn
fī qitāl al-mushrikīn, ed. Rasūl Jaʿfariyān (Qom: Intishārāt-i Anṣāriyān, 1375 Sh./1996),
pp. 20–21. I used Ata Anzali and S. M. Hadi Gerami’s translation of this passage with
some moderations. See Ata Anzali and S. M. Gerami, Opposition to Philosophy in Safavid
Iran: Mulla Muḥammad Ṭāhir Qummī’s Ḥikmat al-ʿĀrifīn (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017),
pp. 8–9.
51  Apart from the aforementioned glosses on the physics of the Shifāʾ, Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī
wrote the following philosophical works: (1) glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Muḥākamāt
ʿalā Sharḥay al-Ishārāt and Mīrzā-Jān Bāghnawī’s (d. 995/1587) glosses on this work. See
Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī and Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī, al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā Shurūḥ al-Ishārāt, ed.
Aḥmad ʿĀbidī, 2 vols. (Qom: Būstān-i Kitāb, 1388 Sh./2009); (2) superglosses on Shams
al-Dīn Khafrī’s (d. 942/1535–36) glosses on the chapter on theology proper of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn
10 Pourjavady

i­ nterest was the origination of the soul, discussed by Mullā Muḥammad Ṣādiq
Ardistānī.52
The siege and fall of Isfahan in 1134/1722 can be regarded as a milestone in
the early modern intellectual history of Iran. For a while the scholars of Is-
fahan were in despair, the madrasas were not active, and the libraries were
looted. During the period of transition, Qazvin and Mashhad were the sites
of some intellectual activity. Āqā Khalīl Qāʾinī (d. 1136/1723–24)53 and Amīr
Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Qazwīnī (d. after 1145/1732–33),54 both students of Āqā
Jamāl Khwānsārī, were active in Qazvin.55 Sayyid Muḥammad Khātūnābādī
(d. 1151/1739) and Ibrāhīm Mashhadī (d. 1148/1732–33) and Mīr Muḥammad
Taqī Shāhī (d. 1150/1737–38) were teaching in Mashhad.56
With the rise of Nādir Shāh (r. 1148–1160/1736–1747) Isfahan was gradually re-
stored to its former position. Several scholars, including Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī
Māzandarānī (d. 1173/1759–60), Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Zamān Nūshābādī
(d. after 1172/1758–59) and Mullā Muḥammad Harandī (d. 1186/1772–73), started

Qūshjī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād. See Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī,
al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā ḥāshiyat al-Khafrī ʿalā sharḥ al-Qūshchī ʿalā Tajrīd, ed. Riḍā Ustādī (Qom:
Kungira-yi Buzurgdāsht-i Āqā Ḥusayn-i Khwānsārī, 1378 Sh./1999); (3) Jabr u ikhtiyār, ed.
ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: Nihḍat-i Zanān-i Īrān, 1359 Sh./1980); (4) Mabda‌ʾ u maʿād, ed.
ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: Nihḍat-i Zanān-i Īrān, 1359 Sh./1980).
52  See his “Ḥikma Ṣādiqiyya”, in Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (ed.), Anthologie des philos-
ophes iraniens: depuis le XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours (Tehran: Département d’iranologie
de l’Institut franco-iranien de recherche, 1359 Sh./1980), vol. 4, pp. 55–220. This work is
based on the lectures of Mullā Muḥammad Ṣādiq Ardistānī, transcribed by his student,
Mullā Ḥamza Gīlānī, revised and completed by Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī and presented with
an introduction by Muḥammad ʿAlī Tūnī Khurāsānī.
53  Āqā Khalīl Qāʾinī left Isfahan during the Afghan siege and spent the remaining years
of his life in Qazvin. Initially, he was a student of Āqā Raḍī Khwānsārī, who was Āqā
Jamāl’s brother, and then when Āqā Raḍī died he studied with Āqā Jamāl. According to
ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Qāʾinī taught Avicenna’s philosophical works and wrote glosses
on the Ishārāt and its commentaries. See ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm Amal al-āmil,
pp. 142–146.
54  On Amīr Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Qazwīnī and his works, see ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm
Amal al-āmil, pp. 52–54.
55  Amīr Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Qazwīnī’s son, Sayyid Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm, known
as Mīr Ḥusaynā (d. 1208/1793–94) was one of the most distinguished scholars of fiqh in the
Zand period.
56  On Ibrāhīm Mashhadī and Mīr Muḥammad Taqī Shāhī see ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm
Amal al-āmil, pp. 55, 84–86. Mīr Muḥammad Taqī Shāhī wrote a treatise, titled Risāla dar
rabṭ-i ḥādith bi-qadīm (MS Qom, Iḥyāʾ-i Mīrāth-i Islāmī 531).
Introduction 11

teaching the intellectual disciplines there again.57 Of these individuals, Mullā

Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī, who had studied with Muḥammad Ṣādiq Ardistānī, is known
to have taught Avicenna’s Shifāʾ. In his Tatmīm al-Amal al-āmil, ʿAbd al-Nabī
Qazwīnī (d. 1197/1782–83) explains Khwājūʾī’s proficiency in teaching the Shifāʾ
as follows:

I heard from a trustworthy and noble man that he [= Khwājūʾī] had gone
through the [metaphysics of the] Shifāʾ thirty times, either by reading
or teaching or studying. I also heard from another person who told me
that his copy of the [Metaphysics of the] Shifāʾ was missing a few folios,
Khwājūʾī recited the missing part to him by heart. Later that person had
the chance to collate it with the correct text. It was entirely correct, ex-
cept for one or two words.58

One of the outcomes of the fall of the Safavids was that the mystics who for a
long time had been suppressed under their rule, particularly during the reign
of Shāh Sulṭān Ḥusayn, enjoyed more freedom to express and propagate their
ideas. Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī (d. 1173/1760) and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Damāwandī (d.
1160/1747) were the two distinguished Sufi scholars of the time who, on the
one hand, distanced themselves from Avicennan philosophy and on the other
promoted the mystical thought of Ibn ʿArabī.59 Besides these two certain phi-
losophers of the age displayed a more explicit inclination towards the thought
of the school of Ibn ʿArabī and Mullā Ṣadrā. One of these was Naʿīm al-Dīn
Ṭāliqānī (d. 1160/1747), better known as Mullā Naʿīmā. He was the keeper of
the books at the royal library (Kitābkhāna-yi Sulṭānī) of Shāh Sulṭān Ḥusayn.
During the siege, he fled to Qom and eventually to Ṭāliqān. It was only after the
fall of the Safavids that Mullā Naʿīmā reveals his inclination for the mystical
thought of Ibn ʿArabī and the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā. In his treatise titled
Aṣl al-uṣūl (completed in 1135/1723), Mullā Naʿīmā refers to Mullā Ṣadrā as the
“best of scholars” and approves of his notion of the primacy of existence.60 But

57  On Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Zamān Nūshābādī
and Mullā Muḥammad Harandī see chapter 1 in this book, pp. 37–38.
58  ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm Amal al-āmil, pp. 67–68.
59  On these two mystics, i.e., Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Damāwandī, see Sajjad
Rizvi, “Whatever happened to the school of Isfahan? Philosophy in 18th century Iran”, in
Michael Axworthy (ed.), Crisis, Collapse, Militarism & Civil War: The History & Historiogra-
phy of 18th Century Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 71–104 (86–90).
60  Naʿīm al-Dīn Ṭāliqānī, Aṣl al-uṣūl, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i
Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1357 Sh./1978), p. 16.
12 Pourjavady

although he was aware of Mullā Ṣadrā’s explanation of the modulation of ex-

istence, he preferred Ibn ʿArabī’s simple concept of the unity of existence and
expressed his approval of the view of the Sufis.61
The increasing recourse to mysticism seems to have been sensed by
Khwājūʾī, who wrote a treatise against the doctrine of the unity of existence.62
Gradually, in the second half of the 12th/18th century, the intellectual inter-
ests of the tutors of Isfahan inclined more and more towards the mystical
teachings of the school of Ibn ʿArabī and the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā. Āqā
Muḥammad Bīdābādī, who was the leading philosopher of the city, along
with Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Muẓaffar Iṣfahānī (d. 1198/1783–84), Mīrzā Abū
l-Qāsim Mudarris Khātūnābādī (d. 1203/1788–89), Mullā Muṣṭafā Qumsha‌ʾī
(d. 1215/1800–1), Shaykh Mahdī Mashhadī (d. 1217/1802–3 or 1218/1803–4) and
Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī Gīlānī were active in this development. It was in line with
this strand of thought that Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Muẓaffar started teach-
ing Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam and some other mystical works of the school of
Ibn ʿArabī.63
Bīdābādī is known to have written glosses on two works by Mullā Ṣadrā, al-
Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya better known as al-Asfār, and his Mashāʿir. It is likely that
these glosses were written while he was teaching them. The period when he
was teaching, which was some decades before his death in 1198/1783–84, is the
earliest in the post-Safavid era when Mullā Ṣadrā’s works were taught. Apart
from the works of Mullā Ṣadrā, Bīdābādī wrote glosses on the Metaphysics of
the Shifāʾ, which makes likely that he was teaching this philosophical text as
well. Interest in the text of the Shifāʾ can be found at the least in the writings of
one of Bīdābādī’s student, namely Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khātūnābādī Iṣfahānī
(d. 1233/1817–18), who likewise wrote glosses on the Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ.64
However, Bīdābādī’s most prominent student, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī gave the Shifāʾ no
particular attention, nor did any of his students including Sabzawārī. Reading
the Shifāʾ revived only in the last decades of the 19th century by Mīrzā Abū
l-Ḥasan Jilwa (d. 1314/1897).

61  Ṭāliqānī, Aṣl al-uṣūl, pp. 35–39, 94.

62  Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī and Raḥīm Qāsimī (ed.), “Waḥdat al-wujūd,” in Sayyid
Aḥmad Sajjādī and Raḥīm Qāsimī (ed.), Mīrāth-i ḥawza-yi Iṣfahān (Isfahan: Markaz-i
Taḥqīqāt-i Rāyāna‌ʾī-i Ḥawza-yi ʿIlmiyya-yi Iṣfahān, 1383 Sh./2004–2005), vol. 1, pp. 137–166.
63  See ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda Iṣfahānī, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī: Iḥyāʾgar-i ḥikmat-i Shīʿī dar
qarn-i dawāzdahum-i hijrī (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿUlūm-i Insānī u Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī,
1381 Sh./2002), pp. 101–103, 146–148, 150–153, 163–167. See also Gobineau, Les religions et les
philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, pp. 93–95.
64  M S Tehran, University of Tehran, Ilāhiyyāt 594.
Introduction 13

3 The Qajar Period: Historical Context and General Attitude

The rise of Āqā Muḥammad Khān (r. 1203–12/1789–97), the founder of the
Qajar dynasty, coincided with a reformation in Shīʿī orthodoxy in which the
mujtahids established their position and function in society.65 The eminent
jurisconsult, Muḥammad Bāqir al-Bihbihānī (d. 1206/1791–2), who was active
in Karbala, is usually credited for bringing Akhbārī dominance to an end both
through his writings and through his long-term teaching activities. Bihbihānī
trained a generation of Uṣūlī scholars who successfully eliminated Akhbārīsm
as an intellectual force in the Shīʿī madrasas.66 Following this development,
the Uṣūlīs regarded philosophical/mystical training as a residual but “harmful”
form of teaching in the Shīʿī educational system. The primary reason for such
aversion was that philosophers did not fully recognize the religious authority
of the ʿulamāʾ. At least inwardly, they were inclined to believe in the superior-
ity of ḥikma over fiqh. Moreover, philosophical training at the time involved
numerous discussions on mystical subjects. Most of the philosophers of this
period were adherents of the doctrine of the unity of existence (waḥdat al-
wujūd). Even those who criticised it were engaged in the same discourse. In
the eyes of the Shīʿī ʿulamāʾ of the time, this kind of intellectual engagement
was aberrant. In his refutation of the teachings of the Sufis, titled Khayrātiyya,
Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī Kirmānshāhī (d. 1216/1801), son of Muḥammad Bāqir
Bihbihānī, felt the need to address philosophical training as well. He argued
that there are many philosophical arguments which are entirely opposed to
the verses of the Qurʾān and the prophetic traditions. Thus, they not only fail
to support religion, but they are also harmful to the Islamic faith:

If they say: God praises knowledge in the Qurʾān, and in many of the tra-
ditions transmitted from the chosen prophet and the pure Imāms the sci-
ences of the scholars are praised, and since ḥikma [in the sense] of falsafa
is a science, how could it be bad? We would reply: knowledge is [gained
from] the decisive verses of the Qurʾān and the traditions of the infallible
ones. From the time of the prophet to the time of Ma‌ʾmūn, the Abbasid
caliph, people acquired knowledge from the Qurʾān and the traditions.
They used to rely on the decisive verses of the Qurʾān and the established

65  Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906: The Role of Ulama in the Qajar Period
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 40–41.
66  On the conflict of Uṣūlīs and Akhbārīs see Robert M. Gleave, “Akhbāriyya and Uṣūliyya,”
EI3, ed. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe. John Nawas, and Everett Rowson. Con-
sulted online on 12 September 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/101163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0029>.
14 Pourjavady

traditions for their theological understandings and religious rulings. Until

Ma‌ʾmūn, deceived by Satan the accursed one, brought from the Byzan-
tine lands the books of philosophy which contained the vain thoughts
and corrupted fantasies of the Greek and Milesian philosophers, and or-
dered those who knew Greek and Arabic, to translate those books into
Arabic […]. And since the caliph of the time rigorously promoted phi-
losophy, it became widespread among the Sunnī people. To find a better
position, or to gain respect in the eyes of the caliph or to become closer
to him, people tried their best to learn it. After Ma‌ʾmūn, other caliphs and
scholars likewise engaged in teaching and learning philosophy.
The Imāmī Shīʿīs used to follow their Imāms all the time. Until towards
the end of the [Abbasid] caliphate, a distinguished Imāmī scholar for a
pragmatic reason (maṣlaḥatī) learned philosophy and dealt with its false
arguments. The verifier and the learned scholar, the Master Naṣīr [al-Dīn
Ṭūsī], in his commentary on the Ishārāt, which he wrote to disgrace
Imām Fakhr [al-Dīn] Rāzī, who was one of the greatest scholars of the
Sunnī Muslims, did not refute philosophy. Nevertheless, in his Fuṣūl, he
rejected those positions of the philosophers which are against religion.
Gradually, however, philosophical discussions became popular among
the Shīʿīs, to the extent that some ignorant people among them tried to
learn philosophy, assuming that it is a religious science.67

Such harsh criticism of philosophy was not common among the jurists of
the time. However, many of them seem to have held more or less the same
opinion, even though they were not outspoken about it. In a letter to Fatḥ ʿAlī
Shāh, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Shaftī (d. 1231/1815–16), commonly known as Mīrzā-yi
Qummī advised the Shah to keep away from philosophical discussions, par-
ticularly when they concerned religious beliefs. He explains that:

No verse of the Qurʾān and no tradition of the Prophet obliged people to

know about the intellects, the souls, the idea of the unity of existence and
existent. It suffices us to know that God is all-perfect, without any flaw
or fault. It’s not our duty to know the quality of His knowledge, whether
His knowledge is acquired knowledge or knowledge by presence, wheth-
er He has a general knowledge or He knows things in detail. Neither is
it our duty to know the quality of His knowledge of things before their

67  Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī Kirmānshāhī, Khayrātiyya dar ibṭāl-i ṭarīqa-yi Ṣūfiyya, ed. Mahdī
Rajāʾī, 2 vols. (Qom: Muʾassasa-yi ʿAllāma-yi Mujaddid Waḥīd-i Bihbihānī, 1370 Sh./1991),
vol. 2, pp. 219–221.
Introduction 15

existence. We must believe that God is free from flaw, fault, evil or cru-
elty […]. In sum, it is undoubtedly desirable to have a general knowledge
about the stages of belief. But knowledge of the details might not be our
duty. On the contrary, we should be silent about many of them. It is there-
fore required of the shah to avoid this type of discussions.68

Najaf and Karbala, the cities in which the mujtahids could easily marshall their
forces, remained to a large extent without philosophy courses. But in the ter-
ritory ruled by the Qajars, philosophy continued to be taught ever more vigor-
ously as compared to the state of affairs in late Safavid and early post-Safavid
times. One important reason was that the Qajar authorities were in favour of
philosophers. In their anti-Akhbārī campaign, the jurists received the approval
of the Qajar authorities. However, an anti-philosophy coalition never emerged
between the jurists and the authorities.69 The Qajar shahs and then their
princes, Qajar statesmen and their regional governors supported the teaching
of philosophy. Moreover opposition, even on the part of the jurists was not
excessive. It is notable that the jurists’ radical confrontation with the Akhbārīs
was due to the fact that they considered the Akhbārīs an existential threat.
Philosophy, however, could never receive the sort of publicity that Akhbārism
had because, in contrast to the latter, it required an extended period of study.
As a result, it was not a real threat to the jurists. Philosophers were seemingly
careful not to provoke the jurists’ animosity. They were happy to comply with
the jurists as long as they were tolerated. What the philosophers expected from
the ruling authorities was not financial patronage as in the earlier periods, it
was more a matter of security and protection in terms of their teaching.70
In the Qajar period, the philosophers’ sources of income became increas-
ingly different from those of the ʿulamāʾ. In the Safavid period, many phi-
losophers were also mujtahids. Hence, they received socio-religious posi-
tions, such as shaykh al-Islām, ṣadr, and imām of the Friday prayer. In the
post-Safavid era, when the ʿulamāʾ started to keep away from philosophical

68  Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Shaftī and Riḍā Ustādī (ed.), “Nāma-yi Mīrzā-yi Qummī bi Fatḥ ʿAlī
Shāh-i Qājār,” Kiyhān-i farhangī 108 (1373 Sh./1994): 14–17 (17).
69  In particular, Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh and Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh are known for their patronage of the
philosophers. For Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh’s interest in philosophy and his support of philosophers,
see chapter 3 (pp. 132, 136). For Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh’s patronage see chapter 4 (p. 187) and
chapter 7 (p. 286) in this book.
70  For instance, neither Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī nor Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa expected finan-
cial support from Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh. Nevertheless, they both seem to have been inclined
to accept his patronage for security and protection. For the attitude of Sabzawārī and
Jilwa to the Shah, see chapter 4 (p. 187) and Chapter 7 (p. 286).
16 Pourjavady

discussions, the two groups fell into two different camps. Mullā Mahdī Narāqī
seems to have been one of the last philosophers of the time who benefited fi-
nancially from the privileges of being a mujtahid. While the ʿulamāʾ had access
to the income of the endowments (awqāf) attached to shrines, mosques, and
madrasas, Qajar philosophers scraped a living through teaching philosophy in
the madrasas. Even that was only possible if the endowment document of the
madrasa permitted philosophical training and the current mutawallī-bāshī (the
chief administrator) of the madrasa was not against it. Some philosophers, of
course, like Sabzawārī and Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa inherited a private income
from their fathers which freed them from the need to earn a living.71
Even though some of the renowned philosophers of the time had many
students, there seems to be no particular attempt on their part to expand the
philosophical sources at their disposal. Comparing the philosophers of the
Qajar period with those of the Safavid period, in terms of the variety of philo-
sophical sources they used, it becomes clear that the Qajar philosophers had
a far narrower range of sources. Out of Greco-Arabic philosophical works, the
only one referred to was the Theology of Aristotle.72 There was no other work by
the philosophers of the pre-Avicennan period, which received any particular
attention from the scholars of this period. Thanks to lithograph technology,
several philosophical works of pre-Avicennan and early post-Avicennan pe-
riod became available in the late nineteenth century. Even then the philoso-
phers of the time did not show any interest in these works. They seem to have
been more eager to collect philosophical works produced in the previous two
or three centuries.73
Likewise, these philosophers did not show any interest in the Western sci-
ences which were gradually being introduced in Iran during the nineteenth
century. At least, any such interest was not pronounced in their writings. Gen-
erally speaking, they seem to have underestimated the possibility that these
scientific developments might have affected the validity of their philosophi-
cal thought. Such disregard can be seen to a greater or lesser extent in their
treatment of Western political ideas too. Although from the mid-nineteenth
century these ideas were increasingly the subject of discussion in Iran, the phi-
losophers did not actively participate in any of these discussions. However, one
cannot rule out the possibility that they shared their political opinions with

71  Cf. chapter 4 (pp. 186–187) and chapter 7 (p. 285) in this book.
72  Among the philosophers of this period, Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī is known for his use of this work.
See chapter 5, pp. 246, 250.
73  This can be gathered from the references given to the philosophical works in their writ-
ings. See, for instance, chapter 5 (particularly, pp. 249–250.), in which the references given
by Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī to the philosophical works were discussed.
Introduction 17

some of their advanced students. It is notable that the circle around one of the
philosophers of the late nineteenth century, namely Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa,
included several political activists, each of whom played a significant role in
the Constitutional Movement of 1284–1290/1905–1911.74

4 Centres for Philosophical Education: Cities and Madrasas

In 1200/1786, Tehran was proclaimed the capital of the new state by the found-
er of the Qajar dynasty, Āqā Muḥammad Khān Qājār. For several decades after
this, however, Isfahan remained the central intellectual city of the country.
One of the centres of philosophical education in Isfahan at the time, and for
decades after, was Madrasa-yi Kāsagarān (also known as Ḥakīmiyya and ear-
lier as Shamsiyya).75 Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1831) taught in this madrasa, and
it seems that his lectures were well attended. In a letter Nūrī wrote to Fatḥ
ʿAlī Shāh, he claimed that at the time four hundred students were studying
with him.76 It is difficult to imagine that Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī was the only philoso-
pher who was teaching in the Kāsagarān and it is very likely that his senior
students were also teaching there. The madrasa continued to be the centre of
philosophical education for years after Nūrī’s death. Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa
(d. 1314/1897) was studying in this madrasa in the 1250s/1830s–40s.77

74  See chapter 7 (pp. 288–292), where biographical accounts of some students of Jilwa, in-
volved in the Constitutional Movement such as Mīrzā Ṭāhir Tunikābunī and Sayyid Naṣr
Allāh Taqawī are provided. Apart from the figures mentioned there, the political activist,
Mīrzā Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī (d. 1318 Sh./1939), also belonged to the same circle.
75  It was called Shamsiyya, because of its founder Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Yazdī. Later it
was rebuilt by Amīr Mahdī Ḥakīm al-Mulk Ardistānī, a reconstruction that was comple-
ted in the final year of the reign of the Safavid Sulaymān Shāh (r. 1077–1105/1666–1694).
From then on it was called the Madrasa-yi Ḥakīmiyya. However, because of the location
of the madrasa in the pottery district, it became commonly known as the Madrasa-yi
Kāsagarān (the School of Bowl Makers). See Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Mahdawī, Iṣfahān: Dār al-ʿilm-i
sharq, ed. Muḥammad Riḍā Nīlfirūshān (Isfahan: Sāzmān-i Farhangī-Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i
Iṣfahān, 1386 Sh./2007–2008), p. 303; Maryam Moazzen, Formation of a Religious Land-
scape: Shi’i Higher Learning in Safavid Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 50.
76  Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī narrates this piece of information in his autobiography. See Āqā
ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt-i Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris-i Ṭihrānī, ed. Muḥsin
Kadīwar, 3 vols. (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Iṭṭilāʿāt, 1378 Sh./1999), vol 3, p. 146.
77  It is known that Jilwa studied with Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī (d. before 1294/1877),
Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Langarūdī Lāhījī (d. before 1294/1877), Sayyid Raḍī Lāhījī (d.
1270/1853–54), Mīrzā Ḥasan Chīnī (d. 1264/1847–48) and Mullā ʿAbd al-Jawād Tūnī
Khurāsānī (d. 1281/1864). It is likely that at least some of these teachers were teaching at
the madrasa of Kāsagarān. See chapter 7 in this volume, pp. 284–285.
18 Pourjavady

The first madrasa in Tehran in which philosophy was taught was Madrasa-yi
Khān-i Marwī or simply Marwī (otherwise is known as Madrasa-yi Fakhriyya).78
It was founded by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān Qājār, known as Fakhr al-Dawla
(d. ca. 1233/1818), who was one of the intimate companions of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh
(r. 1212–1250/1797–1834). The founder particularly invested in the library of
the madrasa and purchased many valuable books, including numerous philo-
sophical codices.79 From the beginning, philosophy was one of the subjects
which its founder was keen should be taught there. Fakhr al-Dawla asked Fatḥ
ʿAlī Shāh to invite Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī to come from Isfahan to Tehran and teach
in this school. Nūrī excused himself from coming and instead sent one of his
students, namely Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī, who started teaching at the ma-
drasa in 1227/1812. As far as is known, he was a metaphysician with a definite
inclination for Ṣadrian philosophy, although nothing is known about his in-
terest in logic or other disciplines of the rational sciences. He seems to have
been patronised by the court. Comte de Gobineau noted that even Fatḥ ʿAlī
Shāh attended a teaching session of his on one occasion.80 Following the death
of Zunūzī philosophy was not taught at the madrasa for several decades.81
In 1264/1848, the year in which Muḥammad Shāh died, Isfahan was still the
main centre of philosophical endeavour.
During the reign of Muḥammad Shāh (r. 1250–1264/1834–1848), the Qajar
court seems to have stopped patronising philosophy. It is even doubtful if, dur-
ing this period, philosophy and rational theology were taught in the Marwī or at
any other madrasa in Tehran. When Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1264–1313/1848–1896)
ascended the throne, things changed in favour of philosophical education in

78  On Madrasa-yi Marwī in the Qajar period see Nūr Allāh Kasāʾī, “Madāris-i qadīm-i Tihrān
dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār,” Nāma-yi farhang 30 (1377 Sh./1998): 114–139 (122–124).
79  The library of the madrasa now contains 1050 manuscripts, catalogued by Riḍā Ustādī, Fi-
hrist-i nuskhahā-yi madrasa-yi Marwī-i Tihrān (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Madrasa-yi Marwī,
1370 Sh./1989). It provides unique copies of some philosophical works; Codex Marwī 19,
for instance, includes 24 works by Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī which otherwise are thought to be lost.
See Robert Wisnovsky, “New Philosophical Texts of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī: A Supplement to En-
dress’ Analytical Inventory,” in Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman (ed.), Islamic Philoso-
phy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas (Leiden: Brill, 2012),
pp. 307–326. This codex has been recently published in facsimile. See Robert Wisnovsky
(ed.), A Safavid Anthology of Classical Arabic Philosophy: MS Tehran Madrasah-i Marwi 19
(Tehran: Kitāb-i Rāyzan, 1395 Sh./2016).
80  Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, p. 96.
81  Presumably, the trustee of the madrasa’s waqf (mutawallī) at the time was against teach-
ing philosophy. Some decades later, however, Shaykh ʿAlī Nūrī (d. ca. 1335/1916) who was
known for teaching ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām, for which he was known
as Shaykh al-Shawāriq, taught in the madrasa. On Shaykh ʿAlī Nūrī, see chapter 5 in this
book, p. 238.
Introduction 19

Tehran. With the support of the court, courses in philosophy were started in
several of the city’s madrasas. This process gradually made Tehran the main
centre of intellectual activity.82
The newly established Qāsim Khān Madrasa, which was located in the
courtyard of the royal palace (arg-i sulṭānī) in Tehran, was one of these ma-
drasas in which teaching philosophy was permitted.83 The founder, Amīr
Muḥammad Qāsim Khān, was the maternal grandfather of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh.
Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī taught at this madrasa for seven years, from 1273/1856
to 1280/1863. Besides Ṭihrānī, a more senior philosopher of the time, whom
Ṭihrānī referred to as one of his teachers, Ḥājjī Ibrāhīm Naqshafirūsh (d. after
1280/1863) also taught there at the same time.84 Around 1275/1858, the madra-
sa was expanded on the orders of Mahd-i Awliyāʾ (d. 1290/1873), Nāṣir al-Dīn
Shāh’s mother. It was for this reason that it was called Madrasa-yi Mādar-i Shāh
(the Madrasa of the Shāh’s Mother).
After several years teaching at Madrasa-yi Mādar-i Shāh, Āqā ʿAlī moved
to another madrasa of the city called the (Old) Sipahsālār. It was located in
ʿŪdlājān, a district mainly inhabited by the Jewish community of Tehran. It
was founded shortly after the construction of the Marwī Madrasa by Mīrzā
Muḥammad Khān Sipahsālar (1283–84/1866–67), the uncle, and for a while
the grand vizier (ṣadr-i aʿẓam), of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh.85 There is no evidence
that the rational sciences were taught in this school in the early years of its
life. The earliest evidence came around 1280/1863 when Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī was
invited to teach there. In the end, Ṭihrānī taught there for more than twenty
years.86 After the death of Ṭihrānī in 1307/1888, Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī
(d. 1336/1918) was appointed as the new teacher of rational sciences there. The
madrasa was referred to later as the Old Sipahsālār to distinguish it from a new
madrasa established in 1299/1882, with the same name, by Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān
Mushīr al-Dawla Sipahsālar (d. 1298/1881).
Two other madrasas in Tehran are worth mentioning here: Madrasa-yi Dār
al-Shifāʾ and Madrasa-yi Ṣadr. The Dār al-Shifāʾ was built at the early period of

82  The great drought and subsequent famine of 1870–71 which devastated the city of Isfahan
was also decisive in the transfer of cultural and intellectual life from Isfahan to Tehran.
83  The madrasa was founded in the early years of the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh. It was lo-
cated in an alley called Darb-i andarūn (later known as Almāsiyya), which divided the Arg
in two, an eastern and a western part. On Madrasa-yi Qāsim Khān see N. Kasāʾī, “Madāris-i
qadīm-i Tihrān dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār,” (124).
84  Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, p. 97.
85  On the Old Sipahsālār Madrasa (madrasa-yi Sipahsālār-i qadīm) see N. Kasāʾī, “Madāris-i
qadīm-i Tihrān dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār,” (125–26).
86  On Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī’s teaching in Qāsim Khān and Old Sipahsālār, see also chap-
ter 5 in this book, p. 233.
20 Pourjavady

Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh’s reign. Initially, as its name suggests, it was meant to be a hospi-
tal. However, it is not known if it was ever used as a hospital and if so, when it
was turned into a madrasa. The earliest recorded instance of philosophy being
taught in this madrasa is in 1273/1856–57 when Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa moved
from Isfahan to Tehran and from the time of his arrival he chose this madrasa
as his place of residence and teaching. Altogether, Jilwa was active as a tutor of
philosophy in this school for more than forty years.87 The other madrasa, Ma-
drasa-yi Ṣadr, was founded around 1224/1809 by Mīrzā Shafīʿ Khān Muʿtamid
al-Dawla Māzandarānī (d. 1234/1819), who was the grand vizier (ṣadr-i aʿẓam)
of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh. It was because of the association with the founder that the
madrasa was called ‘Ṣadr’. Between 1288/1871 and 1303/1885, Āqā Muḥammad
Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī taught philosophy and mysticism there.88
Qazvin was another centre for the study of philosophy. One of the distin-
guished students of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Mullā Āqā Ḥikmī Qazwīnī (d. 1285/1868)
moved to Qazvin after completing his education. In 1233/1817, Madrasa-yi
Ṣāliḥiyya was founded in this city by Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Baraghānī (d. 1271/1855),
and it attracted students from a wide area of Iran and even from as far away
as India. Mullā Āqā Ḥikmī Qazwīnī and some of his senior students, includ-
ing Mullā Yūsuf Ḥikmī (d. 1276/1859) taught philosophy and the rational sci-
ences in this madrasa for many years. Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī (d. 1305/1888)
and, reportedly, Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī, known as Afghānī (d. 1314/1897),
were among Mullā Āqā’s students. It is a remarkable fact that certain women
also attended his philosophy classes, including Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Baraghānī’s
wife, Āmina Ṣāliḥī and her daughter Fāṭima, better known as Ṭāhira Qurrat
al-ʿAyn (d. 1268/1852). The latter, who became a significant figure in the Bābī
movement, studied the rational sciences to such a level of proficiency that she
taught them in the women’s section of the madrasa.89
In Sabzevar, Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1289/1873) taught at a madrasa found-
ed by Ḥājj ʿAbd al-Ṣāniʿ Faṣīḥī, known as Madrasa-yi Faṣīḥiyya. Later this ma-
drasa came to be known as the Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī Madrasa. Sabzawārī must
have started teaching there sometime after his return to his hometown around
1253/1837, and he continued to do so until the end of his life in 1289/1873. In

87  On Madrasa-yi Dār al-Shifāʾ, see N. Kasāʾī, “Madāris-i qadīm-i Tihrān dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār,” (120).
On Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa’s residence and teaching in this madrasa, see chapter 6 of this
book, pp. 285–286.
88  On Madrasa-yi Ṣadr, see N. Kasāʾī, “Madāris-i qadīm-i Tihrān dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār,” (119–120).
On Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī’s teaching in this madrasa, see also chapter 7 of this
book, pp. 260–261.
89  Moojan Momen, “Usuli, Akhbari, Shaykhi, Babi: The Tribulations of a Qazvin Family,” Ira-
nian Studies 36 3 (2003): 317–337 (321, 328).
Introduction 21

other words, he was teaching in this school presumably for more than thirty
years. It was because of his fame that students came to study with him not only
from other major cities of Iran but also from other countries.90
Thus, Isfahan, Tehran, Qazvin, and Sabzevar were the major Iranian centres
for the study of philosophy in the Qajar period. When Gobineau wrote on this
topic in 1865, he limited himself to discussing these four centres. However, he
pointed out that in recent years there had been some considerable scholars
active in other cities such as Hamadan, Kermanshah, Tabriz, Shiraz, Yazd, Ker-
man and Mashhad.91

5 Lithographic Publication of Philosophical Works

The first lithographic publication in Iran was produced in 1248/1832–3 in Ta-

briz. Some years later, in 1253/1837, lithographic printing was also established in
Tehran. Most of the philosophy texts published at the time in Iran were printed
in Tehran. What follows is a review of these philosophical publications which
are mostly from Tehran (unless otherwise specified). The earliest publication
of a philosophy work in Iran took place in 1267/1851, when ʿAbd al-Razzāq
Lāhījī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād, titled Shawāriq
al-ilhām came out together with the glosses by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1245/1829)
and Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī (d. 1239/1823–24).92 Lāhījī’s Shawāriq was one of
the most popular philosophy works of the rest of the Qajar era (some seven-
ty-five years). There are at least a further eight lithographic editions of this
work known in this period.93 Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s commentary on Avicenna’s al-
Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt was published partially (except for the section on logic)
in 1271/1854–55.94 ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd
al-iʿtiqād and its glosses were likewise popular at the time. The first known
edition of this work was produced in 1274/1858. It contains glosses by Ṣadr al-
Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1497), Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502) and Fakhr al-Dīn

90  On Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī’s teaching at Madrasa-yi Faṣīḥiyya, see chapter 4 of this book,
pp. 185–186.
91  Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, p. 105.
92  The edition of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām (Tehran: 1267/1851) is in the hand
of Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṭihrānī.
93  Shawāriq was published in 1280/1863–64 (by Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī, proofread and
collated by Muḥammad ʿAlī Khurāsānī), 1291/1874–75, 1295/1878, 1299/1881–82 (by ʿAbd
al-Ḥusayn Khurāsānī), 1303/1885 (transcribed by Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn), 1312/1894–95, 1330/1912.
94  See Muḥammad Taqī Mudarris Riḍawī, Aḥwāl u Āthār-i Khwāja Naṣīr al-Dīn-i Ṭūsī (Tehran:
Asāṭīr, 1386 Sh./2007), p. 436.
22 Pourjavady

Sammākī (d. 984/1576–77).95 At least three more lithographic editions were

published in Iran in the following decades: one in Tehran in 1285/1868, and two
in Tabriz in 1301/1883–84 and 1307/1889–90. Apart from the glosses by Dawānī
and Dashtakī, these publications include the glosses by Aḥmad Ardabīlī known
as Muqaddas Ardabīlī (d. 993/1585–86) and Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī.96
Al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa was the first of Mullā
Ṣadrā’s works to be lithographed in four volumes. It came out in 1282/1865
together with the glosses by Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī. In the same year, Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Mafātīḥ al-ghayb was published, again with the glosses by Sabzawārī.
The book includes an endorsement by Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, in which he
praises Mullā Ṣadrā.97 Four years later, in 1286/1869, Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid
al-rubūbiyya was published together with Sabzawārī’s glosses.98 A collection
of Mullā Ṣadrā’s shorter works was published in 1302/1885.99 His glosses on the
Metaphysics of Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ was published in 1303/1885.100 Mullā Ṣadrā’s
commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma together with the
glosses by Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa was published in 1313/1896.101 His al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-
l-maʿād was published in 1314/1896–97 together with the glosses by Sabzawārī.
Finally, Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mashāʿir and al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya were published to-
gether in one volume around 1316/1898.
Of the other philosophers of the Safavid period, Mīr Dāmād and ʿAbd al-
Razzāq Lāhījī were the most popular. Several works by Mīr Dāmād appeared
in a single volume in 1315/1897. It contained al-Qabasāt together with Mīr
Dāmād’s glosses on the work and Shams al-Dīn Gīlānī’s (d. 1064/1654) and
Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa’s glosses on it, as well as Mīr Dāmād’s al-Īqāḍāt, his Khalsāt
al-malakūt, his Risālat fī madhhab Arasṭāṭālis and his Ḥudūth al-ʿālam. The
volume was compiled by Mīrzā Maḥmūd Burūjirdī who studied philosophy
with Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī and Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa.102 Beside these

95  This edition was transcribed in the hand of Kalb-ʿAlī b. ʿAbbās Afshār Qazwīnī.
96  The edition of Tabriz 1307/1889–90 contains the glosses by Fakhr al-Dīn Sammākī, Muqa-
ddas Ardabīlī (d. 993/1585–86), and Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī. Transcribed by ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ
b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, it was published by Chāpkhāna-yi Ibrāhīm Tabrīzī.
97  On this endorsement see chapter 5 of this book, p. 248.
98  Transcribed by Muḥammad ʿAlī Iṣfahānī.
99  This collection contains Mullā Ṣadrā’s Risāla fī l-ḥudūth, Risāla fī ittiṣāf al-māhiyya bi-l-
wujūd, Risāla fī tashakhkhuṣ, Risāla fī sarayān al-wujūd, Risāla fī l-qaḍā wa-l-qadar, Risāla
fī l-wāridāt al-qalbiyya, Iksīr al-ʿārifīn and Risāla fī khalq al-aʿmāl.
100  See below, pp. 25–26.
101  It was published by Muḥammad ʿAlī Tājir Shīrāzī in Tehran, Chāpkhāna-yi Sayyid Murtaḍā
Bāsmachī Ṭihrānī. The edition is in the hand of Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Karīm Sharīf Shīrāzī.
102  The text is in the hand of Abū l-Qāsim b. Riḍā Nūrī Kamarbunī. On Mīrzā Maḥmūd
Burūjirdī, see chapter 6 in this book, p. 266.
Introduction 23

treatises, Mīr Dāmād’s Risāla fī tawḥīd al-wājib, Risāla fī khalq al-aʿmāl and his
treatise on the legal question of breastfeeding (riḍāʿ) were published in anoth-
er volume which came out some months later (1315/1898).103 Leaving aside his
commentary on Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād (Shawāriq al-ilhām) mentioned earlier, ʿAbd
al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Persian Gawhar-i murād appears to have been widely used at
the time as a philosophy textbook.104 It was first published in 1271/1855 and was
one of the earliest philosophical works ever published,105 and was republished
again and again in the following decades.106
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī seems to have been the first Iranian philosopher whose
writings were published during his life. Evidently, his autocommentary on Ghu-
rar al-farāʾid, known as Sharḥ-i Manẓūma was first published sometime before
1282/1865.107 As mentioned before, his glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-
mutaʿāliya were published in 1282/1865. His Commentary on Rūmī’s Mathnawī
was published in 1285/1868–69 at the request of the grand vizier Mīrzā Yūsuf
Āshtiyānī, known as Mustawfī al-Mamālik (d. 1303/1886).108 His Asrār al-ḥikam
was first published in Tehran in 1286/1869–70. The publication was financed by
the Qajar prince ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana (d. 1298/1880).109 Sabzawārī’s
writings continued to be popular after his death, particularly his Sharḥ-i
Manẓūma, which was published several times in the following decades, e­ ither

103  Published with the support of a certain Āqā Mīrzā Sayyid Bāqir, it consists of two parts:
part one includes several treatises on legal questions on breastfeeding (riḍāʿ) and land
tax/tribute (kharāj) by Mīr Dāmād, ʿAlī al-Karakī (d. 940/1534), Ibrāhīm al-Qaṭīfī (d.
after 945/1539), Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ardabīlī (d. 993/1585) and Mājid Fāḍil-i Shaybānī
(fl. 10th/16th). The second part is on theology and contains treatises on free will (by
Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī, Mīr Dāmād, Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī and Waḥīd
Bihbahānī) and some other subjects. It also includes Avicenna’s Sirr al-ṣalāt, a treatise on
Aʿyān al-thābita attributed to Ibn ʿArabī, Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī’s Persian treatise on wujūd,
and Qāḍī Saʿīd Qummī’s Risāla fī ḥaqīqat al-ṣalāt.
104  Its advantage was that it explained philosophical matters in Persian, which made it more
accessible/readable for the students.
105  It was published in Chāpkhāna-yi Āqā Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Ṭihrānī.
106  It was first published in 1313/1895–96 in Tabriz by Chāpkhāna-yi Āqā Ibrāhīm Tājir
Kitābfurūsh Tabrīzī, and again by his son, Aḥmad Tājir Kitābfurūsh in Tabriz in
1315/1897–98.
107  Gobineau refers to the publication of Sharḥ-i Manẓūma in Les religions et les philosophies
dans l’Asie centrale, p. 100, therefore its publication must have taken place before the date
of publication of Gobineau’s work (1865).
108  Sabzawārī’s commentary on Mathnawī was published in the Chāpkhāna-yi Āqā Mīr Bāqir
Iṣfahānī, transcribed by ʿAlī Aṣghar Tafrishī.
109  This edition of Sabzawārī’s Asrār al-ḥikam was in the hand of ʿAlī Aṣghar Khudā-Raḥm,
proofread by Muḥammad Bāqir Qazwīnī. It was published in the Chāpkhāna-yi ʿAlī Qulī
Khān Qājār. Another edition of this work, transcribed by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Kāshānī
was published in Tehran in 1323/1905 by Muḥammad Taqī Kitābfurūsh.
24 Pourjavady

with or without glosses by later scholars.110 His commentary on al-La‌ʾālī al-

muntaẓama was published for the first time in 1298/1881. Sabzawārī’s reply to
versified questions by Mīrzā Bābā Gurgānī was published in 1300/1882–83.111
His works al-La‌ʾālī al-muntaẓama and Ghurar al-farāʾid (though without any
commentaries), were published together in 1315/1898.112 His glosses on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād were published in 1314/1896–97.113
The collected works of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī were published in Tabriz by
his followers. They appeared in two volumes under the title Jawāmiʿ al-kalim,
the first volume in 1273/1856, and the second in 1276/1859.114
In contrast to the works of Sabzawārī and Shaykh Aḥmad, the works of
the major philosophers of Tehran, namely Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī and Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa had to wait three more de-
cades to appear in lithograph. Ṭihrānī’s Sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād was
the first of these to be published in 1310/1893.115 Most of the works of these
philosophers were produced sometime between 1313/1896 and 1316/1898–99
by a certain Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī, son of Muḥammad ʿAlī, at the printing
house of Sayyid Murtaḍā Bāsmachī Ṭihrānī. In 1313/1896, he published Mullā
Ṣadrā’s commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma, which con-
tained in its margins the following works: Jilwa’s glosses on this commentary,
Jilwa’s Risāla fī taḥqīq al-ḥaraka fī l-jawhar, his Risāla fī bayān rabṭ al-ḥādith
bi-l-qadīm, Ṭihrānī’s Risāla fī bayān anna al-nafs kull al-quwā and Qumsha‌ʾī’s
Risāla fī bayān taḥqīq asfār al-arbaʿa.
A year later in 1314/1897, Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī published Ṭihrānī’s Badāyiʿ
al-ḥikam.116 Then, in 1315/1898, he published his Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭī. The
year after, in 1316/1898, he published a volume containing Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka’s
Tamhīd al-qawāʿid with Qumsha‌ʾī’s marginal notes and the latter’s Risāla fī
waḥdat al-wujūd bi-l-mawjūd as well as Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī’s Nuṣūṣ together

110  Sharḥ-i Manẓūma was published together with Ghurar al-farāʾid by Muḥammad Ḥusayn
Tājir Kāshānī at the Kārkhāna-yi Muḥammad Taqī Lawāsānī.
111  It was produced at the request of Ismāʿīl Ṭabīb Ṭihrānī at the Chāpkhāna-yi Muḥammad
Ḥusayn Bāsmachī Ṭihrānī.
112  It was produced by Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī.
113  It was produced by Ibrāhīm Ṭājir Ṭabāṭabāʾī.
114  This/these edition/s of al-Aḥsāʾī Jawāmiʿ al-kalim is in the hand of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Rawḍa-
khwān. Aside from this publication, some philosophical works by Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī
were published separately; for instance, his commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mashāʿir
(Tabriz, n.d.) and his commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya ­(Tabriz:
Chāpkhāna-yi Mīrzā ʿAlī Khushnawīs Tabrīzī, 1278/1861–62).
115  The edition is in the hand of Abū l-Qāsim Gīlānī.
116  The edition is in the hand of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Hazār-Jarībī.
Introduction 25

with marginal notes by one of Qumsha‌ʾī’s students, Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī.117

Later that year or shortly after, he published another philosophical volume con-
taining Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mashāʿir with the glosses by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Aḥmad b.
Ibrāhīm Ardakānī (fl. 1228/1813), Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī and Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa
on it in the margins as well as Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya together with
glosses on it by Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī.118 Apart from Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī,
some other people tried to make the writings of the recent philosophers of
Tehran more accessible to the public. As mentioned before, Shaykh Maḥmūd
Burūjirdī published Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa’s glosses on Mīr Dāmād’s al-Qabasāt in
the margins of the edition of the latter work. Moreover, a certain Muḥammad
Hāshim Mūsawī published Ṭihrānī’s al-Risāla al-ḥamliyya in 1314/1897,119
and Ibrāhīm Lārījānī known as Saʿīd al-ʿUlamāʾ (d. 1333/1914–15) published
Qumsha‌ʾī’s Risāla fī mawḍūʿ al-ʿilm and his Risāla fī mawḍūʿ khilāfa al-kubrā
in 1315/1898.120
The Physics and Metaphysics of Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ were published in
1303/1885 in the printing house of the modern, polytechnic-style school, the
Madrasa-yi Dār al-Funūn (established in 1268/1851). The publication was in
two volumes. Volume one contained the Physics and Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ
together with some interlinear or marginal glosses by Mullā Yūsuf Rāzī known
as Mullā Awliyāʾ (fl. 11th/17th century), Sayyid Aḥmad ʿAlawī (d. in/shortly
after 1054/1644) and Sulaymān Māḥūzī Baḥrānī, known as Mullā Sulaymān
(d. 1121/1710). Volume two contained Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on the Meta-
physics I–VI of the Shifāʾ. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Ḥall Mushkilāt al-Ishārāt was
published partially (Physics and Metaphysics) in 1271/1854–55 and in its entire-
ty in 1305/1887–88. Moreover, the publication of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Sharḥ Hidāyat

117  The volume is in the hand of ʿAlī Akbar Ṭāliqānī.

118  The volume also contains Āqā Ḥusayn Tunikābunī’s Risāla fī ithbāt ḥudūth al-ʿālam, Ibn
ʿArabī’s al-ʿAnqā al-mughrib and Risāla fī l-ʿilm al-ladunnī wa-l-kasbī attributed to Naṣīr al-
Dīn Ṭūsī. It was copied by ʿAbd al-Karīm Shīrāzī, proofread by Muḥammad Bāqir Qūchānī.
For the complete list of the works that Ḥājj Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī published, see his note
titled ‘iʿlān’ on the last page of the book (p. 210). The date of the colophon at the end of
al-Mashāʿir is 1315/1897 (p. 109). However, from the aforementioned list of publications by
Ḥājj Shaykh Aḥmad Shīrāzī which includes Tamhīd al-qawāʿid, one can conclude that it
was published at least a year later when Tamhīd al-qawāʿid was published.
119  It was published as an appendix to Miftāḥ al-kalām fī sharḥ Sharāyiʿ al-Islām. The edition
is in the hand of Aḥmad Ṭihrānī.
120  They were both published together with al-Jamʿ bayna ra‌ʾyay al-ḥakīmayn attributed to
Fārābī.
26 Pourjavady

al-ḥikma in 1313/1896 mentioned before, includes several short treatises by (or

attributed to) Avicenna, including parts of al-Mubāḥathāt.121
As for the Ishrāqī tradition, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary on Shihāb al-
Dīn Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq seems to have been the only major work to
be lithographed at this time. It was published in 1315/1898.122 In contrast to this,
the works of the mystical school of Ibn ʿArabī were quite popular in the late
Qajar period as evident from the history of their publication. Dāwūd Qayṣarī’s
commentary on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam was published in 1299/1881–1882. It
was published by the Madrasa-yi Dār al-Funūn at the request of one of the tu-
tors of the school, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Najm al-Dawla (d. 1326/1908–9).123 The other
significant works of this tradition which appeared in lithograph include Shams
al-Dīn Lāhījī’s commentary on Maḥmūd Shabistarī’s Gulshan-i rāz (1301/1884),124
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Lawāyiḥ (1312/1894–95),125 ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī’s
Risāla fī iṣṭilāḥāt al-ʿurafāʾ (1313/1895–96),126 Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī’s Nuṣūṣ127 and
Ṣāʾīn al-Dīn Turka’s Tamhīd al-qawāʿid (1316/1898),128 and finally Shams al-Dīn
Fanārī’s Miṣbāḥ al-uns (1323/1905).
Of philosophical works written prior to Avicenna, the “Theology of Aristo-
tle” (Ūthūlūjiyā) was published in 1315/1897 in the margins of the edition of Mīr
Dāmād’s al-Qabasāt referred to above. The compiler of the volume, Shaykh
Maḥmūd Burūjirdī, claimed that this work was the root and origin of most
works produced by philosophers and that he had used a reliable copy of the
text for this publication.129 Of the works of Fārābī (and those considered to

121  Other short tracts in the book are the alleged correspondences between Abū Saʿīd Abū
l-Khayr and Avicenna, Tafsīr āyat al-Dukhān, Tafsīr sūrat al-Tawḥīd, Tafsīr sūrat al-Falaq,
Tafsīr sūrat al-Nās, Risāla fī maʿrifat al-ashyāʾ, Risāla fī sirr al-qadr, Risāla fī l-akhlāq, Risāla
fī l-ʿahd, Risāla fī l-quwa al-insāniyya.
122  It was published with the financial support of Ḥājjī Sayyid Ibrāhīm Tājir Ṭabāṭabāʾī. The
text is in the hand of Muḥammad b. Mīrzā Darjazīnī. The edition also contains al-Jamʿ
bayna ra‌ʾyay al-ḥakīmayn attributed to Fārābī.
123  By Asad Allāh Maḥallātī. The edition is in the hand of Muḥammad Ḥusayn.
124  Chāpkhāna-yi Mīrzā ʿAbbās.
125  It was published by Muḥammad Qazwīnī.
126  It was attributed in the lithograph to Ibn ʿArabī.
127  The edition includes the marginal notes by Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī. Aḥmad b.
Muḥammad ʿAlī Shīrāzī Ṭihrānī published it together with Ṣāʾīn al-Dīn Turka’s Tamhīd
al-qawāʿid. The volume is in the hand of ʿAlī Akbar Ṭāliqānī. On Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī
see chapter 6 in this book, pp. 262–263.
128  Published by Aḥmad b. Muḥammad ʿAlī Shīrāzī Ṭihrānī. The volume is in the hand of ʿAlī
Akbar Ṭāliqānī.
129  See Muḥammad Bāqir Mīr Dāmād, al-Qabasāt, lithograph edition by Shaykh Maḥmūd
Burūjirdī (Tehran, 1315/1897), p. 323.
Introduction 27

be his), al-Jamʿ bayna ra‌ʾyay al-ḥakīmayn was published in 1315/1898.130 Ismāʿīl

Shanb-Ghāzānī’s commentary on Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, attributed to Fārābī, was
published in 1318/1901,131 and ʿUyūn al-masāʾil was published in 1325/1907–8.
In the subject of logic, the most distinguished works appeared in lithograph
were the works of Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 766/1365). His commentary on Najm al-
Dīn Kātibī’s (d. 675/1277) al-Shamsiyya (Taḥrīr Qawāʾid al-manṭiqiyya fī sharḥ
al-risāla al-Shamsiyya) was first published in 1267/1850–51, and then nine times
during the next fifty years in Tehran and Tabriz.132 Its publication usually in-
cluded the glosses by Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī (d. 816/1413) on this work. But some-
times some other glosses were also included. The edition of 1301/1883–84, for
instance, contained the glosses by Qara Dāwūd Qūjawī (d. 948/1541) as well.133
Another work of Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī, published frequently in lithograph, was his
commentary on the logic part of Sirāj al-Dīn Urmawī’s (d. 682/1283) Ṭawāliʿ
al-anwār (Lawāmiʿ al-asrār fī sharḥ Ṭawāliʿ al-anwār). It was published first in
1270/1853–54, and then again and again in the following decades in Tehran and
Tabriz.134
Among the works of European philosophers, a Persian translation of René
Descartes’s Discours de la méthode was the only work to be lithographed in
Tehran. It was published under the title Ḥikmat-i Nāṣirī in 1279/1862. The trans-
lation was a commission by de Gobineau given to an Iranian Rabbi, Mullā
Lālazār Hamadānī, and it was done with the assistance of a French diplomat,
Emile Berney. Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana was reportedly involved in the publication of
this book.135

130  It was published by Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad Lārījānī known as Saʿīd al-ʿUlamāʾ (d. 1333/1914–15).
131  There is also an edition published in 1319/1901–1902, which is in the hand of Aḥmad
Hazār-Jarībī.
132  It was published in Tehran in 1271/1854, 1276/1859–60, 1280/, 1282/1865–66, 1304/1886–87,
1314/1896–97, and in Tabriz 1296/1878–79, 1301/1883–84. See Khānbābā Mushār, Fihrist-i
kitābhā-yi chāpī-i ʿArabī-i Īrān: Az āghāz tā kunūn, Tehran: Anjuman-i Kitāb, 1344 Sh./1965,
pp. 162–63.
133  Tehran, Dār al-Ṭibā‘ah Mashhadī Muḥammad Taqī.
134  It was published in Tehran 1274/1857–58, 1284/1867–68, 1293/1886–87, 1315/1897–98, and in
Tabriz in 1294/1877. See Kh. Mushār, Fihrist-i kitābhā-yi chāpī-i ʿArabī-i Īrān, p. 772.
135  Firiydūn Ādamiyyat, Andīsha-yi taraqqī u ḥukūmat-i qānūn: ʿAṣr-i Sipahsālār (Tehran:
Khwārazmī, 1356 Sh./1977), pp. 17–18. On the Persian translation of Descartes’s Discours de
la méthode, see chapter 8 of this book, pp. 338–342.
28 Pourjavady

6 The Present Book

So far, studies on Qajar philosophy have been restricted to either a general

description of philosophical endeavour in this period or studies of a few in-
dividuals, particularly Sabzawārī and Aḥsāʾī. The present publication aims to
accomplish both these goals at the same time. It contains studies of the philos-
ophers individually, yet at the same time, its collective character will provide
an overview of philosophy in Iran in this period. Although seven major figures
of the period have been included in this book, there are some important fig-
ures such as Mullā Aḥmad Ardakānī, Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī, Mullā Ismāʿīl
Iṣfahānī from the early Qajar era and Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī from the later
period who deserve separate chapters. However, including separate chapters
on these figures would require focused studies about them to be carried out,
something which is yet to happen.
The present volume consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 of the book is on
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī, a philosopher whose career took place mainly during the
Zand era (1164–1209/1751–94), preceding the Qajar period. However, because of
his significance and the impact of his thought on Qajar philosophers, he has
been included in the volume. For several reasons, Narāqī should be regarded as
an exceptional figure in this period. He was both a philosopher and a mujtahid
(faqīh). Besides fiqh and philosophy, he was also interested in mathematics
and astronomy. Moreover, he was the only philosopher of the period who dealt
with ethics. As a metaphysician, he was a critic of Mullā Ṣadrā, though he had
many things in common with the latter. The aspect of his thought discussed
in this chapter is not intended to introduce his philosophical positions in its
entirety. For a comprehensive understanding of Narāqī’s philosophy, more
studies are required.
Chapter 2 is about Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, who was arguably the most in-
novative thinker of the Qajar period. His impact on the later intellectual devel-
opments in Iran cannot be neglected. Similar to Narāqī, Aḥsāʾī was a critic of
Mullā Ṣadrā’s thought. But unlike Narāqī, he was detached from any particular
philosophical trend, and that is the reason his criticism is radically opposed
to the whole philosophy establishment. The author of this chapter chose not
to employ a historical approach, as in the rest of this book, adopting a philo-
sophical one instead and seeking to explain Aḥsāʾī’s thought with the help of
a new trend in modern logic. For this reason, this chapter is dissimilar to the
rest of the book.
The third chapter is on Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. Nūrī had a significant role in popular-
izing philosophy and reviving the teaching of philosophy in the Qajar period.
He taught in Isfahan and had around five hundred students. His interpretation
Introduction 29

of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, which was close to that of his teacher Bīdābādī
was to some extent conservative. Besides being a philosopher, he was also an
occultist, who engaged in the science of letters (ʿilm al-ḥurūf). This engage-
ment with occult had an impact on his philosophical thoughts as it has been
explained in the article.
Chapter 4 is about Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī who was one of the students of
Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. Like the latter, Sabzawārī played a significant role in popularizing
Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy in the Qajar period. He spent many years teaching
philosophy to a large number of students in Sabzevar. His writings, including
Ghurar al-farāʾid (known as Manẓūma) and his commentary on it, became
widely read philosophical texts. As a master of philosophy, Sabzawārī enjoyed
a great deal of publicity and fame in his lifetime, beyond that of any other
philosopher of the Qajar era.
Chapter 5 is about Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī. Ṭihrānī, who was active in Tehran, was
another commentator of Mullā Ṣadrā and made a valuable attempt to com-
plete Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophical project. Although his philosophical writings
never became as popular as Sabzawārī’s, his scrutiny of philosophical matters
is remarkable. As is evident from his writings, Ṭihrānī was familiar with a great
deal of what was the current writings on ḥikma. Although he was an adherent
of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, he used a large number of contemporary philo-
sophical sources in his writings. He was also exceptional among the scholars of
this period for his immense interest in logic.
Another philosopher of the Qajar period who is the subject of discussion
in this volume is Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, to whom chapter 6 is
devoted. Qumsha‌ʾī was also a commentator on Mullā Ṣadrā. But he was closer
to Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators than any other commentators on Mullā
Ṣadrā. For this reason, in his interpretation of Mullā Ṣadrā, he also stresses his
debt to Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas. Another aspect of Qumsha‌ʾī’s thought was his Shīʿī
interpretation of Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical ideas of spiritual authority (walāya).
Although this kind of interpretation was not unprecedented in Shīʿī tradition,
his efforts in the context of Qajar philosophical thought has a particular
significance.
The last philosopher whose life, works and thoughts are discussed in this
volume is Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa (chapter 7). Similar to Narāqī and Aḥsāʾī,
Jilwa was a fundamental critic of Mullā Ṣadrā’s metaphysics. Instead, he leaned
towards the philosophy of Avicenna and played a significant role in reviving
Avicennan studies in late 19th century Iran. Moreover, Jilwa promoted critical
thinking in general which was applied by his students on the various subjects
far beyond those Jilwa was himself engaged in, including on newly arrived
western ideas.
30 Pourjavady

The final chapter of the book (chapter 8) is about the reception of European
philosophy in Iran during the Qajar period. This chapter, with its different
structure, can be considered as an appendix to the studies of the major
philosophers of this period. The author of this chapter provides an overview
of translations of European philosophical works in this period and discusses
the role of intellectuals who promoted western philosophers in their writings.
Among the intellectuals, specific attention was paid to five eminent figures:
Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda (1295/1878), ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibūf (d. 1329/1910), Sayyid
Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī, known as Afghānī (d. 1314/1897), Mīrzā Āqā Khān
Kirmānī (d. 1314/1896) and Mīrzā Malkam Khān (d. 1326/1909).
The structure of each of the first seven chapters of the book, which deal with
the major philosophers of this period, is similar. Each of these chapters starts
with biographical notes on the philosopher under study, and after introducing
his significant students, his works are listed. This list is complete if the philoso-
pher wrote only on philosophy. Otherwise, it contains only the works directly
related to rational thought. With the detailed biographies and descriptions of
the works given, it is intended to provide a basis for further research on the
philosophers of this period. Finally, the chapters also contain a section on the
thought of the individual, in which there has been an attempt to demonstrate
those aspects of his philosophical views which distinguish him from others.
There is no question that the metaphysics of Mullā Ṣadrā is of fundamental
significance for understanding the philosophical thought of this period. The
philosophers of the Qajar era can be considered Post-Ṣadrian philosophers in
the sense that Mullā Ṣadrā was the primary challenge to their thoughts and
they used his books as their basic sources for philosophy. Despite the relevance
of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, it is not the task of this book to deal with his ideas
in an extensive fashion. It is supposed that the reader is familiar, at least to a
certain extent, with his thought. Nevertheless, on some specific matters, the
positions of Mullā Ṣadrā is elucidated.
The present volume is meant to engage students of philosophy with the
philosophical discourses of Qajar Iran and to provide an impetus for further
research on the philosophers of this period. However, it must be admitted that
some significant elements are lacking in the volume. For instance, a chapter on
the methodology of Shīʿī law would have been desirable. Another aim of this
book is to pave the way for studies on philosophical discourses in contempo-
rary Iran. Undoubtedly, any study on contemporary Iranian philosophy would
be deemed to have failed if it had not been appropriately grounded in studies
of the earlier periods, particularly early modern Iran. However, to accomplish
that task more complementary studies need to be done.
Introduction 31

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Introduction 35

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 chapter 1

Mullā Mahdī Narāqī

Reza Pourjavady1

1 Life2

Muḥammad Mahdī3 Narāqī was born around 1146/1732 in Narāq, a village near
Kashan.4 It was in Kashan that he started his education, in literary sciences
( funūn-i adabī), with a certain Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Bīdgulī.5 After some
years and probably in his early youth, he left Kashan for Isfahan. There he stud-
ied philosophy, rational theology (kalām), legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and law

1  The first draft of this chapter was presented at a Workshop on Rationalist Sciences: Logic,
Physics, Metaphysics, and Theology in the Post-Classical Period, Washington University
of St Louis 2012. The author would like to thank Annabel Keeler, Sajjad Rizvi, and Sabine
Schmidtke for their comments on an earlier draft.
2  On Narāqī’s life see Ḥasan Narāqī, Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī-i Kāshān (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Muʾassasa-
yi Muṭālaʿāt u Taḥqīqāt-i Ijtimāʾī, 1345 Sh./1966); ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Ṭāliʿī, “Zindagīnāmahā-yi
khudnivisht, sharḥ-i ḥāl-i Mullā Aḥmad Narāqī az zabān-i farzandash,” Kitāb-i Shīʿa, 3 (1390
Sh./2001): 148–150; Sayyid Ḥasan Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn sharḥ-i ḥālhā-yi Mullā Muḥammad
Mahdī Narāqī,” Kitāb-i māh-i dīn, 53–54 (1380–81 Sh./2002): 26–30; idem, “Laghzishhā dar
sharḥ-i ḥāl-i Mullā Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī,” Fiqh-i ahl-i bayt 29 (1381 Sh./2002): 210–224;
Sayyid ʿAbbās Mīrī, “Āthār-i ʿilmī-farhangī-i Mullā Mahdī-i Narāqī,” Kitāb-i māh-i dīn 53–54
(1380–81 Sh./2002): 3–19; M. Amin Razavi, “Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī,” in Seyyed Hossein
Nasr and Mehdi Amin Razavi (eds.), An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. Volume 3: Philo-
sophical Theology in the Middle Ages and Beyond from Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī to Shīʿī Texts
(London/New York: I. B. Tauris 2010), pp. 431–432; Juan R. I. Cole, “Ideology, Ethics, and Philo-
sophical Discourse in Eighteenth Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 22 (1989): 7–34 (16–20).
3  His son, Aḥmad Narāqī mentions his father’s full name as Muḥammad Mahdī. See ʿA. Ṭāliʿī,
“Zindagīnāmahā-yi khudnivisht,” 148. But in the introduction to his works, Narāqī refers to
his first name simply as Mahdī, and it seems this was name by which he preferred to be called
and was usually called.
4  This date of birth was calculated on the basis of Sayyid Ḥasan Zunūzī’s statement in his
Riyāḍ al-janna, where Narāqī was said to be around 63 years old at his death in 1209/1795. See
S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn sharḥ-i ḥālhā,” 29.
5  Abū l-Ḥasan Ghaffārī, Gulshan-i murād (Tehran: Zarrīn, 1369 Sh./1990–91), p. 392; Aḥmad
Narāqī introduces Bīdgulī as the chief and the most knowledgeable of the ʿulamāʾ of the city.
For Aḥmad Narāqī’s ijāza for his brother Muḥammad Mahdī, see S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn
sharḥ-i ḥālhā,” 27.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_003

Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 37

(fiqh) with Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī (d. 1173/1759–60), who is the
only person referred to by Narāqī as his teacher.6
Khwājūʾī was a philosopher and theologian as well as a legal scholar.7 The
best known of his philosophical writings is Risāla fī ibṭāl al-zamān al-mawhūm,
in which he defends Mīr Dāmād’s (d. 1030/1621) doctrine of the perpetual
origination of the world (ḥudūth dahrī) against the criticism of Jamāl al-Dīn
Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713).8 He also wrote a treatise on eschatology, titled Ḥidāyat
al-fuʾād ilā nubdh min aḥwāl al-maʿād. In this work, Khwājūʾī follows the view
of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1045/1635–36) when he states that following the corruption
of the body, the soul will join a virtual body (al-ashbāḥ al-mithāliyya) and not
its original body in the intermediary world (ʿālam al-barzakh).9 He also wrote
a Persian treatise on the Sufi idea of the unity of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd),
in which he takes a critical stance towards this idea.10 In teaching ­metaphysics,

6  See Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Jāmiʿ al-afkār wa-nāqid al-anẓār. 2 vols., ed. Majīd
Hādīzāda (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002), vol. 1, p. 210, where Narāqī refers to
Khwājūʾī as “ustādhunā al-muḥaqqiq al-Māzandarānī”.
7  This is according to Aḥmad Narāqī’s ijāza to his brother Muḥammad Mahdī; see
S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn sharḥ-i ḥālhā,” 27.
8  This work has been edited twice: (i) by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Muntakhabātī az
āthār-i ḥukamāʾ-i ilāhī-i Īrān az ʿaṣr-i Mīr Dāmād u Mīr Findiriskī tā zamān-i ḥāḍir (Tehran:
Anīstītū-yi Īrān u Farānsi-yi Pazhūhishhā-yi ʿIlmī dar Īrān, 1357 Sh./1978), vol. 4, pp. 233–
291; (ii) by Sayyid Aḥmad Tūysirkānī in Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī and Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī
Māzandarānī, Sabʿ rasāʾil (Tehran: Mīrāth-i maktūb, 1381 Sh./2002), pp. 239–283.
9  See Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī, “Ḥidāyat al-fuʾād ilā nubdh min aḥwāl al-maʿād,” in Muntakhabātī
az āthār-i ḥukamāʾ-i ilāhī-i Īrān, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, vol. 4, pp. 151–233, par-
ticularly p. 231. On Mullā Ṣadrā’s position on this issue, see Eiyad S. Kutubi, Mullā Ṣadrā
and Eschatology: Evolution of Being (London/New York: Routledge, 2015), especially
pp. 104–123.
10  Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī and Rahīm Qāsimī (ed.), “Waḥdat al-wujūd,” in Sayyid
Aḥmad Sajjādī and Rahīm Qāsimī (ed.), Mīrāth-i ḥawza-yi Iṣfahān, vol. 1 (Isfahan: Markaz-i
Taḥqīqāt-i Rāyāna‌ʾī-i Ḥawza-yi ʿIlmiyya-yi Isfahān, 1383 Sh./2004–05), pp. 137–166. Be-
sides the editions mentioned above, most of Khwājūʾī’s writings have been edited by
Sayyid Mahdī Rajāʾī. See Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī and Mahdī Rajāʾī (ed.), “Risāla-
yi Nawrūziyya,” in Rasūl Jaʿfarīān (ed.), Mīrāth-i Islāmī-i Īrān, vol. 4 (Qom: Kitābkhāna-
yi Marʿashī, 1376 Sh./1997), pp. 165–190; idem, al-Rasāʾil al-iʿtiqādiyya, 2 vols., ed. Sayyid
Mahdī Rajāʾī (Qom: Dār al-Kitāb al-Islāmī, 1411/1990); idem, al-Rasāʾil al-fiqhiyya, 2 vols.,
ed. Sayyid Mahdī Rajāʾī (Qom: Dār al-Kitāb al-Islāmī, 1411/1990); idem, Wajh tasmiyat al-
Mufīd bi-l-mufīd: fīhā munāẓarāt kalāmiyya wa-abḥāth ḥawla l-dirāya wa-l-riwāya wa-l-
farq baynahumā wa-ghayruhā min al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-l-daqā’iq wa-l-raqāʾiq (Tehran: Maktab
al-Qurʾān, 1413/1992); idem, Miftāḥ al-falāḥ wa-miṣbāḥ al-najāḥ fī sharḥ duʿāʾ al-ṣabāḥ,
ed. Sayyid Mahdī Rajāʾī (Mashhad: Muʾassasat al-Ṭabʿ wa-l-Nashr al-Tābiʿa li-l-Āstāna al-
Riḍawiyya al-Muqaddasa, 1993); idem, al-Durar al-multaqaṭa fī tafsīr al-āyāt al-Qurʾāniyya,
ed. Mahdī Rajāʾī (Qom: Dār al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, 1412/1992); idem, al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan, ed.
Mahdī Rajāʾī (Qom: Maktabat al-Marḥūm Āyat Allāh al-Ṣadr al-Khādimī, 1412/1991–92).
38 Pourjavady

it is said that he had a particular emphasis on Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ, which he

taught several times.11 Khwājūʾī seems to have had a remarkable impact on
Narāqī’s thought. It is clear that on many philosophical issues Narāqī’s posi-
tions are close to those of his teacher.
In addition, Narāqī is said to have studied in Isfahan with Muḥammad b.
Muḥammad Zamān Nūshābādī Kāshānī (d. after 1172/1758–59), Muḥammad
Mahdī Ẓahīr Harandī (d. 1186/1772–73), and Mirzā Naṣīr (d. 1186/1772–73).12
Among these scholars, only the first, Nūshābādī, is known to us through his own
extant works. Nūshābādī was a scholar of fiqh and kalām with some knowledge
of astronomy. In the field of kalām, he composed at least three works: (1) Mirʾāt
al-zamān13 (completed in 1062/1748–49), on the origination of the world, in
which he critiques Khwājūʾī’s treatise mentioned above; (2) al-Qawl al-sadīd,
likewise on the origination of the world; and (3) Hidāyat al-mustarshidīn wa-
takhtiʾat al mubalkafīn (completed in 1166/1752–53), on the nature of place
(ayn) and quality (kayf) and the proposition that God is not subject to them.14
After the Afghan siege and conquest of Isfahan in 1134/1722, some madrasas
continued to function in the devastated city, though reduced in number and
students. A small number of scholars who had remained there, including those
mentioned above, carried on the intellectual life of the city. Within a few de-
cades, Isfahan was again lively enough to attract the young Narāqī.15
The duration of Narāqī’s stay in Isfahan is unknown to us. Nevertheless, it
is evident that this was a formative period for his thought. For a while after
his return to Kashan, Narāqī performed the duties of imām of the Friday
prayer.16 But not long after his return he travelled to Iraq and specifically to

It is also notable that Khwājūʾī completed and translated the Ḥikma Ṣādiqiyya (a treatise
on the soul written by Mullā Ḥamza Gīlānī, based on the lectures of Muḥammad Ṣādiq
Ardistānī). See Muntakhabātī az āthār-i ḥukamāʾ-i ilāhī-i Īrān, vol. 4, pp. 56–220 (67).
11  ʿAbd al-Nabī al-Qazwīnī, Tatmīm al-amal al-āmil, ed. al-Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī (Qom:
Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-Marʿashī, 1407/1986), p. 67.
12  See S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn sharḥ-i ḥālhā,” 27.
13  Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Zamān al-Kāshānī, Mirʾāt al-zamān, ed. Mahdī Dihbāshī,
(Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār u Mafākhir-i Farhangī, 1381 Sh./2002).
14  M S Majlis 1966, fols. 17b–32b; MS Marʿashī 4319, fols. 69b–85a. On Muḥammad b.
Muḥammad Zamān Nūshābādī Kāshānī, see M. al-Kāshānī, Mirʾāt al-zamān, xxv–xxvii.
15  J. R. I. Cole, “Ideology, Ethics, and Philosophical Discourse,” 16.
16  Safavid scholars had a long debate about the validity of Friday congregational prayer.
Starting with ʿAlī al-Karakī (d. 940/1534), certain scholars argued that the prayer is obliga-
tory and that a learned faqīh could be appointed to lead the prayer sessions. This position
was rejected by some conservative scholars who believed that only the true Imām could
lead the congregational prayer. Narāqī seems to have been among those who believed in
its obligation. For the debates on Friday congregational prayer in Safavid and post-Safa-
vid era see Andrew J. Newman, “The Vezir and the Mulla: A Late Safavid Period Debate
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 39

Najaf and Karbala, where he was mainly engaged with legal theory (uṣūl al-
fiqh), law (fiqh) and ḥadīth. He studied with outstanding Shīʿī scholars such as
Shaykh Yūsuf Baḥrānī (d. 1186/1772–73), Muḥammad Bāqir Bihbihānī, known
as “Waḥīd” (d. 1206/1791–92), and Shaykh Muḥammad Mahdī Futūnī Najafī
(d. 1183/1769–70), some of whom issued him with licenses to transmit ḥadīth
(ijāzāt).
Around 1180/1766, or shortly before this date, Narāqī returned to Kashan.
With the exception of a few brief trips, he spent the rest of his life in this city.17
Shortly after his arrival, he also married.18 Kashan at this time was ruled by
ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān, who had been appointed by Karīm Khān Zand (r. 1179–
1193/1779–1765) to administer the region. In 1182/1768–69, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān
built a madrasa in Kashan (named Rāziqiyya after him), where Narāqī may
have taught.19
On Tuesday 25 Dhū l-Qaʿda 1192/December 15 1778, Narāqī witnessed the di-
sastrous earthquake that struck Kashan.20 His family was among the survivors
who were evacuated from the city and accommodated in one of the neigh-
bouring villages. But the damage to the water supply led to an outbreak of
cholera, which claimed further victims, among them one of Narāqī’s children.
We know from contemporary sources that the current ruler of Iran, Karīm
Khān Zand (r. 1179/1750–1193/1779), organized immediate assistance to be sent
to the governor ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān so that he could reconstruct the city. A
few months later, in Rabīʿ I 1193/March 1779, Karīm Khān died. In the following
years, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān, who was loyal to the successors of Karīm Khān,
effected repairs to the damaged city. But by then the country as a whole was
in the grip of civil war. There were several battles, and much blood was shed

on Friday Prayer,” in M. Bernardini, M. Haneda and M. Syuppe (eds.), Études sur L’Iran
Médiéval et Moderne Offertes à Jean Calmard: Eurasian Studies 1–2 (2006): 237–69; Rasūl
Jaʿfariyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i rūzgār-i Ṣafawī (Tehran: Nashr-i ʿIlm, 1388 Sh./2009), vol. 1,
pp. 593–744.
17  Narāqī completed his Anīs al-tujjār in Kashan on 10 Rabīʿ I 1180/15 September 1766. See
Anīs al-tujjār (Qom: Būstān-i Kitāb, 1383/2004–05), p. 394.
18  A contemporary poem quoted in Ḥ. Narāqī’s Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī-i Kāshān (p. 24) provides this
piece of information.
19  Maḥmūd Ṭayyār Marāghī, “Madāris-i ʿilmiyya-yi Kāshān (Qurūn-i panjum tā pānzdahum),”
Waqf-i mīrāth-i jāwīdān 22 (1377/1998): 68–79 (75).
20  At the end of his Jāmiʿ al-afkār, completed on 1 Rabīʿ I 1193/20 March 1779, Narāqī ex-
plains the reason for delay in completion of this work to be an earthquake that took place
shortly before he managed to finish the work. About eight thousand people were report-
edly killed in this earthquake. See M. M. Narāqī, Jāmiʿ al-Afkār, vol. 2, p. 598. See also
N. N. Ambraseys and C. P. Melville, A History of Persian Earthquakes (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982), pp. 53–54.
40 Pourjavady

by various groups competing for power. Eventually, Āghā Muḥammad Khān

Qājār, the founder of the Qājār dynasty, emerged in the north of the country
as the victor. In 1198/1783–84, Āghā Muḥammad Khān, on his way to capturing
Isfahan, camped his army outside the city walls of Kashan to force open the
gates of the city. Fearing an attack, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān sent a delegation led
by Narāqī, accompanied by a group of scholars, to Āghā Muḥammad Khān,
seeking to persuade him to leave the city alone. His request was accepted, and
the army moved towards Isfahan without entering Kashan.21
Our knowledge about the last two decades of Narāqī’s life is limited. In his
Gulshan-i murād, Abū l-Ḥassan Ghaffārī reports that he went on a pilgrimage
to Mecca and Medina and also to the shrine cities in Iraq and Iran.22 During
the last three or four years of his life, he no longer taught but devoted his time
to worship and contemplation.23 The subjects of his late works were astrono-
my and fiqh.24 Narāqī died on 8 Shaʿbān 1209/28 February 1795 in Kashan. Ac-
cording to his son, Aḥmad, his body was conveyed to Najaf and buried there.25

2 Students

The following scholars are known to have studied with Narāqī:

1) Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, known as Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh
(d. 1239/1824).26 Born in 1175/1761–62, Kabūdarāhangī’s early education
was in Hamadan, where he studied literary subjects (ʿulūm adabī) and
logic. He was about eighteen years old when he left Hamadan for Isfahan.
He stayed there for about five years and studied philosophy and

21  Ḥ. Narāqī, Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī-i Kāshān, pp. 159–160.

22  A. Ghaffārī, Gulshan-i murād, p. 394.
23  See Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī (Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh), Mirʾāt al-ḥaqq, ed. Ḥāmid
Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Ḥaqīqat, 1383 Sh./2004), p. 70. Sayyid Ḥasan al-Zunūzī also confirms
this in his Riyāḍ al-janna. See S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Kuhantarīn sharḥ-i ḥālhā,” 28–29.
24  Narāqī’s major astronomical work, al-Mustaqṣā, which seems to be a late work, was never
completed. Another astronomical work, Muḥaṣṣal masāʾil al-hayʾa, appears to have been
composed by Narāqī in the last decade of his life. MS Qom, Markaz-i Iḥyāʾ-i Mīrāth-i
Islāmī 2290 contains the oldest known copy of this work, dated 1206/1792–93. In fiqh, his
Lawāmiʿ al-aḥkām fī fiqh sharīʿat al-Islām is likewise a late work. The earliest dated copy
of this work, MS Qom, Marʿashī 8350, was completed on 29 Ramaḍān 1206/21 May 1792.
25  S. Ḥ. Fāṭimī, “Laghzishhā dar sharḥ-i ḥāl,” 224.
26  For Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh’s life and works, see Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, Mirʾāt al-
ḥaqq, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Ḥaqīqat, 1383 Sh./2004), pp. 15–24; idem, Rasāʾil-i
Majdhūbiyya: Majmūʿa-yi haft risāla-yi ʿirfānī, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Ḥaqīqat,
1377 Sh./1998), pp. 17–34.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 41

mysticism with Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (d. 1198/1783–84) and his stu-
dent, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Muẓaffar (d. 1198/1784). From Isfahan, he
continued to Kashan, where he studied philosophy, kalām, uṣūl al-fiqh
and fiqh with Mullā Mahdī Narāqī for about four years. After that, he
went to Qom to continue his studies in theology and legal theory with
Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Qummī (d. 1231/1815–16). Sometime around 1207/1792–
93, he was initiated into the Niʿmatullāhī Sūfī order and became the dis-
ciple of Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh (d. 1234/1818–19). In 1233/1818, Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh
appointed him as the head of the Niʿmatullāhī order. In 1239/1823–84, he
went to Tabriz, where he was well received by Prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā (d.
1249/1833) and the prime minister (ṣadr-i aʿẓam), Abū l-Qāsim Qāʾim-
Maqām Farahānī (d. 1251/1835).27 But soon afterwards he caught cholera
and died in Dhū l-Qaʿda 1239/June-July 1824 in Tabriz. Kabūdarāhangī’s
works reflect his training in the various intellectual fields of study. His
works include Mirʾāt al-ḥaqq,28 Marāḥil al-sālikīn,29 Risāla-yi ʿirfāniyya,30
Risāla-yi iʿtiqādāt31, glosses on Mīr Ḥusayn Maybudī’s commentary on
Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma, and superglosses on Mīrzā-Jān
Bāghnawī’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī’s al-Muḥākamāt bayna sharḥay
al-Ishārāt.32 In the latter work, Kabūdarāhangī cites three glosses by his
teacher, Mahdī Narāqī, to whom he refers with respect as “my teacher or,
rather, everyone’s teacher” (ustādhī bal ʿalā l-kull).33
2) Aḥmad Narāqī, Narāqī’s son. Following his father’s death, he was recog-
nized as the major faqīh of the city of Kashan. Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah (r. 1212–
1250/1797–1834) appointed him as the rector of the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānī
(the “Royal Madrasa”) in the city. Although he might have studied some

27  See Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh, Dīwān-i ʿārif-i nāmī Muḥammad Jaʿfar Qaragūzlū Kabūdarāhangī
Hamadānī maʿrūf bi Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh, ed. Ḥusayn Kāẓimzāda Īrānshahr (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Iqbāl, 1361 Sh./1982).
28  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, Mirʾāt al-ḥaqq, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran:
Ḥaqīqat, 1383 Sh./2004).
29  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, Marāḥil al-sālikīn, ed. Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Najafī (Tehran:
Chāpkhāna-yi Kitāb, 1320 Sh./1941).
30  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī and ʿAlī-Riḍā Dhakāwatī Qarāguzlū (ed.), “Risāla-yi
ʿirfāniyya,” Mīrāth-i Islāmī-i Īrān, ed. Rasūl Jaʿfariyān (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Marʿashī, 1376
Sh./1997), vol. 4, pp. 151–164.
31  Published in his Rasāʾil-i Majdhūbiyya.
32  Maḥmūd ʿĀlimī, and ʿAlī-Riḍā Dhakāwatī Qarāguzlū (eds.), “Taʿlīqāt Ḥājj Muḥammad
Jaʿfar Qarāguzlū Majdhūb Kabūdarāhangī bar ḥāshiya-yi Bāghnawī bar al-Muḥākamāt-i
Quṭb-i Rāzī,” Maʿārif 14 iii (1376 Sh./1997–98): 108–135. Apart from the works mentioned
above, seven treatises of Kabūdarāhangī were published in Rasāʾil-i Majdhūbiyya.
33  See below, fn. 47.
42 Pourjavady

philosophical works with his father, his scholarly works suggest that he
avoided deep engagement in this subject, perhaps deliberately. The ma-
jority of his writings are concerned with law (fiqh) and legal theory (uṣūl
al-fiqh). However, he presented a Persian summary of his father’s Jāmiʿ
al-saʿādāt in a work titled Miʿrāj al-saʿāda.34 He also composed an apolo-
getic work in defence of Islam, titled Sayf al-umma wa-burhān al-milla, in
response to the polemical treatises written by Henry Martyn (d. 1812).35
3) Ḥājjī Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Kalbāsī (or Karbāsī, d. 1261/1845). Apart from
Narāqī, Kalbāsī studied with two other philosophers of the time, Āqā
Muḥam­mad Bīdābādī (d. 1198/1783) and Mullā Muḥammad b. Muḥam­
mad Rafīʿ Gīlānī (d. 1190/1776). He also studied in the shrine cities of Iraq
with Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī Ṭabāṭabāʾī (“Baḥr al-ʿulūm”, d. 1212/1797)
and Muḥammad Bāqir Waḥīd Bihbihānī. Kalbāsī was one of the out-
standing jurists of his age. His Shawārīʿ al-hidāya and his Ishārat al-uṣūl
on legal theory as well as his Minhāj al-hidāya and Irshād al-mustarshidīn
in the field of law became major sources of study and reference.36
4) Muḥammad b. Ḥājj Ṭālib Ṭāhirābādī (fl. 1194/1780). Information on his life
is mostly based on the colophons he added to the works that he had cop-
ied. On the basis of these notes, it is evident that he resided in Kāshān
and studied with Narāqī from 1182/1768 to 1094/1780. He transcribed sev-
eral works of his teacher, including Qurrat al-ʿuyūn (in 1182/1768),37 Anīs
al-mujtahidīn (in 1185/1771)38, and Jāmiʿ al-afkār wa-nāqid al-anẓār (in
1194/1780). Apart from Narāqī’s works, he also copied some other works
including Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Bīst bāb dar maʿrifat-i Asṭurlāb,
an anonymous versification of this work composed in 1104/1692–93, and

34  Aḥmad Narāqī, Miʿrāj al-saʿāda (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Jāwīdān, 1331 Sh./1959).
35  Aḥmad Narāqī, Sayf al-umma wa-burhān al-milla, ed. Sayyid Mahdī Ṭabāṭabāʾī (Qom:
Pazhūhishkada-yi ʿUlūm-i Insānī, 1385 Sh./2006–2007). On Aḥmad Narāqī and his au-
thoritative-religious role see Hamid Dabashi, “Chapter Nineteen: Early Propagating of
Wilayat-i Faqih and Mulla Ahmad Naraqi,” in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi, and
Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr (eds.), Expectation of the Millennium: Shīʿism in History (Albany:
Suny Press, 1989), pp. 287–300; Saϊd Amir Arjomand, “Political Ethic and Public Law in
the Early Qajar Period,” in Robert Gleave (ed.), Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (Oxford:
Routledge-Curzon, 2005), pp. 21–40.
36  See Hossein Modarressi Tabataba‌ʾi, An Introduction to Shīʿī Law: A Bibliographical Study
(London: Ithaca, 1984), pp. 93, 99; Sajjad H. Rizvi, “Hikma mutaʿaliya in Qajar Iran: Locat-
ing the Life and Work of Mulla Hadi Sabzawari (d. 1289/1873),” Iranian Studies 44 (2011):
473–496 (478).
37  M S Tehran, University of Tehran 6772.
38  M S Tehran, University of Tehran, Ilāhiyyāt.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 43

Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿĀmilī’s Ṣaḥīfa which is on the same topic.39 The last three
works suggest that Ṭāhirābādī was also interested in astronomy. It is
therefore plausible to assume that apart from philosophy, rational theol-
ogy and law, he also studied Ptolemaic astronomy with Narāqī.

3 Works

Narāqī was a prolific writer. “A tireless man of action”, as Corbin describes him,40
he left behind an enormous corpus of writings in various disciplines.41 His ca-
reer as an author seems to have started during his time in Karbalā, wherein
1178/1764–65 he completed his Risālat al-Ijmāʿ (Treatise on Consensus) con-
cerning aspects of legal theory.42 His early works were all either on fiqh or uṣūl
al-fiqh, both being topics that continued to engage Narāqī for the rest of his life.
But gradually Narāqī’s domain of writings expanded to include also philosophy,
kalām, ethics, astronomy, and mathematics. It seems that some of his writings
were designed to be textbooks for students. These include three Arabic works
whose titles all begin with Jāmiʿ (“compendium”): Jāmiʿ al-afkār wa-nāqid al-
anẓār (on kalām), Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt fī mūjibāt al-najāt (on moral philosophy),
and Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl (on legal theory). He also composed five introductory works
whose titles begin with “Anīs” (“companion”): Anīs al-ḥukamāʾ (on philoso-
phy), Anīs al-tujjār (on trading laws, completed in 1180/1766),43 Anīs al-ḥujjāj
(on pilgriming laws), Anīs al-muwaḥḥidīn (on kalām), and Anīs al-mujtahidīn
(on legal theory, completed in 1189/1775).44 In what follows, his works on phi-
losophy and theology as well as other related topics are introduced:

1) Jāmiʿ al-afkār wa-nāqid al-anẓār (“Compendium of the [Theological] Ideas

and Their Verifications”)45
This work, Narāqī’s first and most comprehensive work on kalām, was com-
pleted on 1 Rabīʿ I 1193/20 March 1779.46 Evidently, Narāqī had started ­writing

39  M S Majlis 3761/1–3, copied in 1182/1768–69.

40  Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, tr. Liadain Sherrard with the assistance of
Philip Sherrard (London 1964), p. 350.
41  For a full list of Narāqī’s writings, see Sayyid ʿAbbās Mīrī, “Āthār-i ʿIlmī-Farhangī-i Mullā
Mahdī-i Narāqī,” Kitāb-i māh-i dīn 53–54 (1380–81 Sh./2002): 3–19.
42  Ḥ. Narāqī, Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī-i Kāshān, p. 10.
43  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Anīs al-tujjār (Qom: Būstān-i Kitāb, 1383 Sh./2004–05).
44  Published in Qom: Muʿassasa-yi Būstān-i Kitāb, 1388 Sh./2009–10.
45  Edited in two volumes by Majīd Hādī-zāda (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002).
46  Ḥ. Narāqī, Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī-i Kāshān, p. 20.
44 Pourjavady

this work as early as 1186/1773. In the introduction to his Qurrat al-ʿuyūn fī

l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya, which was completed in the same year, Narāqī explains
that his Jāmiʿ al-afkār includes all the discussions treated in Avicenna’s al-
Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt and its commentaries and glosses, with the exception of
the discussions on existence which he treated in a separate monograph, name-
ly his Qurrat al-ʿuyūn fī l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya. In the introduction to his Jāmiʿ
al-afkār, however, the author says it contains the metaphysical discussions
presented by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī in his commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s
Tajrid al-iʿtiqād and the various glosses on this work (wa-li-ishtimālihi ʿalā jamīʿ
al-afkār al-ilāhiyya wa-naqdihā siyyamā maʿa mā taʿallaq bi-l-sharḥ al-jadīd
li-l-Tajrīd [wa-] min al-ḥawāshī). It may be that Narāqī initially intended to
cover the discussions developed in the commentaries on Avicenna’s Ishārāt
but then, once he became involved in writing the book, changed his mind and
turned instead to Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’ Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād and its commentaries. In
any case, the structure of the work has a greater resemblance to the commen-
taries on the Tajrīd than to the commentaries on the Ishārāt. Narāqī’s work
consists of five introductions (muqaddimāt) and two main parts (maqālāt):
the first on the proof of the existence of the Necessary Existent and the second
on His attributes of affirmation and negation. This work seems to belong to the
Ithbāt al-wājib genre, which was initiated by Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī.47
2) Anīs al-muwaḥḥidīn (“Companion of the Unitarians”)
This work, written in Persian, is a typical Twelver Shīʿī creed, containing an
introduction and five parts (abwāb): (1) on the proof for the existence of God;
(2) on His attributes; (3) on the prophecy of Muḥammad; (4) on imamate and
various interpretations of it; (5) on the resurrection.48
3) al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya (“The Radiances of the Throne”).49
This work contains five chapters (lamaʿāt): 1) On existence and quiddity and
some of their states (fī l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya wa-baʿḍ mā lahā min al-aḥwāl); 2)
on what of the attributes of greatness and perfection relates to the Origin (fī-
mā yataʿallaq bi-l-mabda‌ʾ min ṣifāt al-jalāl wa-nuʿūt al-kamāl); 3) on the quality
of His creation and His emanation and other issues related to the emanation
of His actions (fī kayfiyyat ījādihi wa-ifāḍatihi wa-sāʾir mā yataʿallaq bi-ṣudūr
al-afʿāl); 4) on the human soul and related issues (fī l-nafs al-insāniyya wa-mā

47  See Reza Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran: Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī and
His Writings (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 118–119.
48  Muḥammad Mahdī Naraqī, Anīs al-muwaḥḥidīn, ed. Asad Allāh Ṭabātaṭabāʾī (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i al-Zahrāʾ, 1363 Sh./1984).
49  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, ed. ʿAlī Awjabī (Karaj: Alburz, 1381
Sh./2002).
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 45

yataʿallaq bihā); and 5) on prophethood and the quality of the revelation and
the descent of the angel (fī l-nubuwwāt wa-kayfiyyat al-waḥy wa-nuzūl al-malik).
4) al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya fī l-ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya (“The Divine Illumination on
Transcendental Philosophy”).50
Following a brief introduction, this work consists of five chapters (abwāb):
1) On existence and quiddity (fī l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya); 2) on the proof for the
existence of the Necessary and His attributes (Ithbāt al-wājib wa-ṣifātihi); 3)
on emanation and creation (al-ifāḍa wa-l-ījād); 4) on the states of the soul
and its origins (aḥwāl al-nafs wa-nashʾatuhā); 5) prophecy and its mission (al-
nubuwwa wa-l-baʿtha). The structures of al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya and al-Lumʿa
al-ilāhiyya are quite similar, to such an extent that Āshtiyānī suggests that the
al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya is the concise form of al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya.51
5) al-Kalimāt al-wajīza (“The Pithy Discourse”).52
This work consists of six chapters, each of which is called a kalima. These
are devoted to the following subjects: 1) on existence and quiddity ( fī l-wujūd
wa-l-māhiyya); 2) on proofs for the existence of His essence and His attributes
(fī ithbāt dhātihi wa-ṣifātihi); 3) on emanation (fī l-ifāḍa); 4) on the soul and its
origins (the original title is missing); 5) on prophecy (the original title is miss-
ing); 6) on imāma (fī l-imāma).
Al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya, and al-Kalimāt al-wajīza close-
ly resemble each other in terms of structure. Moreover, with regard to their
structure, all three can aptly be described as creeds in the classical Islamic
sense. However, rather than discussing philosophical preliminaries (al-umūr
al-ʿāmma) or the unity of God (tawḥīd), as is usually the case for the open-
ing chapter of an Imāmī creed during this period, Narāqī begins each of these
works with a chapter on existence and quiddity. The reason for this might be
his categorical objection to the idea of the unity of existence, which he regard-
ed as a deviation from the orthodox notion of God’s unity. Another feature that
sets these works apart from other creeds is the fact that they do not include an
independent chapter on the resurrection (fī l-maʿād).53 Further, two of these
works, al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya, do not include a chapter on
imāma either, although al-Kalimāt al-wajīza does. It is evident that Narāqī did
not strive to follow the typical model for a creed in these works, whereas he did
so in Anīs al-muwaḥḥidīn.

50  See Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya wa-l-kalimāt al-wajīza by Sayyid Jalāl
Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Anjumān-i Falsafa, 1357 Sh./1978).
51  See M. M. Narāqī, al-Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya, p. 42.
52  This work has been edited by Sayyid Jalāl Āshtiyānī. See Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, al-
Lumʿa al-ilāhiyya wa-l-kalimāt al-wajīza.
53  However, chapter 4 of al-Lumʿa does cover the Resurrection.
46 Pourjavady

6) Anīs al-ḥukamāʾ (“The Companion of the Philosophers”)

This work consists of three parts (fann): logic, physics, and metaphysics.54
7) Commentary on the Metaphysics of Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ55
This is a lemmatized commentary on Book One and part of Book Two (up
to the end of Chapter Two) of the metaphysics of the Shifāʾ. Although incom-
plete, it is the only known attempt to write a systematic and lemmatized com-
mentary on Avicenna’s major work on metaphysics. In the introduction, Narāqī
apologizes for not being able to present this work in the form it deserves, blam-
ing the difficult times in which he was living:

If our brothers and predecessors who excelled in knowledge, had lived in

the same period of tyranny and cruelty as we are in, their thought would
be likewise blocked, and their names and works would not have survived
them.56

Throughout the commentary, Narāqī seems to have made some attempts at

editing the text of the Shifāʾ.57 Evidently, he consulted earlier commentaries on
the work. According to Nājī Iṣfahānī, he was mainly engaged with two earlier
commentaries on it by Mullā Ṣadrā and Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī (d. 1098/1687).
While he frequently agreed with the views of Mullā Ṣadrā, it seems that he
sided with Khwānsārī whenever the latter criticized Mullā Ṣadrā.58
8) Remarks on Ḥabīb Allāh Bāghnawī’s gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī’s
Muḥākamāt bayn Sharḥay al-Ishārāt
In his supergloss on Ḥabīb Allāh Bāghnawī’s gloss on Rāzī’s Muḥākamāt,
Narāqī’s student, Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, included three remarks

54  A unique, albeit incomplete, manuscript of this work is extant in the Marʿashī Library in
Qom (MS Marʿashī 7328).
55  This work has been edited by Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī. See Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Sharḥ
al-Ilāhiyyāt min kitāb al-Shifāʾ, 2 vol., ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Qom: Kungira-yi Buzurg-
dasht-i Muḥaqqiqān-i Narāqī, 1380 Sh./2001). Prior to this edition, Mehdi Mohaghegh
(Mahdī Muḥaqqiq) edited this work partially. See Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Sharḥ al-
Ilāhiyyāt min kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. Mahdī Muḥaqqiq, vol. 1 (Tehran: Institute of Islamic Stud-
ies of McGill University [Tehran Branch], 1367 Sh./1986). Only the first volume of this
commentary has ever been published.
56  M. M. Narāqī, Sharḥ al-Ilāhiyyāt min kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. Ḥāmid Najī Iṣfahānī, vol. 1, p. 5.
57  See, for instance, Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, translated, introduced
and annotated by Michael E. Marmura (Provo Utah: Brigham Young University Press,
2005), p. 383.
58  See M. M. Narāqī, Sharḥ al-Ilāhiyyāt min Kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī, vol. 1,
pp. 20–22.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 47

by Narāqī on Bāghnawī’s gloss. These remarks concern the first namaṭ of Avi-
cenna’s Ishārāt on physics.
9) Qurrat al-ʿuyūn fī l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya (“Consolation of the Eyes on
Quiddity and Existence”)59
This work was completed on 5 Rabīʿ II 1182/17 August 1768.60 In the intro-
duction, Narāqī refers to his Jāmiʿ al-afkār as his major contribution to the
study of philosophy and theology, adding that he had decided not to include
the discussions on existence (wujūd) in the Jāmiʿ but instead to devote an inde-
pendent treatise to this subject. Qurrat al-ʿuyūn constitutes this independent
examination of existence and quiddity which is divided into fourteen discus-
sions (mabāḥith). Āqā Muḥammad Bidābādī wrote glosses on this work.61
10) Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt fī mūjibāt al-najāt (“Compendium of the Blisses regard-
ing the Necessary Requirements for Salvation”)62
This work, the seemingly most comprehensive ethical work ever written
by a Muslim author, consists of an introduction and three chapters (bāb):
1) on preliminary discussions (muqaddimāt); 2) on various types of character
( fī bayān aqsām al-akhlāq); 3) on the method of achieving and maintaining ex-
cellence of character (fī ṭarīq ḥifẓ iʿtidāl al-akhlāq al-maḥmūda wa-istiḥṣālihā).
Following Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, the usual habit when composing
works of this nature was to include discussions on household management
(tadbīr al-manzil) and politics (siyāsat al-mudun) as well. Narāqī, however, did
not follow this model. He stated in the introduction that he did not discuss
about those subjects because his intention in this work was merely to cleanse
the soul for moral qualities.63

59  There are two editions of this text: 1) Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn fī l-wujūd
wa-l-māhiyya, ed. Sayyid Jalād al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsa-
fa-yi Īrān, 1357 Sh./ 1978). This edition has also been included in Muntakhabātī az āthār-i
ḥukamāʾ-i ilāhī-i Īrān, vol. 4, pp. 345–536; 2) Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn fī
l-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya, ed. Ḥasan Majīd ʿUbaydī (Beirut: Dār al-Maḥajja al-Bayḍāʾ, 2009).
A partial English translation of this work, by Joseph E. Lumbard, is included in S. H. Nasr
and M. A. Razavi (ed.), An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, vol. 3, pp. 433–456.
60  See the author’s colophon, M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Ḥasan Majīd ʿUbaydī, 297.
61  Some, if not all, of these glosses are included in Ḥasan Majīd ʿUbaydī’s edition of Qur-
rat al-ʿuyūn. For these glosses see also Āghā Buzurg, Dharīʿa, vol. 17, 75. Images of a copy
of Qurrat al-ʿuyūn with Bīdābādī’s margin glosses are preserved at the Centre of Great
Islamic Encyclopedia (shelfmark no. 1972/2). See Muṣtafā Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra-yi dast-
nivishthā-yi Īrān, 12 vols. (Tehran: Kitābkhāna Mūzi u Markaz-i Asnād-i Majlis-i Shūrā-yi
Islāmī, 1389 Sh./2010), vol. 8, p. 178.
62  Muammad Mahdī Narāqī, Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt fī mūjibāt al-najāt, ed. Sayyid Muḥammad
Kalāntar (Najaf, 1375/1955).
63  M. M. Narāqī, Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt fī mūjibāt al-najāt, vol. 1, p. 5.
48 Pourjavady

The type of ethics discussed in this work is Aristotelian, resembling that of

Abū ʿAlī (Ibn) Muskūya’s (or Miskawayh, d. 421/1030) in his Ṭahdhīb al-akhlāq
wa-taṭhīr al-aʿrāq, later elaborated in Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī. Narāqī
quotes from Muskūya64 and Ṭūsī65 in this work. He also refers to Jalāl al-Dīn
Dawānī’s Lawāmiʿ al-ishrāq fī makārim al-akhlāq (otherwise known as Akhlāq-i
Jalālī). Narāqī seems to have drawn upon Dawānī’s ethical work in several
respects. However, he omits most Sunnī connotations replacing them with
Shīʿī elements and ḥadīths.66 His primary source for the Shīʿī material was al-
Maḥajja al-bayḍāʾ fī tahdhīb al-Iḥyāʾ by Muḥsin Kāshānī, known as “Fayḍ” (d.
1090/1680). In addition to these Shīʿī ideas, Narāqī gleaned extensive material
from Fayḍ’s discussions of Sufi states and stations, which were in turn inspired
by Abū Ḥāmid Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) elaborations in his Iḥya‌ʾ al-ʿulūm al-dīn.67
Narāqī’s Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt seems to have received much attention among later
scholars of Iran. Soon after its completion, Muḥammad Ḥasan Qazwīnī
(d. 1240/1824–25), who was residing in the city of Karbala, summarized the
work under the title, Kashf al-ghiṭāʾ ʿan wujūh marāsim al-ihtidāʾ.68 As men-
tioned above, Narāqī’s son, Aḥmad, incorporated a translation of some parts
of Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt in his Persian Miʿrāj al-sāʿāda.69 Mullā Aḥmad Ardakānī
(d. ca. 1245/1829) translated Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt into Persian.70 In his ethical work,
Tuḥfat al-ʿIrāq fī ʿilm al-akhlāq, Muḥammad Jaʿfar Sharīʿatmadār Astarābādī
(d. 1263/1846) seems to have used Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt as a model. A lithograph edi-
tion, published in Tehran in 1312/1894–95 is further evidence of the popularity
of this work.71

64  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 48–49.

65  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 62.
66  See, e.g., the discussion on ʿalāj al-khawf in Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt, vol. 1, pp. 208–212, and com-
pare it with Jalāl al-dīn Dawānī, Akhlāq-i Jalālī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Masʿūd Ārānī (Tehran:
Iṭṭilāʿāt, 1391 Sh./2012–13), pp. 159–165.
67  Cf., e.g., the following discussion in these two works: dhamm al-māl (Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt, vol.
2, 103 ff. and al-Maḥajja al-bayḍāʾ, vol. 6, 39 ff.), and tawba (Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt, vol. 3, 49 and
al-Maḥajja al-bayḍāʾ, vol. 7, 5 ff.).
68  Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Qazwīnī, Kashf al-ghiṭāʾ ʿan wujūh marāsim al-ihtidāʾ, ed. Muḥsin
al-Aḥmadī (Qazvin: Qism al-Abḥāth wa-l-Dirāsāt fī l-Ḥawza al-ʿIlmiyya, 1381 Sh./2002). Ac-
cording to Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, this work was completed before 1202/1787–88,
cf. Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī u
Markaz-i Asnād-i Danishgāh-i Tihrān, vol. 17 (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1364
Sh./1985), p. 103.
69  See above, p. 42.
70  See ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda Iṣfahānī, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī. Iḥyāʾgar-i ḥikmat-i Shīʿī dar
qarn-i dawāzdahum-i hijrī (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿUlūm-i Insānī u Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī,
1381 Sh./2002–2003), pp. 105–106.
71  The editor of this lithograph was Shaykh Maḥmūd Burūjirdī (d. 1337 Sh./1918–19), who
studied philosophy with Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1306/1888).
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 49

11) Nukhbat al-bayān (“The Finest Rhetoric”).72

This is a short Persian treatise, written at the request of certain friends, on
simile (tashbīh), metaphor (istiʿāra), free trope (majāz-i mursal) and metony-
my (kināya).
12) Mushkilāt al-ʿulūm (“Problems in the Sciences”).73
This work is divided into thirteen chapters (abwāb) which are devoted to
topics ranging from aspects of literature to mathematics, logic, and philoso-
phy, from religious fields of study to games and puzzles.
13) al-Mustaqṣā fī l-hayʾa (“The Comprehensive Account of Astronomy”).
This is an extensive work on astronomy, consisting of an introduction and
four chapters (abwāb). In it, Narāqī refers to the motion of the earth as the view
of the Modern Europeans.74
14) Muḥaṣṣal masāʾil al-hayʾa (“A Collection of Astronomical Problems”)
An Arabic work on astronomy, containing six chapters (abwāb): (1) intro-
ductory issues; (2) the configurations of the orbs and subjects related to them;
(3) the circles and the arcs; (4) what occurs to the planets in their motions; and
(5) the form of the Earth and subjects related to it.75
15) Taḥrīr Kitāb Ukar li-Thāwdhiyūs (“A Commentary on [the Arabic version
of] the Sphaerica by Theodosius of Bithynia”)76
A revision of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr kitāb Ukar with some additional
discussions.77
16) Tawḍīḥ al-Ashkāl (“Elucidating the Shapes”)78
This work is a Persian translation of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr kitāb al-Uqlīdis.
In the introduction, Narāqī explains that there has been an earlier Persian
translation of this work by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311). However, the trans-
lator had failed to demonstrate properly the obscure notions and expressions

72  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Nukhbat al-bayān. Dar wujūh-i tashbīh, istiʿārāt, muḥsināt-i
badīʿiyya, ed. Ḥasan Narāqī (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Majlis, 1335 Sh./1956–57).
73  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Mushkilāt al-ʿulūm, ed. Ḥasan Narāqī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi
Muṭāla‌ʾāt u Taḥqīqāt-i Farhangī, 1367 Sh./1987).
74  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, al-Mustasqā, MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11567, fol.
50a.
75  For the extant copies of this work, See Ḥasan Narāqī’s introduction to M. M. Narāqī, Qur-
rat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 42–43; Muṣtafā Dirāyatī, Fihristwārah-yi
dast-nivishthā-yi Īrān 1–12, vol. 9, p. 183.
76  On this work and its Arabic translation, see Richard Lorch, “The Transmission of Theo-
dosius’ Sphaerica,” in Menso Folkerts (ed.), Mathematische Probleme im Mittelalter: Der
lateinische und arabische Sprachbereich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996).
77  The holograph of this work is preserved in Ḥasan Narāqī’s private collection. But a mi-
crofilm of it is said to be available at the Library of Majlis Shūrā-yi Islāmī. See Ḥasan
Narāqī’s introduction to Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-
Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 39–40, 43.
78  M S Tehran, University of Tehran 467.
50 Pourjavady

found in the text. In his rather free translation, Narāqī tries to clarify Ṭūsī’s text
and render its contents more accessible to its readers.
Apart from the above-mentioned works, Narāqī composed Lawāmiʿ al-
aḥkām, Muʿtamad al-Shīʿa, Anīs al-tujjār, Anīs al-ḥujjāj, al-Manāsik al-Makkiyya
and al-Tuḥfat al-Riḍawiyya, Risāla fī Ṣalāt al-Jumʿa on law, and Tajrīd al-uṣūl,
Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl, Anīs al-mujtahidīn, and Risālat al-ijmāʿ on legal theory.79 He was
also a poet and composed about three thousand strophes of poetry in Persian
and Arabic. The pen name he used in his poems was Narāqī.80

4 Philosophical Thought

Mullā Ṣadrā seems to have had significant impact on Narāqī’s philosophical

thought. Although there are some crucial ontological issues with respect to
which Narāqī took a different position, his discourse remains invariably post-
Ṣadrian. Even his commentary on the metaphysics of Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ
should be studied within the post-Ṣadrian context. The situation is similar to
that of a philosopher of the late 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries who might
have relied heavily on Avicenna’s writings. As we shall see, even the majority of
the references and quotations from earlier sources that Narāqī cites are in fact
gleaned from Mullā Ṣadrā’s works.
Nevertheless, Narāqī was by no means a Ṣadrian philosopher, particularly
when it came to certain issues where he had theological concerns about the
position of Mullā Ṣadrā. On the question of the origination of the world, for
instance, following his teacher, Khwājūʾī, Narāqī distanced himself from Mullā
Ṣadrā’s view and instead adopted Mīr Dāmād’s doctrine of the perpetual origi-
nation of the world (ḥudūth dahrī).81 He emphasised in his writings in his in-
dependence of thought and the fact that he did not belong to any one school:

Do not think that I adore a certain school of Sufi, Ishrāqī, theological, or

peripatetic thought. Rather, in one hand I hold the incisive demonstra-
tive proof and in the other, the incisive proof of the revelation […] I use

79  For the extant copies of these works, see Ḥasan Narāqī’s introduction to M. M. Narāqī,
Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 25–29.
80  See Ḥasan Narāqī’s introduction to M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī, pp. 17, 44–46.
81  See M. M. Narāqī, Jāmiʿ al-Afkār, vol. 1, pp. 178–243.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 51

these incisive proofs regardless of [their] being opposed to the principles

of one of these schools.82

In ontology, Narāqī follows Mullā Ṣadrā in his view of the primacy of existence
(aṣālat al-wujūd). However, upon closer analysis, some differences can be dis-
cerned. Narāqī adheres to the Ṣadrian view that in reality there is no duality of
essence-existence. Following Avicenna, the mainstream philosophers believed
that existence is accidental (ʿāriḍ) to the quiddity or, as Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī put it,
superadded (zāʾid) to it. Narāqī argues that this is a mere conceptual analysis
which has no correspondence in reality. In the external world, there is only
one single reality, and that is existence. Utilizing the concept of jaʿl (meaning
“to create”), Narāqī maintained that existence is created (majʿūl) and not quid-
dity. In other words, what is created by the Necessary Existent is the existence
of things and not their quiddities. This position is the one referred to by Mullā
Ṣadrā as the primacy of existence. Although Narāqī accepted this idea, he did
not approve of Sadrian metaphysics in its totality. Narāqī refers to the existence
of things in the extra-mental world as special existence (al-wujūd al-khāṣṣ).
Similar to Mullā Ṣadrā, he thinks that this existence is real and not something
accidental to the quiddity of things. However, to Narāqī what the existents, in
so far as they exist, have in common, i.e., absolute existence (wujūd al-muṭlaq),
is something intelligible (maʿqūl) and conceptual.83
In his metaphysical system, Mullā Ṣadrā sought to synthesize Ibn ʿArabī’s
doctrine and terminology with Avicenna’s explanation of the God-universe re-
lationship. First of all, he identified Absolute Existence with the Necessary Ex-
istent, maintaining that the latter’s reflection results from the first effulgence
from His Being. This first effulgence, in the sense that it is pure existence, is
identical to the Necessary Existent. However, being the result of His first self-
reflection, it is also something different. Mullā Ṣadrā calls this existence the
“expanding existence” (al-wujūd al-munbasiṭ). The Necessary Existent, or Ab-
solute Existence, is a transcendent unity with no quiddity and therefore is un-
knowable. But this first effulgence possesses quiddity and is therefore know-
able. This self-expanding existence mediates between the Necessary Existent
and the world of contingents. God’s attributes, which are adumbrated as a
unity and contained in an implicit manner in Absolute Existence, manifest
themselves at this level of existence. In other words, by adopting Ibn ʿArabī’s
doctrine, Mullā Ṣadrā maintained that, as far as their manifestations are

82  Muḥammad Mahdī Narāqī, al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, ed. ʿAlī Awjabī (Karaj: Alburz, 1381
Sh./2002).
83  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 81–86.
52 Pourjavady

concerned, God’s attributes are distinct from God’s essence. But this is only
a conceptual distinction. In reality, there is no distinction between God’s at-
tributes and His essence. Likewise, there is no real distinction between the
existence of contingents and that of the Necessary Existent. The existence of
contingents is nothing but the overflowing of expanding existence. Although
the contingents appear to be distinct, they are united existentially. The idea of
expanding existence was one of the crucial elements of Ibn ʿArabī’s thought,
and Mullā Ṣadrā incorporated it into his philosophical system.
In a short Persian treatise titled Risāla dar waḥdat-i wujūd u taʿaddud-i
mawjūdāt (“On the Unity of Existence and the Plurality of Existents”), Narāqī’s
teacher, Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī, criticizes what he calls “the Sufi idea” of the
unity of existence.84 In this work, Khwājūʾī goes straight to the problem and
targets the Sufi belief that the Necessary Existent is identical to absolute exis-
tence. He argues that existence in its absolute sense is something that all exis-
tent beings have in common; therefore, referring to absolute existence as the
Necessary Existent implies that every existent in its true sense is the Necessary
Existent. This, according to Khwājūʾī, is an irrational statement (ghayr-i maʿqūl)
and leads to infidelity (kufr) and idolatry (ilḥād).85 Khwājūʾī also criticizes the
idea of expanding existence, which, according to him, paves the way for the
Sufis to claim unification with God. It is evident that Khwājūʾī’s criticism is
directed against the school of Ibn ʿArabī. However, Khwājūʾī does not distin-
guish between this school and those of other Sufis adequately.86 As shall be
pointed out below, Narāqī follows the arguments of his teacher. However, un-
like Khwājūʾī, Narāqī carefully phrases his criticism of those who followed Ibn
ʿArabī, whom he calls wujūdiyya.87
Narāqī’s most extensive discussion on this issue is to be found in chapter
thirteen of the Qurrat al-ʿuyūn. There he conceives of three “hypothetical
­stages” (iʿtibarāt-i ʿaqlī) for existence in its general and obvious sense:
1) lā bi-sharṭ or “non-conditional”
2) bi-sharṭ lā or “negatively conditional”
3) bi-sharṭ shayʾ or “positively conditional”

84  Here in this treatise, Khwājūʾī indicates that he had dealt with this subject at length (bar
wajh-i shāfī u qadr-i kāfī) in another of his works (p. 137). I have been unable to identify
that other work.
85  Khwājūʾī, “Waḥdat al-wujūd,” p. 139.
86  Khwājūʾī’s treatise was evidently influenced by anti-Sufi literature produced during the
Safavid era. Nevertheless, he does not dismiss all the Sufis. He differentiates between Shīʿī
Sufis who follow the path of the Imāms from the rest whom he regards as “deviant”. See
Khwājūʾī, “Waḥdat al-wujūd,” pp. 158–159, 165–166.
87  See, e.g., M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (ed.), p. 129, where he
defends the view of “akābir al-Ṣūfiyya” against the criticism of Mullā Ṣadrā.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 53

These logical divisions can be traced back to Avicenna, but they became
a moot problem within the exegetical tradition of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd
al-iʿtiqād.88 “Negatively conditional” existence, which means existence with-
out quiddity or determination, corresponds to the Necessary Existent, accord-
ing to the philosophers. “Non-conditional” existence, which is existence with
no positive or negative condition with respect to quiddity, corresponds to the
Necessary Existent, according to the Sufis. Finally, “positively conditional” ex-
istence is existence with quiddity and in this sense is identical to contingents.
Narāqī explained that early Sufis (qudamāʾ al-Ṣūfiyya) adhered to the idea of
the unity of existence, but meant by this that existence is unique, that is to say,
that the Necessary Existent flows into the bodies of the contingents. However,
this should not be understood to be in the way of infusion (ḥulūl) or accidental
attachment (ʿurūḍ). The exact quality of this overall presence is indeed un-
known. The early Sufis emphasize the point that the perception of it requires
unveiling and spiritual observation and that it is not possible to apprehend it
by means of arguments and theories. By contrast, some later Sufis (jamʿun min
al-muta‌ʾakhkhirīn), who combined insight with theory, sought to explain the
unity of existence in rational terms. They argued as follows:
The reality of existence (ḥaqīqat al-wujūd) which is universal by nature
(kullī ṭabīʿī) can be considered in three different stages:
1) The first stage is the aḥadiyya of existence when it is not conditioned by
any quiddity (bi-sharṭ ʿadam māhiyya), nor by any determination what-
soever. The philosophers’ (ḥukamāʾ) idea of the Necessary Existent cor-
responds to this stage.
2) In the second stage, existence is a pervading entity (huwiyya sāriyya), i.e.,
when it is not conditioned by any quiddity or its absence. The Sufis’ idea
of the Necessary Existent corresponds to this.
3) The third stage is existence conditioned by quiddity. This is the stage of
the contingents, in which the reality of existence is mixed with
quiddities.89
As Narāqī explains, according to the Sufis the reality of the contingent, which is
a way of determining existence, is something conceptual and accidental to the
reality of existence. But this idea challenges the concept of God’s unity. Narāqī
admits that Mullā Ṣadrā was aware of this problem and it was for this reason that
he emphatically states that by Absolute Existence the Sufis meant negatively

88  For the discussion on these hypothetical stages in the exegetical tradition of Tajrīd, see
T. Izutsu, “Basic Problems of “Abstract Quiddity,” in M. Mohaghegh and T. Izutsu (eds.),
Collected Texts and Papers on Logic and Language (Tehran, 1974), pp. 1–25.
89  Narāqī’s discussion here relates to Mullā Ṣadrā’s similar discussion in al-Ḥikma mutaʿāliya
fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981–1990),
vol. 2, pp. 327–347.
54 Pourjavady

conditioned existence and not expanding existence (wujūd munbasiṭ). In fact,

mistaking Absolute Existence for expanding existence leads to dreadful con-
sequences (mafāsid shanīʿa) such as infusion (ḥulūl) and anthropomorphism
(tashbīh).90 Despite this exercise, Narāqī remained dissatisfied:

I say: these three stages of existence, that is the reality negatively con-
ditional, reality non-conditional, and reality positively conditional, are
either different and separate in the external world (fī l-wāqiʿ) and in and
of themselves (fī nafs al-amr) or not, meaning that their differences and
separateness are merely intellectual and conceptual. If we go for the first,
the unity of existence is not real since accordingly the Necessary Existent,
the contingents, and the expanding existence must each have separate
existences. That is to say, expanding existence would be neither identi-
cal with the existence of the Necessary Existent nor with the existence
of the contingents. In this case, I do not know how to define it, although
no Sufi would admit to this. From what we have seen until now and will
see in the future, this mystic (ʿārif) [= Mullā Ṣadrā] does not believe such
a thing either. If we go for the second possibility, which corresponds to
the explicit statements of the Sufis […], there are no differences between
these stages of reality; indeed the difference is merely conceptual. There-
fore in the same way that the first stage is applicable to the existence of
the Truth, so is the second and even the third stage as well.91

Narāqī argues, therefore, that if we consider the distinction between the neces-
sary and possible existents to be conceptual, then it is perfectly correct to see
existence as that which descends from the stage of Oneness (aḥadiyya) to the
second and even the third stage. Since the rejection of this idea undermines
the doctrine of the unity of existence, its advocates need to choose between the
two positions; either the unity of existence or the adjoining (inḍimām) of Ab-
solute Existence (= the Necessary Existent) with quiddities in the second and
the third stages.92 To Narāqī, it appeared that Mullā Ṣadrā was ­contradicting

90  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, p. 175. Narāqī here sum-
marizes and paraphrases Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikmat al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 2, p. 330.
91  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 175–176.
92  Narāqī uses the term ‘ḥaqīqat al-wājib’. He argued that this ḥaqīqa in itself is free from
any determination. He stated, however, that the majority of Sufis believe that it can be
adjoined (munḍamm) with the quiddities. He quotes an anonymous Sufi who explicit-
ly states that the distinction between wājib and mumkin is purely conceptual and not
extra-mental (pp. 165–166). Narāqī goes on to explain that if we maintain the position
that the Necessary Existent, which is pure existence with no determination, can become
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 55

himself when he distinguished between the possible existents and the Neces-
sary Existent, on the one hand, and when he adhered to the doctrine of the
unity of existence, according to which the distinction between the three stages
of existence is conceptual. He would have been more accurate had he assert-
ed that the idea of expanding existence does not compromise transcendence
of God.
Although Narāqī’s primary focus is Mullā Ṣadrā and his metaphysics,
he occasionally aims his criticism at his predecessor, Shams al-Dīn Khafrī
(d. 942/1535–36), who was among the first to adopt Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine of
waḥdat al-wujūd in his metaphysical thought. One of the statements of Khafrī
he quotes is the following:

Summarizing the things [we have] mentioned, according to the Verifiers

of the Truth, the caused is a conceptual aspect (ḥaythiyya iʿtibāriyya) of
the complete cause; for them (i.e., the verifiers), therefore, creation (ījād)
means the external result of the True Existence. The Truth is the true exis-
tence, and the creatures are His manifestations. The distinction is some-
what conceptual and intellectual (bi-l-iʿtibār wa l-taʿaqqul). The Qurʾān
alerts one to this by stating: “He is the First and the Last, the External
and the Internal and He is aware of all affairs.”93 […] Creation (ījād) for
them [i.e., the verifiers] means the True Existence becomes something
determined. If you like, you [may] say it [i.e., creation] means the True
Existence becomes determined by the conceptual determinations of the
contingents. You [may equally] say that it [i.e., creation] is the expan-
sion (inbisāṭ) of the True Existence into contingents or that it [i.e., cre-
ation] means the True Existence turns into the separable quiddities of
the contingents.94

Narāqī concludes that, according to Khafrī, the distinction between the true
existence (wujūd ḥaqīqī) which is the first stage (bi-sharṭ lā or “negatively con-
ditional”) and the creature (khalq) which is the third stage (bi-sharṭ shayʾ or
“positively conditional”) is merely conceptual. This is even more true of the

determined and thus turn into a possible existent, there is no real difference between the
Necessary Existent and the contingents (p. 167).
93  Narāqī introduces these quotations with “thumma qāla”.
94  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 181–183. The quotations
are gleaned from Khafrī’s Risāla fī ithbāt wājib al-wujūd bi-l-dhāt wa-ṣifātih. See Shams
al-Dīn Khafrī, Sitta rasāʾil fī ithbāt wājib al-wujūd bi-l-dhāt wa-fī l-ilāhiyyāt, ed. Fīrūza
Sāʿatchiyān (Tehran: Kitābkhāna u Mūzi u Markaz-i Asnād-i Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1390
Sh./2011), pp. 152–153.
56 Pourjavady

distinction between the True Existence and the expanding existence, that is,
between the first and the second stages. This, Narāqī indicates, runs counter
to the principle of maintaining the stages (ḥifẓ al-marātib), which is essential
for believing in the unity of God and what differentiates a true believer from a
heretic (zindīq).95
Narāqī takes pains to clarify for his readers that his criticism of Ibn ʿArabī’s
doctrine of the unity of existence had already been voiced before him. We
know that, following Mullā Ṣadrā’s adaptation of this doctrine, it had re-
peatedly been criticized by a number of philosophers, among them ʿAbd al-
Razzāq Lāhījī (d. 1072/1661), Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī (d. 1099/1688), Rajab ʿAlī
Tabrīzī (d. 1080/1669), Qāḍī Saʿīd Qummī (d. 1107/1696), Muḥammad Ismāʿīl
Khātūnābādī (d. 1116/1704–1705), and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Tunikābunī
(d. 1124/1712–13), not to mention Narāqī’s teacher, Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī, as was point-
ed out earlier.96 Narāqī reiterated some of these criticisms while adding his
own, as is indicated by his quoting some of these criticisms without specifying
the names of authors.97 One of the critical remarks he quotes originated from
Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī, although Narāqī refrains from identifying his source.
In his commentary on Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ, Narāqī sided with Khwānsārī in his
critique of Mullā Ṣadrā’s notion of existence. Following a quotation from Mullā
Ṣadrā’s commentary on Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ, in which Mullā Ṣadrā explains ex-
istence as being, at one and the same time, the first cause (awwal al-ʿilal) and
the last caused (ākhar al-maʿlūlāt), and as the source of knowledge, light, and
collectivity (jamʿ) on the one hand, and ignorance and darkness and fraction
(tafraqa) on the other, Narāqī quotes the following criticism of Āqā Ḥusayn
Khwānsārī:

[…] this is a poetic language which is inappropriate for philosophical dis-

cussions and does not correspond to external reality. How do you know
that the external reality of such things is possible? It may be necessarily
non-existent. The intellect does not prevent it from being non-existent.
It would be possible to establish the existence of an unlimited number

95  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, p. 183.
96  For the critical attitude of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī, Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī and Qāḍī Saʿīd Qummī
towards Mullā Ṣadrā see Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom, “Rajab ʿAlī
Tabrīzī’s Refutation of Ṣadrian Metaphysics,” in Sajjad Rizvi and Saiyad Nizamuddin
Ahmad (ed.), Philosophy and the Intellectual Life of Shīʿa Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp.
184–207.
97  See, e.g., Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 174, 234.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 57

of non-existents such as mountains [made] of ruby and seas of mercury

and so on.98

In his Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, Narāqī chooses to appeal to two Sufi critics of Ibn
ʿArabī: the Kubrawī shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī (d. 736/1336)99 and the
Chishtī shaykh, Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsū-Darāz (d. 825/1422),100 to whom he
refers explicitly. Narāqī’s acquaintance with Gīsū-Darāz seems to have been
vague, perhaps based merely on secondary sources, as there is no evidence
that he was acquainted with any of his writings. He had a far better knowledge
of Simnānī’s position. His source was mainly Mullā Ṣadrā’s account in his al-
Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, in which the latter quotes some of Simnānī’s criticisms
of Ibn ʿArabī from his glosses (“ḥāshiya”) on al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya.101 One of
Ibn ʿArabī’s crucial statements, which was severely criticized by Simnānī, was
that “absolute existence is subject to every attribute” (inna l-wujūd al-muṭlaq
manʿūt bi-kull naʿt). Simnānī responded to this by saying that “the existence
of the Truth is the Truth and not absolute existence (al-wujūd al-muṭlaq) or
determined existence (al-wujūd al-muqayyad).”102
Narāqī pointed out the failed attempt by Mullā Ṣadrā to respond to Simnānī’s
criticism. Mullā Ṣadrā argued that the dispute (munāqasha) between Ibn ʿArabī

98  M. M. Narāqī, Sharḥ al-Ilāhiyyāt min Kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. Ḥāmid Najī Iṣfahānī, 761. This
quotation can be found in Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī, al-Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-Shifāʾ (Ilāhiyyāt),
ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Qom: Kungira-yi Buzurgdāsht-i Muḥaqqiqān-i Khwānsārī, 1378
Sh./1999–2000), p. 62.
99  On ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla Simnānī and his criticism of Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine of the unity of exis-
tence, see F. Meier, “ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., P. Bear-
man, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel (ed.), vol. 1, pp. 346–347; Jamal J. Elias, The
Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla as-Simnānī (New York: Suny
Press 1995); Hermann Landolt, “Deux Opuscules de Semnânî sur le moi théophaniqe,” in
S. H. Nasr (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin (Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies of
McGill University 1977), pp. 279–319, reprinted in Hermann Landolt, Recherches en spiritu-
alité iranienne: Recueil d’articles (Tehran: Presses Universitaires d’Iran/Institut français de
recherches en Iran, 1384 Sh./2005), pp. 210–243; idem, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kāšānī
und Simānī über Waḥdat al-wuğūd,” Der Islam 50 (1973): 29–81, reprinted in Hermann
Landolt, Recherches en spiriualité iranienne, pp. 245–300; idem, “La ‘double échelle’ d’Ibn
‘Arabī chez Simnānī,” in M. A. Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Le voyage initiatique en Terre d’islam.
Ascensions célestes et itinéraires spirituels (Louvain-Paris 1996), pp. 251–264, repr. in Her-
mann Landolt, Recherches en spiritualité iranienne, pp. 197–209.
100  On Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsū-Darāz, see Richard M. Eaton, “Gisu-Darāz,” Encyclopaedia
Iranica, Ehsan Yarshater (ed.), vol. XI, pp. 1–3.
101  Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāiya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa (Beirut: Dār
Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981–1990), vol. 2, pp. 336–337; M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed.
Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 215–217.
102  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, pp. 177–178.
58 Pourjavady

and Simnānī was merely a matter of preferring different vocabulary (yarjaʿ ilā
l-lafẓ). He also explained Ibn ʿArabī’s original statement. According to him, it is
not clear what Ibn ʿArabī meant here by “absolute existence” (wujūd muṭlaq). If
he meant that expanding existence which overflows into quiddities, then it is
correct that He is the subject of every attribute. But if he meant by it the pure
existence (wujūd baḥt) of the Necessary Existent, then by “every attribute” he
meant either (1) every attribute of perfection or necessity, which is identical to
his Essence, or (2) His attributes in a general sense, including those of His Es-
sence, at the stage of oneness and those attributed to Him at subsequent stages
such as Mercifulness, Bounteousness, Generousness, and Gracefulness.
Taking Mullā Ṣadrā to the task, Narāqī maintains that Simnānī was opposed
to a semantic compromise over God’s unity and therefore accused Ibn ʿArabī
and his followers of infidelity.103 Narāqī states that the pure existence of the
Necessary Existent is beyond any attribute or name. This is the consensus of
belief. So if Ibn ʿArabī predicates every attribute to the absolute existence, then
by absolute existence he must have meant something other than existence in
the stage of oneness. He must be referring to his notion of expanding exis-
tence, which according to Ibn ʿArabī and his followers flows through all the
quiddities. Narāqī reminds the reader that the use of the term “absolute ex-
istence” for expanding existence was condemned by Mullā Ṣadrā as it would
lead to dreadful consequences (mafāsid shanīʿa) such as the idea of God being
infused in creatures (ḥulūl) and anthropomorphism (tashbīh). However, sur-
prisingly, Mullā Ṣadrā did not seem to mind if Ibn ʿArabī used the term here in
the sense of expanding existence.
Narāqī also notes Simnānī’s insistence on the point that the unity of exis-
tence is a subject that should be disputed in epistemology rather than ontol-
ogy. As the latter stated:

I also reached this state, and the unity of existence became unveiled to
me. However, when I ascended beyond this state, it appeared to me that
it is the opposite [of what I expected]. I then realized that the followers
of wujūdiyya [i.e., Ibn ʿArabī and his followers] never reached this state.104

103  Ibid., p. 215.

104  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, p. 217. Narāqī indicates to
Simnānī’s correspondence with ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī as the source of this statement.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī has recorded this Persian correspondence in his Nafaḥāt al-uns,
and it is likely that Narāqī’s became acquainted with it through this work. On this corre-
spondence, see H. Landolt, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kāšānī und Simānī über Waḥdat
al-wuğūd”.
Mullā Mahdī Narāqī 59

In the above quote Simnānī maintained that the perception of the unity of ex-
istence belongs to a particular state; when the wayfarer goes beyond that state,
as Simnānī himself did, it becomes apparent to him that his previous percep-
tion was mistaken. Through this quotation, Narāqī undermines the spiritual
experience on which the doctrine is based. In other words, as far as he was
concerned the doctrine was not only invalid theoretically, but also is based on
an immature spiritual experience.
As mentioned above, Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī wrote glosses on Narāqī’s
Qurrat al-ʿuyūn. Bīdābādī’s intention in writing these glosses, as he himself puts
it, was to correct (iṣlāḥ) Narāqī’s mistakes.105 Among other things, Bīdābādī
deals with Narāqī’s treatment of the doctrine of the unity of existence. He ar-
gues that, according to this doctrine, the existence of the contingents is merely
conceptual (iʿtibārī). It is best referred to as a “shadowy existence” (wujūd ẓillī),
i.e., a secondary existence.106 Using this paradoxical notion, Bīdābādī tries to
conform to the idea of God’s transcendence while committing himself to the
doctrine of the unity of existence. The same idea, albeit in a more elaborate
fashion, was expressed by Bīdābādī’s student, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1831). In
his Risāla fī basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa, Nūrī argues for the Necessary Existent as the sole
existent in reality. He uses the term “shadowy existence” for the contingents,
by which he means that the contingents lack real existence. They possess only
a certain weak and incomplete existence, caused by the relationship they have
with the expanding existence or “the breath of the Merciful”.107 In his Qurrat
al-ʿuyūn, Narāqī did not deal specifically with this position of Bīdābādī (and
Nūrī). However, it is safe to assume that those of his contemporaries who were
adherents of the doctrine of the unity of existence, including Bīdābādī, were
the target of his criticisms.
Narāqī himself indicated other contemporary adherents of the doctrine,
namely the Sufis. He said that the doctrine was commonly accepted by
most of the Sufi orders of his time, including the Nūrbakhshī, Naqshbandī
and Niʿmatullāhī orders, and hence he implied his disapproval of these Sufi
orders.108 Why Narāqī names only these three Sufi orders is not clear. It is
known that the Dhahabī order, for instance, was active in his time and that the

105  See Bīdābādī’s colophon to his glosses in M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Ḥasan Majīd
ʿUbaydī, pp. 25–26.
106  Ibid., p. 253.
107  ʿAlī Nūrī, Rasāʾil-i falsafī: Basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa wa-waḥdat al-wujūd, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Anjuman-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1357/1978), 32, 58. See also Janis
Esots, “Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī as an exponent of Mullā Ṣadrā’s teachings,” Transcendent Philoso-
phy 12 (2011): 55–67.
108  M. M. Narāqī, Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, p. 178.
60 Pourjavady

shaykhs of this order were advocates of the doctrine of the unity of existence.109
Likewise, it is unclear if Narāqī had a particular interest in the orders he men-
tioned. Nevertheless, Narāqī happened to have Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh among his
students later in his career, and consequently, he managed to have a significant
impact on a particular phase of Niʿmatullāhī order, when Majdhūb was the
shaykh of this order (i.e., from 1234/1819 to 1238/1822). In his Risāla-yi iʿtiqādāt,
Majdhūb criticizes the doctrine of the unity of existence. Although he does not
explicitly refer to his teacher and his criticism of this doctrine, his view seems
to have been almost identical to that of Narāqī. Quoting from Simnānī and
Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624), Majdhūb argues that the sense of unity reached
by some Sufis in the state of annihilation (fanāʾ) is subjective and it may have
nothing to do with any external reality.110 Apart from Majdhūb, a younger con-
temporary of Narāqī, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826), partook of some
aspects of Narāqī’s criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā’s metaphysics. Although Aḥsāʾī
made no reference to Narāqī, it is not inconceivable that he had at least some
remote knowledge of Narāqī’s positions.111 Despite these criticisms, one gener-
ation after Narāqī the doctrine of the unity of existence was promoted widely
by Bīdābādī‘s student, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, and his disciples, to the extent that one
may argue that it became the main philosophical discourse in the Qajar peri-
od. But there remained some critics of it among later Qajar philosophers, most
notable among them being Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa (d. 1314/1896).

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 Chapter 2

Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī

Idris Samawi Hamid

1 Biography

1.1 Life and Travels

“The Philosopher of the Era” ( faylasūf al-ʿaṣr),1 more popularly known as “the
Most Unparalleled Shaykh” (al-shaykh al-awḥad), Aḥmad the son of Zayn al-
Dīn, was born in Rajab 1166 (during or just after May 1753) in al-Muṭayrafī,
a village of what was then the emirate of al-Aḥsāʾ, located near the Eastern
coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The tribe into which Shaykh Aḥmad was born
originally belonged to the ʿĀmma; his family on his father’s side converted to
Tashayyuʿ five generations earlier.2 According to Shaykh Aḥmad’s testimony
(in his spiritual autobiography),3 al-Muṭayrafī in particular had become some-
thing of a backwoods, an oasis far removed from major population centers and
largely devoid of significant scholars or resources in Islamic learning.
Upon noticing an interest in grammar on the part of his son, Shaykh Zayn
al-Dīn sent him to a nearby village to study with a local scholar. At some point
during these early studies, he began having visions and dreams in which a
young man would teach him the meanings of Qurʾānic signs (āyāt, s. āya).4
Eventually he saw in a vision three of the Twelve Imāms of the Ahlulbayt: the
Second Imām al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the Fourth Imām ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b.
ʿAlī, and the Fifth Imām Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn. The high point of this

1  This title was given by the well-known biographer Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī, in the
course of an introductory epitaph for Shaykh Aḥmad. This epitaph occurs at the outset of
the entry on the latter in Khwānsārī’s Rawḍāt al-Jannāt fī aḥwāl al-ʿulamāʾ wa-al-sādāt (Qom:
Ismāʿīliyān, 1390/1971); see vol. 1, p. 216.
2  The expression ‘al-ʿāmma’ (meaning “the people at large”) is a term used by the later Imāms
of Ahlulbayt to refer to the self-titled “Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamāʿa”. The expression ‘tashayyuʿ ’
is what they used to refer to the praxis of what we now call “Shīʿī Islām”.
3  Shaykh Aḥmad ibn Zayn al-Dīn al-Aḥsāʾī, Jawāmiʿ al-kalim, 2nd ed., 9 vols. (Basra: Maktaba
al-Ghadīr, 2009), vol. 8, pp. 458–466. The next four paragraphs draw from this famous auto-
biographical account.
4  It is significant that one of the first things this stranger taught young Aḥmad was, in effect,
the priority of matter over form (S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī, Jawāmiʿ al-kalim, 2nd ed., vol. 8, p. 461). This is
a germ of the inverse hylomorphism which would later become one of the bedrocks of Shaykh
Aḥmad’s philosophy; see below, page 110.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_004

Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 67

vision occurs when Imām Ḥasan places his mouth over that of young Aḥmad,
who is lying flat on his back, letting him taste the Imām’s saliva. Afterwards
the Imām placed his hand on Aḥmad’s face, then upon his chest, sending a
profound coolness through his heart.
After some conversation, young Aḥmad requested, “My Master! Inform me
of something such that, whenever I recite it, I can see you all.” Imām Ḥasan
replied with the following hemistiches:

Become a shunner of your affairs; Entrust all affairs to the Decision.

Thus tight spaces sometimes widen; And open spaces sometimes get tight.
Often a matter which is tiresome; In its ends, for you there lies Riḍā.5
Allāh will do whatever He Wishes; Become not one who interferes.
Allāh habituated you to the beautiful; So do compare with what has passed.

Then the Imām added the following:

A matter over which the ego (nafs) has tightened;

Often there comes to her [the ego] from Allāh relief.
Become not a despairer of the arrival of a breeze;
So often indeed are those impediments dispelled.
All the while a man is despondent in deathly illness;
Yet Allāh comes to him with a breeze and a relief.

For months young Aḥmad recited the two poems every night without result.
Then he realized that the Imām meant for him to not merely repeat the vers-
es but to embody their inner meanings. So over the following months young
Aḥmad began focusing on the cultivation of sincerity (ikhlāṣ)6 in his devotions,
increasing his recitation of the Qurʾān, spending late night to dawn in seeking
forgiveness (istighfār) and in meditation, as well as deepening his contempla-
tions on the world at large. The intensity of his visions increased until, finally,
the gate of vision of the Ahlulbayt opened and he would see some of them over
the course of “most days and nights”. Eventually he reached a point where he
was able to see the Imāms and even the Messenger almost at will, and to ask
difficult questions of them. He could even choose which of them he wanted to

5  The word ‘riḍā’ may be translated by ‘well-pleasedness’. In the process of spiritual walāya
it is one of the highest stations, if not the very highest. For further detail, see Idris Samawi
Hamid, Islam, Station and Process: The Spirituality of Walāyah (New York: Global Scholarly
Publications, 2011), pp. 95–97.
6  The word ‘ikhlāṣ’ has a technical meaning in the process of spiritual walāya; see ibid.,
pp. 101–106.
68 Hamid

see and speak to. At one point (around 1208/1794) he had a vision wherein the
Tenth Imām ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Hādī passed him twelve licenses (ijāzāt),
one license (ijāza) from each imām.7
In his twenty-first year, young Aḥmad went to the centers of the Shīʿī scho-
lastic establishment in southern Iraq to advance his studies.8 The chief figure of
this establishment at the time of his arrival was Āqā al-Waḥīd Bāqir Bihbahānī
(d. 1205/1791): It was he who finalized, within the scholastic establishment, the
dominance of the analytic principlist (uṣūlī) school of jurisprudence, includ-
ing its associated philosophy of law and language. The Shaykh also attended
the lectures of many of the most prominent students of Āqā al-Waḥīd, includ-
ing Shaykh Jaʿfar b. Khiḍr al-Najafī (d. 1228/1813), also known by the honorific
title Kāshif al-ghiṭāʾ (Uncoverer of the Veil); and Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī b.
Murtaḍā al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1212/1797), better known by the honorific Baḥr al-
ʿulūm (Sea of Sciences). Baḥr al-ʿulūm was also known as a great ʿārif (cogni-
zant), viz., someone who had reached some of the higher modes of experience
generally associated with mysticism. Shaykh Aḥmad was to receive licenses
(ijāzāt) from these and other prominent and important scholars of his day,
all of which contain comments praising his erudition and piety in the highest
terms. Baḥr al-ʿulūm, a generation senior, even goes so far as to call Shaykh
Aḥmad a “brother” and “best or cream (nukhba) of the cognizants (ʿurafāʾ)”.9

7  In the traditional scholastic establishment, an ijāza (license or permission) given by a teach-
er to a student or colleague served as something akin to a diploma. It connected the recipient
to higher links in a continuous chain of teachers going back to the first transmitters, who in
turn narrated directly from the Prophet or from another member of the Ahlulbayt.
8  Sources for what follows include ʿAbd al-Riḍā Ibrāhīmī’s Introduction to S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī,
Sharḥ al-Ziyāra al-jāmiʿa al-kabīra, reprint (with different pagination and formatting) of the
4th edition, 4 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Mufīd, 1424/2003), vol. 1, front matter, pp. 11–14. See also
S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī, Jawāmiʿ al-kalim, 2nd ed., vol. 1, front matter, pp. 13–18.
9  It is unfortunate that the expression ‘ʿārif ’ (pl. ‘ʿurafāʾ’) is still commonly and uncritically
translated by ‘gnostic’ (and that the cognate gerunds ‘maʿrifa’ and ‘irfān’ are translated by
‘gnosticism’). Many scholars and historians of the Muslim philosophical and mystical tradi-
tions remain heavily affected by the terminology of the late Henry Corbin, who worked to
assimilate elements of Muslim traditions into his personal project, inclusive of a universal-
ist conception of gnosis. Corbin interprets much in the Muslim philosophical and mystical
traditions as a “meta-historical” continuation of the early dualist and antinomian schools
of Christian Gnosticism and related traditions. This use of ‘gnostic’ by Corbin was arguably
appropriate in his studies of Ismāʿīlī thought, a Muslim tradition that strongly exhibits cer-
tain Gnostic elements. A few of the more radical Ṣūfī or Extremist (Ghulāt) schools (some of
them also studied by Corbin) may also be amenable to such a treatment. But the use of that
term to cover the full gamut of Islām’s cosmological and mystical traditions, including and
especially those of Twelver Tashayyuʿ, crosses the border into anachronism or confusion.
In primary senses, the words ‘maʿrifa’ and ‘ʿārif ’ are used to denote a mode of objectu-
al, phenomenological knowing. In contrast to Arabic or the Romance languages—‘savoir’
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 69

We do not know whether or to what degree Shaykh Aḥmad attended for-

mal lectures in the falsafa of Mullā Ṣadrā or other philosophers (at the time
commonly referred to as ḥikma). The Shaykh makes mention of a prominent
philosopher whom he met in Basra,10 but neither the Shaykh nor the reference
for this information gives his name. It is known that, in addition to his studies
in the standard curriculum including prophetic traditions, philosophy of lan-
guage and law, jurisprudence, ethics, and kalām (doctrinal philosophy and the-
ology), he pursued and delved deeply into other sciences such as mathematics
and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry, mineralogy, the occult Hermetic arts
(such as numerology and letter-based hermeneutics), even medicine. He was
particularly attracted to alchemy, which the first Imām, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, had
famously called “the sister of prophecy”.11 By all accounts the Shaykh attained
a profound mastery in this science and undertook what appears to have been
original research in the field. Since some of these disciplines, such as alchemy
and other Hermetic arts, were taught only privately and secretly, we do not
know the identities of his outward teachers in these fields, if any. We do know
that he was associated with a certain obscure alchemist and scholar Shaykh
ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Fāris, on some of whose works Shaykh Aḥmad wrote com-
mentaries; he apparently lived mostly in seclusion. Shaykh Aḥmad also extols
Shaykh ʿAlī with a degree of praise he bestows upon few other scholars.

  versus ‘connaître’ in French is an example—English does not have a common or everyday

way to express the natural, intuitive distinction between propositional knowledge and
objectual or phenomenological knowledge. ‘Recognition’ comes close but is too restric-
tive. We will use the word ‘cognizance’, an English word for objectual knowledge derived
from the same Latin root as ‘connaître’, and its cognates. It is not as common in everyday
English as it could be, but semantically it is more precise and philosophically neutral than
the loaded word ‘gnostic’.
   For the distinction between propositional and objectual knowledge, see J. Corcoran
and I. S. Hamid, “Investigating Knowledge and Opinion,” in A. Koslow and A. Buchsbaum
(ed.), The Road to Universal Logic (Cham: Birkhäuser, 2015).
10  Abū l-Qāsim Khān Ibrāhīmī, Fihrist-i kutub-i mashāyikh-i ʿiẓām (Kerman: Chāpkhāna-yi
Saʿādat, n.d.), p. 183.
11  The reasons for this attraction are not difficult to discern. To a degree greater than any of
the traditional sciences of Muslim civilization, the aim, object, and method of alchemy
fundamentally involve dialectical and objective-logical considerations (see Section 4.2).
We intend to explore the relation of alchemy to the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad in the
course of a future work. It is worth noting that something similar has already been done
in the case of Hegel; see Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Itha-
ca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
70 Hamid

Shaykh Aḥmad’s life was characterized by considerable dynamism and

mobility. After leaving al-Aḥsāʾ for the ʿAtabāt,12 he returned a few years later
because of a plague that was ravaging southern Iraq. He married and settled
down for some years in his homeland; during the first conquest of al-Aḥsāʾ by
the Wahhabis (in 1208/1794)13 the Shaykh escaped to Bahrain.14 After staying
in Bahrain for four years, he visited the ʿAtabāt for a time, then settled with his
family near Basra. In 1221/1806 he made the fateful decision to go on pilgrimage
to Mashhad, in eastern Iran, in visitation of the tomb of the Eighth Imām, ʿAlī
al-Riḍā. Along the way he passed through the central Iranian city of Yazd. The
scholars of the city, coming from various fields of learning, quickly became en-
amored of Shaykh Aḥmad; so much so that they lobbied him heavily, begging
him to stay and settle in their city.
The Shaykh promised to spend time with the people of Yazd after finishing
his pilgrimage to Mashhad. So once he completed his visitation of Imām ʿAlī
al-Riḍā, Shaykh Aḥmad settled in Yazd. There he gave lectures and wrote many
treatises in response to difficult questions presented to him in philosophy, al-
chemy, esoteric traditions of the Ahlulbayt, and so forth. Already a mujtahid
(independent expert in jurisprudence), after a short time he became (what a
few decades later would be called) a major marjaʿ al-taqlīd (source of jurispru-
dential emulation), as well as the most important theologian on the Iranian
scene. Eventually he attracted the attention of the reigning monarch, Fatḥ ʿAlī
Shāh Qājār (r. 1211–1250/1797–1834). The Shah began a correspondence with the
Shaykh, and attempted to induce him to visit Tehran. Shaykh Aḥmad politely
but pointedly refused, citing his strong dislike of intermingling with the opu-
lent, let alone emperors.
The Shah replied politely and respectfully; at the same time he made it clear
that, if the Shaykh did not come to Tehran, then the king would have to travel
to Yazd, with a standard royal entourage of at least 10,000 men, which the peo-
ple of Yazd would have to provide for.15 Shaykh Aḥmad was, by all accounts,

12  The ʿAtabāt comprises the sacred cities of Najaf, Karbala, and Kazimayn, burial sites for
the remains of six of the Twelve Imāms.
13  The Wahhabis conquered al-Aḥsāʾ three times. The first Wahhābī occupation of al-Aḥsāʾ
lasted from 1794 to 1818 (during the lifetime of Shaykh Aḥmad); the second from 1830–
1871; and the third from 1913 to the present day.
14  According to his son ʿAbd Allāh, in the latter’s Sharḥ Aḥwāl al-Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī,
p. 10, “the Khārijī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad [ibn Saʿūd], known as the Wahhābī,” per-
sonally did his utmost to capture Shaykh Aḥmad, even spending a large sum of money to
that end. ʿAbd Allāh also quotes his father to the effect that the Wahhābī conquest of al-
Aḥsāʾ took place on 24 Shaʿbān, 1208/26–27 March, 1794. See also the following footnote.
15  Many of the details of this episode are chronicled by ʿAbd Allāh, the son of Shaykh
Aḥmad, in the latter’s Sharḥ Aḥwāl al-Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī. The somewhat inaccurate
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 71

aghast and in distress at the prospect of getting dragged into the agendas of
the ruling authorities, so much so that he attempted to return to Iraq. But the
scholars and leaders of Yazd pressed upon him that, even if he were to reach
Iraq, they would still face the king’s wrath (as accomplices in his escape). When
it became clear that leaving or staying would bring undue hardship upon the
people of Yazd, he finally relented and did in fact visit Tehran in 1223/1808.
The king asked the Shaykh to settle in Tehran. However, bluntly citing the
incompatibility of the oppressive and tyrannical nature of monarchic rule
with his own dignity,16 the Shaykh refused and sought permission to return to
Yazd; the Shah granted the request. About six years later, in 1229/1814, follow-
ing a command from Imām ʿAlī received in a vision, he decided to return to
the ʿAtabāt, despite the desperate attempts of the people of Yazd to convince
him to remain. Upon his arrival in Kermanshah—by way of Isfahan, where he
stayed for forty days and debated Mullā Ṣadrā’s doctrines with the falāsafa of
the city—the eldest son of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh persuaded him to spend some time in
the town. He settled his family there and continued his journey to the ʿAtabāt,
where he spent some time before returning to Kermanshah. Aside from other
pilgrimages and journeys (including undertaking the ḥajj), he remained in
Kermanshah until 1239/1824. During 1238/1822–23 the Shaykh made a final
visitation to the tomb of Imām Riḍā. Over the course of the return journey
he spent a few months in Yazd, followed by some time in Isfahan (where he
famously gave 53 days of lectures). In 1239/1824 he left Iran and settled with his
family in Karbala.
Unfortunately, the jealousy of some less senior jurisprudents and theolo-
gians in the scholastic establishment created problems for the Shaykh.17 One

Persian translation is a well-known source referenced by, e.g., Algar, al-Ṭāliqānī, and
others. This author has been given access to a transcription of a rare manuscript of the
Arabic source (the original Arabic text was once thought to have been lost).
16  Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906 (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1969), p. 67.
17  Most contemporary scholars, including Hamid Algar, Mangol Bayat, Henry Corbin, and
Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Ṭāliqānī, concur that jealousy was the original motivating fac-
tor in the Shaykh’s being declared an unbeliever. See H. Algar, Religion and State in Iran
1785–1906, p. 68; Mongol Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982), pp. 39–40; Henry Corbin, History of Islamic
philosophy (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993), pp. 353–354; Muḥammad Ḥasan
al-Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya: Nashʾatuhā wa-taṭawwuruhā wa-maṣādir dirāsātihā (Beirut:
al-Āmāl li-l-Maṭbūʾāt 1420/1999–2000), p. 95. The 19th century biographer and scholar,
Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī, a junior contemporary of Shaykh Aḥmad but not his dis-
ciple, also shared this view (M. B. Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 1, pp. 227–229; quot-
ing approvingly from Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī); even Shaykh Aḥmad points to it as a factor
in the later persecution he had to endure (see S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī. Jawāmiʿ al-kalim, 2nd ed.,
72 Hamid

prominent and proud mullā in Qazvin, Mullā Muḥammad Ṭaqī Baraghānī

(d. 1263/1847), apparently felt slighted because Shaykh Aḥmad did not imme-
diately call upon him during a stopover as he was making his way to Mash-
had for his last visitation of the Eighth Imām.18 During his stay in Qazvin,
Baraghānī declared the Shaykh to be an unbeliever; he accused the Shaykh,
ironically, of being a follower of Mullā Ṣadrā in eschatology and in the latter’s
alleged denial of physical resurrection. This sparked a more general reaction
on the part of other segments of the scholastic establishment. Although few,
if any, senior scholars concurred with Baraghānī’s pronouncement—at worst
some demurred or remained non-committal—concern in different quarters
began to be expressed about Shaykh Aḥmad’s unique, iconoclastic, and non-
scholastic approach to theology; as well as to the potential effects of his teach-
ing and leadership on the traditional establishment.
By the time the Shaykh finally settled himself and his family in Karbala, the
atmosphere in the ʿAtabāt had been poisoned by the propaganda of Baraghānī
and his associates to the point where there were, among other intrigues,19 at-
tempts to get him into trouble with the Ottoman authorities in Baghdad. Fi-
nally, the Shaykh decided to go to Mecca, ostensibly to undertake the ḥajj pil-
grimage, and to perhaps even go into exile there. But there are indications that
he was aware that his life in this world was soon coming to an end;20 as in the
case of his decision to leave Yazd, it appears he had been commanded by his
inward masters to make this move. In Damascus he fell ill, and he passed away
just outside Medina on 21 Dhū l-Qaʿda 1241/27 June 1826 at age seventy-three

vol. 8, pp. 198–199). Because so many of the Shīʿa in Iran, India, and elsewhere were now
sending their religious dues to the Shaykh, there were probably financial motives as well
behind the intrigues of Mullā Baraghānī and some of his associates; see M. Ḥ. al-Ṭāliqānī,
al-Shaykhiyya, p. 107.
18  M. Ḥ. al-Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya, p. 97. ʿAbd al-Riḍā Ibrāhīmī, in the course of his Introduc-
tion to the 4th edition of Sharḥ al-Ziyāra al-Jāmiʿa al-Kabīra, suggests that this incident
took place on the return journey to Kermanshah from his sojourn in Isfahan after the
final pilgrimage to Mashhad. See S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī, Sharḥ al-Ziyāra al-jāmiʿa al-kabīra, reprint
(with different pagination and formatting) of the 4th edition in four vols. (Beirut: Dār al-
Mufīd, 1424/2003), vol. 1, p. 13; see also S. A. al-Aḥsāʾī, Jawāmiʿ al-kalim, 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 16.
19  Such intrigues included going so far as to interpolate some of his works to make them
sound explicitly offensive to scholastic and even popular sensibilities. See, e.g., M. Ḥ. al-
Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya, pp. 100–101.
20  For example: Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī explains that the manner in which he made his journey
to Mecca was in intentional imitation of Imām Ḥusayn’s departure from Medina on the
journey that would end in his martyrdom. In other words, Shaykh Aḥmad had no expec-
tation of surviving the journey. See S. K. Rashtī, Dalīl al-Mutaḥayyirīn, published in the
course of Jawāhir al-ḥikam (Basra: Maktaba al-Ghadīr, 2011), vol. 7, p. 270. There are other
indications as well.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 73

(seventy-five in lunar years). His entourage buried him in the cemetery of al-
Baqīʿ in Medina, at the feet of the same three a‌ʾimma (s. imām) he had seen in
his first visions, and who had initiated him into the profundities of the wisdom
(ḥikma) of the Ahlulbayt.

1.2 Character and Charisma

Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī was, at once, the most influential and the most con-
troversial Shīʿī scholar of 19th-century Iran and of Tashayyuʿ at large. Over one
hundred and ninety years after his passing, the dust thrown up when he burst
upon the Shīʿī scene has still not settled. At the same time, if there is one thing
agreed upon by virtually all scholars and historians, past and present, includ-
ing his many detractors (who still largely dominate the scholastic establish-
ment), it is that the Shaykh possessed a unique and electrifying spirituality, as
well as an uncanny charisma. The eloquent rhymed prose of the establishment
biographer Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī (d. 1313/1895) encapsulates a large
portion of this consensus:

In these recent times no one like him has been encountered with regard
to cognizance (maʿrifa) and understanding, nobility and sound resolve,
excellence in temperament, beauty in path (ṭarīqa), purity in inner re-
ality (ḥaqīqa), abundance of spirituality, knowledge of Arabic, ethics
of the Sunna, well-approved characteristics, points of theoretical and
practical wisdom, beauty of expression and eloquence, subtlety and fine-
ness of writing style, and sincerity of love and devotion to the magnifi-
cent Ahlulbayt of the Messenger; so much so that some of the exoteric-
minded people have accused him of excess and extremism (ghuluww);
whereas in fact he is, without a doubt, one of the people of majesty and
transcendence.21

There is an important point to be made in this context. At that time—it re-

mains the case today—most of the influential scholars of Bahrain, the ʿAtabāt,
and Iran came from well-established families and belonged to networks which
spanned the major cities of the region. In Iran and in the ʿAtabāt, most of them
were Iranian or of Iranian origin. The phenomenon of Shaykh Aḥmad present-
ed something of a shock to the leaders and students of the scholastic establish-
ment, as well as the cultured community at large. To paraphrase al-Ṭāliqānī’s
analysis of the matter: Most Iranians of that time generally looked upon Arabs
with contempt and considered them inferior in their intellectual capabilities.

21  M. B. Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 1, pp. 216–217.

74 Hamid

Then, despite any real or imagined status already possessed by the elites of the
scholastic establishment, this individual from an oasis in the Arabian desert
seemed to come out of nowhere, to surpass them in their own areas of exper-
tise, supersede them in honor in their own cities, lead them by the thousands
in communion; even the king of Iran reserved for him a reverence that he had
not previously shown to any Persian scholar, let alone an Arab.22
Despite his strenuous disagreement with Shaykh Aḥmad over some of the
latter’s criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1831) still considered
him at least equal in stature to his late teacher Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī
(d. 1197/1783), another powerful spiritual personality. Once Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī was
asked, “How does Shaykh Aḥmad compare in stature with Āqā Bīdābādī?” He
replied,23 “Distinguishing between them cannot be done unless the one who
wants to do it has already reached their station (maqām). And where do I fit in
the midst of all of that?”

2 Works

Shaykh Aḥmad was a prolific writer; the range covered by his learning was en-
cyclopedic. He wrote over 160 books and treatises: They range in length from
long, multi-volume compositions to short treatises of only a couple or so pages
in length. The subjects covered by the Shaykh range over the gamut of dis-
ciplines of traditional Muslim civilization, including metaphysics, cosmology,
mysticism, theology, ethics and mystical wayfaring, philosophy of language
and law, jurisprudence proper, interpretation of the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth,
alchemy, mineralogy, astronomy, the occult sciences, poetry and literary arts,
music, medicine, grammar, prosody, and others.

2.1 Fundamental Philosophical Works and Opera Majora

Over two-thirds of the writings of Shaykh Aḥmad are in the field of philosophy.
Of these, we may identify eight as the most important, in-depth, and whose
primary concern is philosophy proper24 (listed in chronological order).

22  M. Ḥ. al-Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya, p. 95.

23  M. B. Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 1, p. 226.
24  Many individual works of the Shaykh consider important philosophical matters in con-
cert with other topics, particularly in many of those treatises written in reply to multiple
inquiries of a questioner.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 75

1. Mabāḥith al-alfāẓ (Discourses on Semantics)25

This incomplete treatise is a part of what was intended to be Section 3 of a
larger work, Fawāʾid al-uṣūl (Observations on Principles) in the field of prin-
ciples of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), i.e., philosophy of law. This was almost
certainly written during the pre-Iran period of the Shaykh’s life, when most of
his jurisprudential works were produced. Many of the Shaykh’s positions on
issues of fundamental philosophical importance, such as his rejection, with
respect to God, of both the ishtirāk maʿnawī (univocity) of the word ‘existence’
(wujūd) as well as the ishtirāk lafẓī (equivocity) of ‘existence’, can hardly be ap-
preciated without reference to his underlying philosophy of language.
2. al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya (Observations in Wisdom)26
This comparatively short text constitutes a synopsis of the metaphysical
and cosmological system of the Shaykh. The original al-Fawāʾid consists of 12
chapters referred to as “observations” (fawāʾid). Although there is room for fur-
ther research on the matter, al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya was apparently completed
sometime during the winter of 1223–24/1808–1809. After completing his own
commentary on this work, he later added seven more fawāʾid (see below).
3. Sharḥ al-Ziyāra al-jāmiʿa al-kabīra (Commentary on the Grand Compre-
hensive Visitation)27
This work was begun in Yazd and completed in Kermanshah on the night
before 10 Rabīʿ I 1230/19–20 February 1815; he completed an addendum exactly
ten days later. In four volumes, this is Shaykh Aḥmad’s longest, most famous,
and most controversial book. It is a commentary on a particularly long visita-
tion (ziyāra), a formula recited when one “visits” or communes with the body
and spirit of the Prophet, his daughter Fāṭimah, or one of the Twelve Imāms.
Philosophically it is the most profound work of its kind, covering various facets
of the dialectics of primordial Shīʿī cosmology and the anthropology of the
perfect human (al-insān al-kāmil). Drawing upon a broad spectrum of interdis-
ciplinary expertise, brilliantly woven into a dense but consistent fabric, Shaykh

25  Published in the course of the original Jawāmiʿ al-kalim (JK1), vol. 1, towards the end, pagi-
nation confused (Tabriz, lithograph, 1276/1856–57); Jawāmiʿ al-kalim 2nd edition (JK2),
vol. 6, p. 189 ff. (Basra, 2009). For the remainder of this chapter we will use the abbrevia-
tions ‘JK1’ and ‘JK2’ respectively to refer to the original and second editions of Jawāmiʿ
al-kalim.
26  Published in the course of Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid (Tabriz, lithograph, 1274/1857–58); JK2, vol. 2,
p. 175 ff.
27  Published in multiple lithograph and typeset editions. The standard editions for refer-
ence are Tabriz 1276/1859–60; reprint (with different pagination and formatting) of the
self-styled “4th edition” (Kerman, p. 197), 4 vols., Beirut: Dār al-Mufīd, 1424/2003.
76 Hamid

Aḥmad’s massive commentary constitutes the most extensive and penetrating

elaboration of this concept in the history of Muslim civilization.
4. Sharḥ Risālat al-ʿilm (Commentary on the Treatise on Knowledge)28
Apparently begun almost immediately after finishing Sharḥ al-Ziyāra, this
work was completed in Kermanshah on 5 Rabīʿ II 1230/16–17 March 1815. It
constitutes a critique of the theological epistemology of Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ
Kāshānī (d. 1090/1679), the disciple and son-in-law of Mullā Ṣadrā. The point
of departure for the discussion is Fayḍ Kāshānī’s theory of the nature of God’s
Knowledge of His creation.
5. Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya (Commentary on the Observations in
Wisdom)29
The Shaykh initiated this work in 1232/1817 on his way to Mecca to perform
the ḥājj; he completed it on 9 Shawwāl 1233/11–12 August 1818. As the title in-
dicates, this book is an elaboration of his philosophical epitome, al-Fawāʾid al-
ḥikmiyya. Sometime after its completion the author wrote another seven ob-
servations and appended them to the original twelve. Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid, along
with the additional seven observations, together constitute a broad overview
of the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad. Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, the most prominent pro-
fessor of Ṣadrian philosophy at that time, wrote a set of annotations on Sharḥ
al-Fawāʾid (see below, Section 4.3).
6. Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir (Commentary on the [Metaphysical] Organa)30
This work is the first major commentary by Shaykh Aḥmad on one of Mullā
Ṣadrā’s books. The Shaykh began work on this project sometime prior to start-
ing on Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid. He completed a draft of Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir on 27 Ṣafar
1234/25–26 December 1818; he finalized revision and correction (taṣḥīḥ) of the
manuscript exactly three months later (26 Jumādā I 1234/23 March 1819). As in-
dicated by the title, this is a study of al-Mashāʿir (The Organa), in which Mullā
Ṣadrā presents his ontological metaphysics of existence, followed by applica-
tions to theology and cosmology. Shaykh Aḥmad’s commentary constitutes a
critique of this metaphysics and of the methodology (Aristotelian cognitivism)
involved in its articulation; throughout he compares and contrasts them with
his own dialectical metaphysics of existence and essence and with his own
methodology (Hermetic cognitivism), both of which he applies to problems in
theology and cosmology.31 In important respects this is Shaykh Aḥmad’s most

28  JK1, Vol 1, p. 166 ff.; JK2, vol. 2, p. 1 ff.

29  Multiple editions, including standard references: Tabriz, lithograph, 1274/1857–58; JK2,
vol. 2, p. 175 ff.
30  Tabriz, 1278/1860–1861; JK2, vol. 3.
31  We will discuss the distinction between ontological and dialectical metaphysics, and be-
tween Aristotelian and Hermetic cognitivism, in Subsections 4.2 and 4.4 respectively.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 77

difficult work in philosophy.32 It is also a masterpiece of critical commentary

with numerous original ideas, such as his subtle, incisive critique of the Aristo-
telian (and scholastic) logic of predication; ideas that Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar
Lāhījānī (d. 1260/1844), a student of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī who wrote his own com-
mentary on al-Mashāʿir, calls “cogent observations, knowledge, and majestic
light” (fawāʾid jalīla wa ʿilm wa nūr jalīl).33
7. Sharḥ al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya (Commentary on the Empyreal Wisdom)34
This is the second of Shaykh Aḥmad’s two major commentaries on the writ-
ings of Mullā Ṣadrā; it was completed on 27 Rabīʿ I 1236/April 29–30, 1821. This
is the author’s longest and most famous work after Sharḥ al-Ziyāra. It is an
extensive, critical commentary on al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya (Empyreal Wisdom),
a summary of Mullā Ṣadrā’s theology, cosmology, psychology, and eschatology.
Not quite as difficult as Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir but no less profound and original,
this commentary contains some of the most extensive discussions of eschatol-
ogy to be written in Islamaic philosophy35 after Mullā Ṣadrā’s own section on
this topic in al-Asfār al-arbaʿa.
8. Risāla fī l-umūr al-iʿtibāriyya (A Treatise on Matters of Subjective
Significance)36
Apparently not completed, this is likely the last major work written by
Shaykh Aḥmad. It constitutes a critique of the general practice of scholastic
philosophers and theologians to define the extensions of general metaphysical
concepts out of objective reality via analytical reductionism. This work drives
home what Alfred North Whitehead would later call “the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness”, as well as the priority the Shaykh gives to objective logic over
ontology, to be discussed later (in Subsection 4.2).

32  One manifestation of the vicissitudes suffered by the school of Shaykh Aḥmad, from his
passing up to the present day, can be seen in the fact that there has not been a single study
produced on this critically important philosophical work, neither by anyone from the
major Shaykhī communities nor by anyone else.
33  M. J. Lāhījānī, Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir (Mashhad: Chāpkhāna-yi Khurāsān, 1383/1963), p. 167.
34  Tabriz, 1271/1854–55; 1278/1861–62; JK2, vol. 4.
35  We use ‘Islamaic philosophy’ in place of the usual ‘Islamic philosophy’, ‘Muslim philoso-
phy’, or ‘Arabic philosophy’. The distinction between Islamic and Islamaic is analogous
to the distinction between Hellenic and Hellenistic. Examples: ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib articu-
lated an Islamic, but not an Islamaic, philosophy. Maimonides was an Islamaic, but not
an Islamic, philosopher. Islamaic philosophy appropriates and develops a non-Islamic
(Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, etc.) heritage. It is our intention to discuss this distinction in
further detail in the course of a forthcoming work.
36  JK1, vol. 2, p. 222 ff.; JK2, vol. 1, p. 49 ff. The last part of this work (ibid., pp. 76–97) ends with
a little-noticed commentary on a section of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār (Safar 3, Mawqif 2, Faṣl 5).
78 Hamid

The final seven works of the eight mentioned in the list above represent
the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad in its most mature form. They constitute his
opera majora as well as the most complete expression of the last major philo-
sophical school of traditional Muslim civilization, occurring as it did on the
cusp of the onset of the civilizational condition currently called “modernity”.

2.2 Secondary Philosophical Works and Opera Minora

Space does not permit an inventory of all of Shaykh Aḥmad’s numerous other
philosophical works. Some of them, such as al-Risāla al-Tawbiliyya and al-
Risāla al-Rashtiyya, are quite long and contain deep, original answers to nu-
merous questions on mysticism, alchemy, and other Hermetic sciences. Other
works contain insightful answers to questions from his students on difficult
passages in major works such as Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid. From a plethora of treatises
(rasāʾil) and individual responses to questions, one could construct a genuine
opera minora of his secondary philosophical works.

3 Legacy and Influence

3.1 Students and Close Disciples

A comprehensive list of all the known students of Shaykh Aḥmad has not been
drawn up, and the lists one finds in the various sources for his life are incom-
plete. The vicissitudes of the era, including the intense persecution suffered by
the devoted followers of the Shaykh, have left us, in many cases, with little in-
formation about a given student of significance beyond a name. What follows
is a short selection of important students and disciples.

1. Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (d. 1259/1844)

By far the most significant of Shaykh Aḥmad’s disciples, Sayyid Kāẓim
became a student of the Shaykh during the Yazd period. He became so close
to Shaykh Aḥmad that Khwānsārī describes him as the equivalent of the “shirt
on the body” of the Shaykh.37 In the last years of his life, Shaykh Aḥmad often
delegated the task of responding to philosophical questions he had received to
Sayyid Kāẓim.
As persecution of the school of Shaykh Aḥmad began in earnest shortly after
his passing, it became the responsibility of Sayyid Kāẓim to defend his teacher
as well as continue to expand upon his teachings. He wrote at least 140 books
and treatises in Arabic and Persian, most of them under constant, unrelenting

37  M. B. Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 1, p. 225.

Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 79

duress. He died in Karbala, his adopted home for many years, at about 55 years
of age. Most of his larger projects were never completed and some of his works
exhibit a rushed quality. There was hardly ever time to go back and carefully
edit any particular book or treatise.
No one among the immediate students of the Shaykh appears to have
grasped the dialectical and objective-logical depth of the thought and meth-
odology of Shaykh Aḥmad to the same degree as Sayyid Kāẓim.38 At the same
time, in his own writings Shaykh Aḥmad always keeps the expression of his
dialectical metaphysics and phenomenology under tight control so that a care-
ful reader can, with reasonable effort, follow its phases. In the case of Sayyid
Kāẓim the reins on the movement of dialectical thought are loosened to the
point where, on occasion, he becomes extremely obscure. One of the Sayyid’s
more accessible philosophical works is his Commentary on the Ḥadīth of ʿImrān
al-Ṣābīʾ. The text being explained is a dialogue and debate between Imām Riḍā
and a Hermetic philosopher.39
2. Mullā Kāẓim b. ʿAlī Naqī Simnānī
Shaykh Aḥmad wrote three treatises in reply to Mullā Kāẓim. In the first of
them, the student addresses the teacher as his spiritual father. In the third, the
teacher calls the student his “dear and honored son”.40 Mullā Kāẓim Simnānī
wrote a commentary on al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya that has been at least partially
preserved in manuscript.
3. Mullā Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Naṣīr Rashtī Gīlānī
From a note by Sayyid Kāẓim,41 one gathers that he was the son of a promi-
nent judge. Mullā Muḥammad wrote an important commentary on al-Fawāʾid
al-ḥikmiyya which was written during the lifetime of the Shaykh; a complete
copy is available only in a single manuscript.42 This commentary is drawn in
large part from lectures given by Shaykh Aḥmad, who earlier (in 1230/1815)

38  Hence the famous statement attributed to Shaykh Aḥmad: “Sayyid Kāẓim gets it; the rest
do not.”
39  This dialogue may be found in a number of sources, including the ḥadīth collection
­al-Tawḥīd by Shaykh Ṣadūq (Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Babawayh, d. 381/990–991).
40  JK2, vol. 2, pp. 286 and 332.
41  Sayyid Kāẓim b. Qāsim al-Ḥusaynī Rashtī, Jawāhir al-ḥikam, 15 vols. (Basra: Maktaba
­al-Ghadīr, 2011), vol. 7, p. 339.
42  Henry Corbin had access to a photocopy of the manuscript of this work, and was ap-
parently impressed with Mullā Muḥammad al-Gīlānī’s commentary. See Henry Corbin,
Face de Dieu, Face de l’Homme (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), p. 167; idem, En Islam Iranien,
4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), vol. 4, p. 264. That unique manuscript is now housed in
Kitābkhāna u Markaz-i Asnād, Markaz-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī, Tehran; call
no. 298. It is our hope to be able to present a critical edition of this commentary in the
near future.
80 Hamid

completed a treatise in response to some of Mullā Muḥammad’s philosophical

questions. There he rebuts an interesting attempt by his student to reconcile
some of the Shaykh’s positions with those of Mullā Ṣadrā.
4. Mullā Muḥammad b. Muqīm Bārfirūshī Māzandārānī
A budding scholar pursuing his higher studies in Isfahan, Mullā Muḥammad
apparently met Shaykh Aḥmad during the latter’s final visit to the city, where
he gave the 53 days of lectures mentioned earlier. He asked Mullā Muḥammad
to take time from his other studies and to focus some attention upon his
major works such as Sharḥ al-Ziyāra, Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir and Sharḥ al-Ḥikma
al-ʿarshiyya. At some point this mullā, possessing only the first volume of Sharḥ
al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, began a commentary on it for the benefit of beginning
and intermediate students. Apparently he never completed it, but what he
wrote survives in a number of manuscripts.43
5. Shaykh ʿAlī Naqī b. Aḥmad b. Zayn al-Dīn (d. 1246/1830)
Among the children of Shaykh Aḥmad, the most learned of them and the
closest to his way of thinking was his second son, ʿAlī Naqī. He passed away in
Kermanshah less than five years after his father. He often served as his father’s
secretary; a number of manuscripts said to be autographs of Shaykh Aḥmad
are actually in the handwriting of Shaykh ʿAlī Naqī.44 At his father’s request he
sometimes wrote responses to questions received by the former. Like Sayyid
Kāẓim, he participated in writing works in defense of the thought of Shaykh
Aḥmad. His early passing (from a plague that swept through Kermanshah) is
one factor that made the burden of Sayyid Kāẓim that much greater.
6. Mīrzā Ḥasan Gawhar (d. 1266/1849)
Mīrzā Ḥasan met Shaykh Aḥmad in Karbala, probably around 1230/1815.
He became a devoted student of the Shaykh, and later became a close com-
panion and student of Sayyid Kāẓim.45 Mīrzā Ḥasan was arguably more at-
tracted to theology (kalām) proper than to philosophy (falsafa) per se. His
works provided the foundations for the more scholastic sub-branch of the
Shaykhiyya after the passing of Sayyid Kāẓim. His most prominent student,
Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir Uskūʾī (d. 1301/1883), became the progenitor of what
would become one of the most important families in the leadership of this
sub-branch of the Shaykhī community. Towards the middle of the 20th cen-
tury this family came to dominate the leadership of scholastic Shaykhism, a
­position it m
­ aintains up to the present day.

43  This includes one at the Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī collection, Tehran; and four at the
Marʿashī Library, Qom.
44  This includes some of the manuscripts in the Kirmānī Collection of Shaykhī manuscripts.
45  See M. Ḥ. al-Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya, pp. 183–185.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 81

7. Mīrzā Muḥammad Shafīʿ b. Ḥusayn Māmaqānī (d. 1269/1852)

After completing his higher studies in jurisprudence and theology in the
ʿAtabāt, Mīrzā Muḥammad Shafīʿ passed through Kermanshah on the return
journey to his hometown of Tabriz. Going to the city’s main mosque, he hap-
pened to hear a lecture that Shaykh Aḥmad gave after performance of the pub-
lic communion. Deeply impressed, he decided to put off return to his city. He
became a devoted disciple of the Shaykh, who eventually commanded Mīrzā
Muḥammad to return to Tabriz and to serve the community there.46
Mīrzā Muḥammad Shafīʿ never became a full-fledged philosopher in its
theoretical dimensions, although he lived his later life in Tabriz under the pro-
found influence of his teacher’s practical philosophy. His importance lies pri-
marily in the fact that he and a few generations of his descendants in Tabriz
constituted one of the most important families in the scholastic sub-branch
of Shaykhī thought until the early-to-mid 20th century; during this period, the
Māmaqānī family produced a number of historically important and excep-
tional scholars.
8. Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī Āl Jabbār al-Qaṭīfī (d. 1252/1836)
Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī was a very important mujtahid of Greater
Bahrain (also called Hajar), including the districts al-Qaṭīf, al-Aḥsāʾ, and the
island of Bahrain proper. He corresponded with Shaykh Aḥmad, and the latter
wrote at least two treatises in response to questions from Shaykh Muḥammad.
Sayyid Kāẓim also wrote at least one treatise in response to this scholar.
9. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Hamadānī
It is not clear if Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ever met Shaykh Aḥmad; however, he
is said to have been one of the most important students of Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī.
Later he became associated with Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kirmānī.47 He
is known for his Persian treatise ʿIlm-i ilāhī, a philosophical investigation of Di-
vine Knowledge that also replies to and seeks to refute the objections of some
of the philosophers of Isfahan to Shaykh Aḥmad’s own Sharḥ Risālat al-ʿilm
(Commentary on the Treatise on Knowledge). Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ṣamad has an-
other work in Arabic that, as far as this author is aware, a) exists in a single
manuscript;48 and b) is not mentioned either in the published bibliographies

46  Ibid., pp. 186–188.

47  See page 84 f. There is a brief entry on him in Aḥmad Ḥusaynī Ashkiwarī, Tarājim al-rijāl:
Majmʿa tarājim li-aʿlām aktharuhum maghmūrūn tunsharu mawādduhā al-tārīkhiyya li-
awwal marra. 4 vols. (Qom: Dalīl-i Mā, 1423/2007), vol. 2, p. 62. See also Muḥammad Karīm
Khān Kirmānī, Sharḥ Duʿāʾ al-saḥār (Tehran, 1318/1900), p. 3.
48  U CLA Biomedical Collection, Arabic, MS 116 (coll. 1062); held previously in the Shaykhi-
yah Collection (coll. 1655). Most recently a few leaves of this work from another manu-
script (details not yet available) have come to the attention of the author of this chapter.
82 Hamid

or any other work. The manuscript is apparently incomplete; it appears likely

that the work was not finished. It constitutes a more detailed philosophical
study of knowledge. It includes the author’s own critical commentary on pas-
sages from Mullā Ṣadrā, as well as references to Pre-Socratic philosophers such
as Thales.

3.2 Licensees and Other Contemporaries

A number of Shaykh Aḥmad’s contemporaries in the scholastic establishment
were not, strictly speaking, his students or disciples. Although pillars of the
learned establishment, they were also admirers of the Shaykh who sought and
received licenses from him for the narration of the traditions (aḥādīth) of the
Imāms. Mention is restricted to four of the most famous as well as one lesser-
known figure:

1. Ḥājj Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Karbāsī (d. 1261/1845)

Of the most influential scholars of Isfahan, he was probably the most
outwardly devoted to Shaykh Aḥmad. Like his friend Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, he was
also a student of the mystical philosopher Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī. Ḥājj
Muḥammad Ibrāhīm specialised in philosophy of law, a field in which he wrote
a famous multi-volume work, Ishārāt al-uṣūl.49
2. Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh Shubbar (d. 1241/1825)
Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh was especially well known as a theologian and as a com-
mentator on the Qurʾān. One of his most popular books is his two-volume
Ḥaqq al-yaqīn, on the essentials of creed (ʿaqīda).
3. Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Najafī (d. 1266/1849)
Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan was the author of Jawāhir al-kalām, an encyclo-
pedia of jurisprudence that remains the most important work written in the
field up to the present day.50 Despite his (relatively minor) connection with
Shaykh Aḥmad, he was critical of the efforts of the latter’s student, Sayyid
Kāẓim.
4. Shaykh Murtaḍā al-Anṣārī (d. 1281/1864)
It was Shaykh Murtaḍā who revolutionized the foundations of the philoso-
phy of law; so much so that it is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all

49  The aforementioned biographer Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī was one of the disciples of
Karbāsī.
50  Followed closely by al-Ḥadāʾiq al-naḍira by the akhbārī scholar Shaykh Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī
(d. 1186/1772). The traditionalist (akhbārī) school of jurisprudence stands in contradis-
tinction to the principlist (uṣūlī) school mentioned earlier (p. 68).
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 83

mujtahidūn (s. mujtahid) today follow his school of legal philosophy in one way
or other. He is famous for the advanced text Farāʾid al-uṣūl.
5. Mullā Muḥammad Mahdī b. Muḥammad Shafīʿ Astarābādī (d. 1259/1843–44)
Already an established scholar, he happened to be living in Kermanshah
around the time that Shaykh Aḥmad established residence there. Three or four
treatises of Shaykh Aḥmad were written in response to sets of questions sub-
mitted by this mullā. One of the sets of questions sent by Mullā Muḥammad
Mahdī to Shaykh Aḥmad includes inquiries pertaining to some fine points in
the Peripatetic philosophy of Ibn Sīnā and Fārābī.51 This is unusual; philosoph-
ical questions presented to the Shaykh were usually in the context of either his
own thought or that of Illuminationists belonging to the school of Mullā Ṣadrā.
An important contemporary, admirer, and sometime critic of the Shaykh
was Mullā ʿAlī b. Jamshīd Nūrī. We will speak more about Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī in
Section 4.3.52

3.3 Shaykhism
The spark ignited by Baraghānī and his associates inevitably led to a polariza-
tion in the scholastic establishment between the supporters of Shaykh Aḥmad
and his detractors. Despite the best attempts of some of the students of Shaykh
Aḥmad and the companions of Sayyid Kāẓim, such as Mīrzā Ḥasan Gawhar
and Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī Āl Jabbār, to effect a reconciliation with
official circles (especially in the ʿAtabāt), the growing consensus of the leaders
of the establishment gradually leaned much more towards the detractors of
the Shaykh than towards his supporters.
There is a consensus among historians and researchers that Shaykh Aḥmad
never had any intention to establish a distinct division or community within
Tashayyuʿ.53 Unfortunately, the mischief of the Shaykh’s enemies brought the
discussion of his high cosmological meditations down to the “marketplace,” a
circumstance bitterly lamented by Henry Corbin.54 Shunned by the official-
dom of the scholastic establishment, the most devoted followers of Shaykh
Aḥmad began to coalesce with their families into a sub-community of the larg-
er Shīʿī community. This community, which came to be known as that of the

51  JK2, vol. 2, pp. 469–504.

52  It has been stated that Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī also received an ijāza from Shaykh Aḥmad (H. Algar,
Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906, p. 69); this author has not been able to confirm that
claim.
53  See, e.g., M. Ḥ. al-Ṭāliqānī, al-Shaykhiyya, p. 197; H. Algar, Religion and State in Iran 1785–
1906, pp. 68–69.
54  See H. Corbin, History of Islamic philosophy. p. 356.
84 Hamid

Shaykhiyya—from ‘shaykh’, used to mention the most common title of Aḥmad

al-Aḥsāʾī—developed in three directions:

1. Scholasticism
Prominent, mainstream disciples such as Mīrzā Ḥasan Gawhar, Mīrzā
Muḥammad Shafīʿ, and Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī did, their utmost to
situate the teachings of Shaykh Aḥmad within the perimeter set by the scho-
lastic Uṣūlī establishment. Although they were never entirely successful in this
effort, they did achieve a fair degree of tolerance.
On the other hand, with perhaps a few exceptions, one does not find a high
degree of philosophical development in this branch. The theology propound-
ed by this branch of the Shaykhiyya does possess considerable spiritual depth,
especially with regard to the cosmological status of the Ahlulbayt. But these
insights are largely (though not exclusively) framed in close proximity to the
perimeter of the very scholastic framework that Shaykh Aḥmad sought to over-
come (see Section 4).
The scholastic branch of the Shaykhiyya community survives up to the present
day, particularly in the Persian-Gulf lands of Eastern Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
2. Theosophy
No one did as much to develop the theosophical potential latent in the
­writings of Shaykh Aḥmad and Sayyid Kāẓim as did one of the latter’s most
important students, Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kirmānī (d. 1288/1871). A
powerful and iconoclastic personality, the mark he left on the Shaykhī com-
munity was so great that, even today, Shaykhism eo nomine is often identified
with the work of this man and with the sub-branch of the Shaykhī community
that he established.55
In response to the persecution of Sayyid Kāẓim in the scholastic establish-
ment, Āqā Muḥammad Karīm made the fateful decision to break off from it
entirely. Most significantly: Via the focused application of his own genius,56 he
distilled much of the cosmological meditations of Shaykh Aḥmad and Sayyid

55  Even Henry Corbin considered Āqā Muḥammad Karīm to be the only genuine successor
of Sayyid Kāẓim. This is not surprising since, of the three sub-branches of the Shaykhī
community, the theosophical sub-branch was the most amenable to Corbin’s over-arch-
ing project of gnosis.
56  A number of western scholars, such as Mongol Bayat, have erroneously treated the thought
of Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kirmānī as though it is identical to that of Shaykh Aḥmad.
That is, they commit the fallacy of reading the theosophical distillations made by the Āqā
and then assuming that their content, context, and intentions are identical to those con-
tained in the cosmological meditations of Shaykh Aḥmad. This has contributed to severe
misunderstandings and misreadings of the Shaykh’s own socio-historical context as well
as of the philosophical foundations and intentions of his thought. Partly for this reason, a
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 85

Kāẓim into a new and accessible form intended for both lay people and ex-
perts alike: This distillation especially emphasized concepts such as the high
metaphysical stations of the Ahlulbayt and the cosmogony of the intermediary
universe of subtle matter, space and time: Hūrqilyā.57 A particularly controver-
sial doctrine developed by the Āqā is the doctrine of the Fourth Pillar (al-rukn
al-rābiʿ), pertaining to the need of the Shīʿī community at any given time for
the existence of at least one especially enlightened cognizant in their midst.
These and other doctrines distilled from high cosmological meditations on the
Prophetic sources, via a loving spiritual connection with the Ahlulbayt, consti-
tute what we call Āqā Muḥammad Karīm’s theosophy.58 This contrasts with the
scholastic establishment’s traditional method, which involves the distillation
of scholastic theology from the Prophetic sources via (in large measure) the dry
and dispassionate application of traditional Aristotelian logic.
Āqā Muḥammad Karīm was keenly aware of the importance of the dialecti-
cal and objective-logical aspects of the thought of Shaykh Aḥmad. However,
the dialectical movement of the cosmos and consciousness that is so critical
to the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad becomes somewhat ossified in the the-
osophy of Āqā Muḥammad Karīm. His theosophy and associated praxis are, in
an important sense, conservative. Indeed, it is not far-fetched to compare Āqā
Muḥammad Karīm’s interpretation of the teachings of Shaykh Aḥmad with
the contemporary phenomenon of Right-Hegelianism in Europe.
The theosophical school of Shaykhī thought still has many adherents: The
main sub-branch, led until recent times by the descendants of Āqā Muḥammad
Karīm, is centered in Kerman and Basra. A smaller sub-branch of theosophical
Shaykhism, founded by one of Āqā Muḥammad Karīm’s best students, Mīrzā
Muḥammad Bāqir Hamadānī (d. 1319/1900–1901), is still active in cities such as
Mashhad, Isfahan and Tehran.
3. Radicalism
Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad Shīrāzī (d. 1265/1850) attended the lectures of Sayyid
Kāẓim for about two years. Soon after the passing of the latter in 1259/1844, he
announced his own mission as the Gate (bāb) of the awaited Twelfth Imām of

major portion of Chapter 2 of Bayat’s Mysticism and Dissent (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1982), which discusses Shaykh Aḥmad and his teachings, is worthless.
57  Commonly misspelled ‘hūrqalyā’ (with middle ‘a’ in place of ‘i’) by Corbin and others;
however, Shaykh Aḥmad has explicitly vocalized it as ‘hūrqilyā’. See, e.g., JK2, vol. 2, p. 91;
vol. 5, p. 129.
58  We are using ‘theosophy’ in a broad sense to mention an organized framework of doctrine
and practice grounded in claims to special cognizance of (as opposed to mere faith in)
matters pertaining to cosmological origin, meaning, and destiny, as well as of mysteries
beyond the physical world.
86 Hamid

Tashayyuʿ, al-Ḥujja b. al-Ḥasan. This was the beginning of that 19th-century

revolutionary movement known as Bābism.
Although many of its adherents and the bulk of its leadership were students
or admirers of Sayyid Kāẓim to one degree or other, Bābism is best described as
post-Shaykhī. Three points stand out. First, Bābism was radically theosophical:
The Bāb would eventually claim a semi-divine status for his position. Second,
Bābism was quite Gnostic in the classical sense: The age of the Islamic legal
and ritual dispensation (sharīʿa) was now coming to an end, to be replaced
in the new, post-legalist era. Finally, Bābism culminated in a revolutionary,
egalitarian fervor that actually tried to overthrow the Iranian monarchy. In
these three aspects we see that Bābism may, in all fairness, be considered as
constituting both a Gnostic and a millenarianist movement, much like certain
phases in the history of Ismāʿīlism.
In Bābism the vertical dialectic of Shaykh Aḥmad is aggressively mapped
onto the horizontal plane of the phenomenal world of historical time. Dur-
ing the rebellion against the monarchy, followers of Bābism (if not the Bāb
himself) promoted a radical praxis which may be positively compared with
socialism or even communism. Bābism was to Shaykhism as the Hegelian Left
was to Hegelianism.
The leaders of Shaykhism proper, from both the scholastic and theosophical
communities, vigorously opposed Bābism. On the theosophical side, the Bāb
and Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān became bitter enemies. On the scholastic
side, Mīrzā Muḥammad Shafīʿ of Tabriz played an important leadership role in
the trial and, after a curiously long wait, the final condemnation of Sayyid ʿAlī
Muḥammad for spreading corruption in the earth.59

3.4 Later Trends

The failed but ferocious Bābī rebellion in Iran reinforced the burgeoning anti-
Shaykhī sentiment in the scholastic establishment. Any public teaching of
the works of Shaykh Aḥmad was largely banned. Although his admirers and
followers among the Shaykhiyya have continued to vigorously defend him
from false accusations and to preserve his writings (as well as those of Sayyid
Kāẓim), the exposition and further development of the philosophy proper of
the Shaykh went into a very steep decline from which it has not yet recovered.

59  The Bāb was executed on 28 Rajab 1266/9 June 1850. Accounts of the history and doc-
trines of the Bābī movement include H. Algar, Religion and State in Iran 1785–1906, Ch. 8;
M. Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent, Ch. 4; and D. MacEoin, The Messiah of Shiraz (Leiden:
Brill, 2009). Each account is significantly problematic in one respect or other and must be
approached with caution.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 87

Yet even in the current centers of the scholastic establishment such as Qom
and the ʿAtabāt, certain senior scholars have privately continued to read and
benefit from him, although they would never admit this publicly. As this au-
thor has mentioned elsewhere:60 Despite being followers of Mullā Ṣadrā in
philosophy and, to a degree, Ibn ʿArabī in mysticism; there is reason to believe
that mystical philosophers and cognizants such as Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī
Shāhābādī (d. 1323 Sh./1944), as well as his famous student, Sayyid Rūḥ Allāh
Khumaynī (d. 1368 Sh./1989), were under the influence of Shaykh Aḥmad in
some significant way. It was bad enough that they were philosophers in the
tradition of Mullā Ṣadrā (a tradition that was barely tolerated by the establish-
ment in the middle of the 20th century); to openly acknowledge the additional
influence of the Shaykh with so much as a whisper or even a nod would have
spelled professional suicide.
Another example is provided by Shaykh Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Baḥrānī al-Najafī
(ca. 1275/1858), a well-respected mainstream scholar of the ʿAtabāt: He wrote
an influential book on spiritual wayfaring, al-Ṭarīq ilā Allāh.61 The biographi-
cal encyclopaedia Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, by Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn (d. 1371/1952), has
an entry on him.62 Now Sayyid Muḥsin displays a negative attitude towards
Shaykh Aḥmad, one exemplified by an extraordinarily prejudiced entry that
arguably crosses the line into scholarly misconduct.63 In contrast, this sayyid
gives both Shaykh Ḥusayn and his book unqualified high praise. Yet Chapter
Nine of al-Ṭarīq ilā Allāh constitutes, in virtually its entirety, praise of and com-
mentary on the verses received in his early visions by Shaykh Aḥmad from
Imām Ḥasan!64 Again, Shaykh Aḥmad’s name is not mentioned explicitly.
As far as this author can tell, attitudes towards Shaykh Aḥmad in the scho-
lastic establishment are slowly but steadily relaxing; there is still a consider-
able way to go. On the other hand, despite the increasing availability of his
works—one can now find them sold semi-openly even in Qom—profound,
critical philosophical examination and further development of the cosmologi-
cal meditations of the Shaykh remain in a sorry and deplorable state.

60  Hamid Idris Samawi, “Al-Qurʾān wa al-ʿItraḧ: A Treatise from the Rašaḥāt al-Biḥār of
Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Šāhʾābādī,” International Journal of Shīʿī Studies 2 1 (2003): 121–158
(121–126).
61  Shaykh Ḥusayn al-Baḥrānī, al-Ṭarīq ilā Allāh (Tehran: al-Zahrāʾ, 1423/2002).
62  Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa (Beirut: Dār al-Taʿāruf li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1403/1983),
vol. 6, p. 119.
63  Ibid., vol. 2, p. 569.
64  See p. 67 of this chapter.
88 Hamid

4 Selected Arcs in the Philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad

4.1 Preliminary Considerations65

Among the conditions of Wisdom is that the investigator not place all
of his reliance upon his principles and axioms. Whoever does that will
hardly ever hit upon the true. Rather, he will see each thing which agrees
with his principles as correct, even if his ego (nafs) discovers that that
thing is outweighed [by something else]: When he turns towards its
being outweighed, he still complies with it owing to his dependence on
his principles. And he will see each thing which conflicts with his prin-
ciples as false, even if he finds within his ego (nafs) that that thing out-
weighs [what he already holds to be the case] or otherwise finds its truth;
owing to his over-reliance on his principles. But maybe the mistake is in
his principles.
Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya66

Approaching the factual content of philosophy ( falsafa or ḥikma) with a clean

slate and no presuppositions: That is perhaps the key point of attack in Shaykh
Aḥmad’s iconoclastic approach to philosophy and science. Although there is
no escape from the pre-philosophical choices that must be made, even those
choices have a presuppositionless aspect. The presuppositionless movement
of consciousness directs one to the pre-philosophical choices, and the pre-
philosophical choices direct and give context to the presuppositionless move-
ment of consciousness.
For presuppositionless philosophy is, first and foremost, objective philoso-
phy. It calls for the cultivation of one’s entire subjective self, of the entire mi-
crocosm, in objective cohesion with the world; as a mirror that reflects the
macrocosm.67 This emphasis on the entirety of the subjective self (= ego, nafs)68

65  In conformance with the standard convention for the use-mention distinction, through-
out this chapter we use a single-quote name to mention an expression, sentence, or other
string of characters; we use a double-quote name to mention a concept, proposition, or
other object of conceptual thought per se. We also use double quotes in the usual sense of
quoting the speech or comments of others. For each case, the context should make clear
which sense of double-quotes is intended.
66  JK2, vol. 1, p. 282.
67  The precise senses in which we are using ‘objective’, ‘subjective’, and their cognates will be
clarified in the course of Section 4.2.
68  Shaykh Aḥmad emphasizes the distinction between nafs in the Hellenistic sense (psyche
or soul) and nafs in the Qurʾānic sense (subjective self); the latter is a sense for which the
English word ‘ego’ is a good approximation. Similar to the case with the word ‘ʿaql’ (to be
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 89

points to the fact that, in contrast to the paradigm of Aristotelian science fol-
lowed by traditional Islamaic philosophy, the theoretical and practical cannot
at this, or at any, point be separated:

Sometimes, by ‘ḥikma’ is meant “theoretical wisdom (al-ḥikma al-

ʿilmiyya)”; and sometimes, “practical wisdom (al-ḥikma al-ʿamaliyya)”.
Now we mean by ‘ḥikma’ that wisdom which is, at once, both theoretical
and practical.69

Through night and day the microcosm meditates on Heaven and Earth. The
struggle of the microcosm, in its subjective self (nafs), to objectively reflect
the macrocosm is symbolic of the relationship between receiving light (analo-
gous to a mirror) and accurately sending it back. Receiving and sending back,
in turn, is symbolic of the relationship between a principle of revelation (or
descent) and one of ascension (or ascent). Finally, the relationship between a
principle of revelation and one of ascension is symbolic of something to which
the Shaykh and his intended audience (viz., the contemporary intelligentsia of
the Shīʿah) already had access: the Qurʾān and the Ahlulbayt. According to a
famous tradition of the Messenger: “Just as I fought for the tanzīl (descending
from the origin), you, O ʿAlī! will fight for the ta‌ʾwīl (ascending to the origin).”
From the initial point of attack, Shaykh Aḥmad makes a pre-philosophical
commitment. As a Shīʿī Muslim an objective, and hence, presuppositionless,
commitment to the Qurʾān and the Ahlulbayt as the sources of wisdom is al-
ready demanded:70

Weigh and measure with a straight and effective balance. That is better
and more beautiful by way of ta‌ʾwīl. (Q 17:35)

Going further: If the Qurʾān and the Ahlulbayt are indeed true, in an appropri-
ate and strong sense of ‘true’, then these two in their relationship to one anoth-
er must also objectively map onto the relationship between the macrocosm and
the microcosm, between the objective horizons and the subjective ego. Thus

discussed below, p. 3), the Hellenistic influence on Islamaic philosophy has obscured the
primordial prophetic and Qurʾānic senses of the former term. A detailed theory of the
nafs qua ego, under development by the author, is being prepared for an upcoming book;
see fn. 143.
69  Ibid.
70  That is, the Qurʾān and the Ahlulbayt demand the struggle for an objective commitment
to themselves, not a dogmatic one. See Idris Samawi Hamid, Islām, Sign and Creation: The
Cosmology of Walāyah (New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2011), pp. 33–35.
90 Hamid

the presuppositionless, objective movement of consciousness involves a cos-

mological meditation and praxial spirit within a four-way system of universes
of discourse (i.e., categories) and the maps between them: an objective map-
ping between the macrocosm and the microcosm (movement one), an objec-
tive mapping between the Qurʾān and the teachings of the Ahlulbayt (move-
ment two); and, most critically, an objective mapping between movement one
and movement two, e.g., from macrocosm to the Qurʾān and from microcosm
to the Ahlulbayt. It is within this framework of objective logic that the enter-
prise of presuppositionless philosophy begins, and in which the primary aim
of ḥikma develops:

We will show them Our signs in the horizons [macrocosms] and in their
egos [microcosms] until it becomes clear to them that He is the True
(Q 41:53).

Approaching the philosophy and cosmological meditations of Shaykh Aḥmad

is a difficult task. In part, this is because his presuppositionless approach can-
not be mapped in any one-to-one manner onto the principles or methodol-
ogy of any major philosopher, scientist or theologian of Muslim civilization
preceding him. In comparison: Mullā Ṣadrā, for all his genius and creativity,
was fundamentally an ishrāqī (Illuminationist) philosopher in the tradition of
Suhrawardī. Suhrawardī, for all his criticism of Ibn Sīnā, still conducted argu-
mentation by use of Peripatetic methods of discourse rooted in the Aristote-
lian paradigm of logic and apodictic method (the same goes for Mullā Ṣadrā).
Shaykh Aḥmad was, in a distinct manner, much more radical. Some western
scholars have erroneously tried to peg our Shaykh as a follower of Mullā Ṣadrā,
Mīr Dāmād, Suhrawardī, or even, absurdly, of Ismāʿīlī and “Gnostic” thought.71
Yes, there is an important sense in which Shaykh Aḥmad does belong to the
Illuminationist tradition of the afore-mentioned figures, as will be discussed
in the sequel; there can be no doubt that the thought of the Shaykh is a prod-
uct (as well as a criticism) of his era. However, he initiated a radical paradigm
shift away from Peripatetic apodictics and its framework of first principles

71  See, e.g., Morris’ ill-informed statement in James Winston Morris, The Wisdom of the
Throne: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981), p. 71. In the case of Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān Kirmānī, the case for Ismāʿīlī
(but not Gnostic) influence is perhaps arguable; more likely that is a matter of appear-
ance only. Just as he did successfully with Ismāʿīlī thought, Henry Corbin certainly tried to
fit Āqā Muḥammad Karīm’s theosophy into his own project of universal gnosis. But it is a
fallacy to project these hypotheses backwards and to identify them with the philosophical
intentions of Shaykh Aḥmad per se. Cp. fn. 56.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 91

presumed known to be true: For Shaykh Aḥmad, every definition and concept
of any significance, from any source, was subject to being filtered through his
presuppositionless objective logic within the perimeter of the four-way sys-
tem of categories and mutual mappings mentioned above. In that context, no
axiom, principle, or method is sacrosanct except to the degree that it can sur-
vive being critically filtered through that four-way system, a system which itself
must be approached via presuppositionless consciousness.
In the philosophical career of Shaykh Aḥmad, the first exposition of the
four-way system and of the movement of presuppositionless thought within it
is to be found in his extensive treatise on Hermetic sciences entitled Lawāmiʿ
al-wasāʾil fī ajwibati Jāmiʿ al-masāʾil, popularly known as The Tawbaliyya.
Completed in early 1211/1797,72 this is one of the Shaykh’s earliest works.
The date of completion is significant, in part because it precedes by nearly
two decades the beginning of the Shaykh’s explicit and extensive critique of
the works of Mullā Ṣadrā and his followers. A comparison of content shows
this early exposition to be identical in spirit with that of the introduction of
Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid, a work written concurrently with the critique of the Mullā,
and from which the epigraph that began this section is taken. Specifically,
The Tawbaliyya stresses the indispensable importance of cultivating
presuppositionless consciousness with respect to philosophical meditation
within the four-part system. These facts implicate, and the preponderance of
the evidence establishes, that the development of the philosophical thought
of the Shaykh was not motivated by or conceived as a reaction to the school
of Mullā Ṣadrā. On the contrary, the philosophical system of Shaykh Aḥmad
was driven by a nisus to develop and establish a genuine theory and praxis
of wisdom on the foundation of the four-way system of objective mappings,
not borrowing any presupposition (= axiom, principle) that does not flow from
that system. According to Shaykh Aḥmad, any such presupposition constitutes
a merely formal hypothesis of abstract, subjective thought, rational deduction

72  To be precise, Lawāmiʿ al-wasāʾil was completed on the night before 22 Shaʿbān 1211/19–20
February 1797; see JK2, vol. 8, pp. 39–266. Its alternative title is derived from the name of
a small village in Bahrain, the hometown of Shaykh ʿAbd ʿAlī ibn Shaykh ʿAlī al-Tawbalī.
Shaykh ʿAbd ʿAlī was the author of Jāmiʿ al-masāil, a work consisting of a set of questions
(pertaining, for the most part, to Hermetics) addressed to Shaykh Aḥmad; Lawāmiʿ al-
wasāʾil constitutes the latter’s reply to those questions.
   For an exposition of the four-way system of presuppositionless consciousness, see
ibid., pp. 131–132.
92 Hamid

from which does not demonstrate anything.73 This last point is emphasized in
many places, especially throughout Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir.74
That philosophical work must begin with a non-hypothetical (= presup-
positionless, concrete) starting point has been emphasized in different ways
and contexts by philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel.75 Fur-
thermore, it is the job of philosophy to do systematic justice to each mode of
human cognitive experience in conjunction with the objects of that experi-
ence, i.e., to bring all such modes and their objects into systematic cohesion
(ijtimāʿ). According to Shaykh Aḥmad, phenomenological investigation reveals
three fundamental modes of human cognitive experience; they constitute a
scale from base to summit. The first is knowledge (inclusive of coming-to-
know) in the narrow sense (ʿilm, taʿallum); its locus is peripheral consciousness
(ṣadr), its object (in the broad sense of ‘object’ that encompasses that which is
grasped by each cognitive mode) is form (ṣūra) and appearance (ẓuhūr). The
second is nexal prehending (ʿaql, taʿaqqul); its locus is central consciousness
(qalb), its object is some specific reality (ḥaqīqa) and object in the strict sense
(maʿnā). At the peak of cognitive experience there is cognizance (maʿrifa); its
locus is primordial, singular, blaze consciousness (fuʾād), its object is the True
(al-ḥaqq).76 This non-hypothetical, concrete starting point of Wisdom, objec-
tively grasped by the highest mode of cognitive experience, is what Shaykh
Aḥmad calls al-wujūd al-ḥaqq (True Existence); it is the proper denotation of
Hegel’s expression ‘die Sache selbst’ (the Fact itself).77 For Shaykh Aḥmad, the

73  See the distinction between Aristotelian cognitivism and Platonic deductivism discussed
in Section 4.4. In short, Shaykh Aḥmad rejects the Aristotelian cognitivism that was a
hallmark of Islamaic philosophy up to his time.
74  For example, JK2, vol. 3, p. 379.
75  See R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Philosophical Method, New Edition (Oxford, 2005), p. 123.
76  The phenomenology of cognitive experience is discussed in many places; for a standard
exposition see Observation 1 of Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid: JK2, vol. 1, pp. 285–295. Cp. the early
exposition of these three modes in The Tawbaliyya: JK2, vol. 8, pp. 50–54. It is critical to
the comprehension of Shaykh Aḥmad to note that, in his system, neither of the two lower
modes constitutes the proper vehicle for true philosophical meditation; that is subserved
by the highest, viz, cognizance; see p. 111.
   The word ‘singular’ is used, in the context of the topos of cognizance, as the adjectival
form of both ‘single’ (aḥad) and ‘singularity’ (ṣamad); see p. 113.
77  See JK2, vol. 1, p. 296ff. For Hegel, ‘die Sache selbst’ denotes the ultimate object of Vernunft
(Reason); see Collingwood, loc. cit. Shaykh Aḥmad, however, would say that Vernunft in
Hegel’s sense, even if concrete, does not and cannot reach the Fact itself (= the True). At
most, Vernunft belongs to the second mode of cognitive experience, that constituted by
nexal-prehending; see previous footnote. In the sense expressed by Kant, Vernunft is not
concrete: It does not grasp any real object, only an abstract structure belonging to a con-
scious subject; see fn. 107.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 93

True (= the Fact itself) is the primordial phenomenological and metaphysical

ground through which one meditates and operates within the network con-
sisting of the four universes (the macrocosm, the microcosm, the Qur’an, and
the Tradition (sunna) of the Ahlulbayt) and the objective mappings between
them. For the earlier Islamaic traditions of philosophy, the doctrines and
methodology of Aristotle and his successors are to a significant degree taken as
canonical; such canonicity is rejected by the Shaykh as a form of unwarranted
dogmatism (taqlīd) because it absolutizes a criterion that does not result from
presuppositionless consciousness via the Fact itself.78
It has been maintained that the historical development of philosophy in
Muslim civilization after Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198), especially with regard to the
traditions of Illuminationism and Sufi metaphysics, constitutes a movement
towards a philosophy that may truly be called “Islamic” in the strict sense of
‘Islamic’.79 Shaykh Aḥmad’s framework of Wisdom involves i) a cohesion of die
Sache selbst with a four-way system of universes and mappings that includes
the Qur’an and the Tradition of the Ahlulbayt as primary (as opposed to de-
rivative) sources of philosophical meditation and direction, coupled with ii)
a commitment to the movement of concrete, presuppositionless conscious-
ness through all the modes of cognitive experience and their objects. As such,
this framework constitutes a major milestone in the gradual transition from
Islamaic80 towards genuinely Islamic philosophy. At the same time, every
original philosophy constitutes, at once, a product and a criticism of its era.81
That Shaykh Aḥmad, in his later works, took a sharply critical approach to the
thought of Mullā Ṣadrā and his followers, that the Shaykh’s thought constitutes
a criticism of its era, is well known to later Islamaic philosophers and intel-
lectual historians; even if that critique has for the most part been subjected

78  See, e.g., JK2, vol. 3, p. 60. The Shaykh does not consider his own system dogmatic because
i) recognition of the four-way system constituting the ground for the phenomenological
realization of die Sache selbst already has an objective basis; and ii) presuppositionless
consciousness via die Sache selbst within the four-way system places no restriction on
cognitive experience (as found in, say, the Kalām). So there is no limitation on the deter-
mination of doctrine or the articulation of content to either a peripheral understanding
of the prophetic sources or to the techniques of discursive reasoning.
79  See, e.g., Corbin, History of Islamic philosophy (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993),
p. 254. For the strict sense of ‘Islamic’, see Hamid, op. cit., pp. 11–12.
80  For our use of ‘Islamaic philosophy’, see fn. 35. Shaykh Aḥmad persistently presses
upon his audience, the Shīʿī Illuminationists, that a proper cognitive framework for
metaphysics is already explicitly present in the teachings of the Ahlulbayt; presuppo-
sitional attachment to Aristotelian apodictics blinds them from seeing it; see, e.g., JK2,
vol. 3, p. 210.
81  See G. R. G. Mure, Retreat from Truth (Oxford, 1958), pp. 246–247.
94 Hamid

to caricature and severe misunderstanding.82 What has not been recognized

or sufficiently emphasized, however, is that the systematic critique of the
Mullā began only after at least two decades of development on the part of the
Shaykh, over the course of which his unique philosophical position matured
to its zenith.83 That position, as is obvious from the slightest inspection of
his works, draws upon and addresses many of the metaphysical interests and
problems contemplated in Shīʿī cosmology and praxis, Peripatetic philosophy,
the Illuminationist tradition extending from Suhrawardī to Mullā Ṣadrā, even
Sufi metaphysics;84 as such it is a product of its era. The Shaykh’s systematic
articulation of his meditation and praxis within the four-way system of uni-
verses and objective mappings, via the highest mode of presuppositionless
consciousness, encapsulates a radical, alternative philosophical approach to
contextualizing those interests through a cohesive framework and to solving
the associated problems.
Concomitant to being a product of its era, another step on the part of the
Shaykh in his appropriation of the content of traditional Islamaic philosophy
was necessitated, so that its form of expression could appropriately subserve
the articulation of his philosophical position. The movement of presupposi-
tionless consciousness and action through the four-way system of universes
and mappings, and the filtering of other concepts and principles through that
system, result in the sublation of the language of traditional philosophy. Put
another way, as one filters the problems of traditional falsafa (or any other sci-
ence or discipline) through presuppositionless cosmological meditation and
praxial spirit, the terminology has to be dissolved and recombined so that it will
function at a higher level commensurate with the results of that meditation
and praxis.
Expressions such as ‘sublation’ (German ‘aufheben’) invoke echoes of Shaykh
Aḥmad’s Western European contemporary G. W. Hegel (d. 1831). Words such
as ‘dissolving’ and ‘recombining’ have an alchemical ring. Phrases expressing
multiple universes of discourse in objective mutual cohesion carry a Hermetic
and objective-logical flavor. Locutions such as ‘movement of presupposition-
less consciousness’ carry a Heraclitean vibration. This is no accident: The im-
mediate outcome of presuppositionless philosophy turns out to be irreducibly

82  A point often stressed by Henry Corbin.

83  The moment of maturity can be dated: It corresponds to the completion of his magnum
opus, Sharḥ al-Ziyāra al-jāmiʿa al-kabīra. It is no accident that the effort to systematically
critique Mullā Ṣadrā and his followers in writing began immediately upon finishing Com-
mentary on the Grand Comprehensive Visitation; see p. 8.
84  Even at the height of his critique of Mullā Ṣadrā, the Shaykh matter-of-factly acknowl-
edges this. See, e.g., JK2, vol. 4, p. 241.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 95

dialectical in an important sense of ‘dialectic’. Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī was a

dialectical philosopher, and his ḥikma constitutes a dialectical philosophy. This
is a crucial point that must be grasped if one is to have any hope of genuinely
understanding the Shaykh or of properly contextualizing his thought within
philosophy in general.
Shaykh Aḥmad’s dialectic is constituted by the cohesion of presupposition-
less consciousness with its object in their mutual revelation and development
throughout all the modes of cognitive experience. The most obvious manifes-
tation of this dialectic consists in the dynamic tension or synthesis of oppo-
sites found within every level and between every two levels of the world. Con-
trary to the oft-repeated pronouncements of his detractors, Shaykh Aḥmad
had a thorough understanding of the technical vocabulary of traditional fal-
safa and scholasticism. But much of that vocabulary had to first be dissolved
and recombined, it had to be sublated, it had to be at once negated, preserved,
and lifted up (aufheben) in order for it to function as the proper vehicle for ar-
ticulating a dialectical philosophy.
A related difficulty in approaching Shaykh Aḥmad involves his use of phe-
nomenological categories, i.e., categories of the modes of experience. This phe-
nomenology is not something to be brought in posterior to an exercise in ab-
stract ontological analysis and scholastic apodictics. Rather, the phenomenol-
ogy of cognizance (maʿrifa) of the True must be taken into account as an inte-
gral, concrete factor in the movement of presuppositionless thought between
the nodes (= categories) of the four-way system. Bringing in phenomenology at
the outset of the exercise in objective logic is critical to being able to properly
account for things such as the primordial dialectical unity of consciousness
and (contingent) existence in the concrete phenomenological category of the
True.85 As Hegel famously remarked, “The examination of knowledge can only
be carried out by an act of knowledge.”86 More precisely for the purposes of
our Shaykh: The examination of phenomenological knowledge or cognizance can
only be carried out by an act of cognizance. Cognizance of the True, of the Fact
itself, is a necessary condition of genuine metaphysical thought. But for the

85  “The onset of the wujūd (existence) of a thing is the onset of its wijdān (existential con-
sciousness)”—JK2, vol. 1, p. 492. The use here of ‘existential’ to translate some of the
sense of ‘wijdān’ is suggestive of a yet to be explored relationship with its phenomeno-
logical uses in contemporary existentialism. Except in the context of translating ‘wijdān’,
throughout this essay ‘existential’ will be used to translate the adjectival form of ‘wujūd’
per se. The unity of wujūd and wijdān constitutes singular, blaze consciousness (fuʾād); see
p. 23.
86  Fredrik G. Weiss (ed.), Beyond Epistemology: New Studies in the Philosophy of Hegel (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), Foreword (p. v).
96 Hamid

masses who have not phenomenologically realized die Sache selbst (cognized
in and as that mode of experience that is the True, and which constitutes a
unity of consciousness and contingent existence) there is still hope, for the ob-
jective logic of the Shaykh maps this phenomenological category onto a sym-
bolic category that a fledgling philosopher can comprehend, but provided one
starts off with a clean slate free of presuppositions.

4.2 Objective Logic and Dialectics

The long chains of correct reasonings and calculations of which subjective

logic is justly proud are only possible within a precisely defined universe
of discourse, as has long been recognized. Since there are many such uni-
verses of discourse, thinking necessarily involves many transformations
between universes of discourse as well as transformations of one universe
of discourse into another. The results of applying logic in the narrow sense
to the laws of these objective transformations are necessarily inadequate….
Sets for Mathematics87

Surely those who possess the kernels of consciousness (ʿulu al-albāb)

know that the way of inference to what is there cannot be known except
by what is here!
Imām ʿAlī b. Mūsā l-Riḍā, in the course of his debate with the Hermeticist ʿImrān
al-Ṣābīʾ88

The terminology and other linguistic devices that Shaykh Aḥmad uses to ex-
press the outcomes of his cosmological meditation and praxis belong to his
object-language. In the object language of the Shaykh we do not find explicit
Arabic translations of words such as ‘objective logic’ or ‘dialectic’.89 These and
similar expressions belong to the meta-language in which we seek to articulate

87  F. William Lawvere and Robert Rosebrugh, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003,
pp. 239–240.
88  See fn. 39. This statement is frequently cited throughout the oeuvre of the Shaykh. Its first
occurrence in Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid is found in JK2, vol. 1, p. 279.
89  There is a translation of ‘dialectic’, in an Aristotelian sense of that word, common through-
out Islamaic logic: ‘jadal’. But Aristotle’s conception of dialectic, particularly as understood
by Islamaic scholasticism, is too impoverished to be useful in the context with which we are
concerned. More relevant to our meta-language are Hegelian conceptions of dialectic.
   Note the distinction between a dialectical paradigm and a dialectical doctrine. It is
the case that Shaykh Aḥmad and Hegel each operates within a dialectical paradigm of
metaphysics overall; in the effort to accurately articulate and convey certain arcs in the
metaphysics of the Shaykh, our meta-language uses, as appropriate, something of Hegel
(as well as of contemporary objective logic). However, it does not follow, and it is not the
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 97

the philosophical content of our Shaykh’s ḥikma, as well as to give it its proper
context in the field of Islamaic philosophy.90 Let us discuss some of this meta-
linguistic terminology in a more precise manner.
Traditional Aristotelian and scholastic metaphysics (including Illumina-
tionism in the forms it took prior to Shaykh Aḥmad) largely involves an exer-
cise in ontology in some scholastic sense of ‘ontology’. Used precisely, ‘ontol-
ogy’ has two standard families of meaning that are relevant to our discussion
of the ḥikma of Shaykh Aḥmad and that of related philosophers such as Mullā
Ṣadrā. These are the scholastic, Parmenidean senses and the contemporary-
logical, meta-linguistic senses.91
– Scholastic and Parmenidean senses of ‘ontology’
In most traditional scholastic senses, ontology is a branch of metaphys-
ics concerned with being per se. The word ‘ontology’ was popularized by
Christian Wolff (d. 1754), who identified ontology with “general metaphys-
ics”; this includes what is called “general matters” (al-umūr al-ʿāmma) in the
terminology of Islamaic philosophers, e.g., that of Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī
(d. 1289/1873).92 In the main, ontology in a scholastic, Parmenidean sense
considers abstract, fixed categories and forms of being, posited and grasped
by rational thought; the truths pertaining to these abstract categories and
forms are intuited as true first principles (e.g., Aristotle) or else posited as
hypotheses (e.g., Plato). Logical consequences of the first principles or hy-
potheses are then deduced by discursive thought. Such usages of ‘ontology’
may be called Parmenidean, after the pre-Socratic Parmenides, arguably the
father of ontology with respect to this family of senses.
– Contemporary-logical and meta-linguistic senses of ‘ontology’
In contemporary-logical senses, given a philosophical theory, its associated
ontology involves the universe of discourse constituted by those objects,

case that this essay in any way suggests, that they reach identical final conclusions or
share the same metaphysical doctrine; far from it. See also fn. 118.
90  For a succinct summary of this distinction, see John Corcoran and Idris Samawi Hamid,
“Meta-language, object-language,” Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 19 31 (2013), 232–233.
91  In contemporary Western philosophy, there is third family of usages of ‘ontology’ that
may be traced back to Heidegger, in the context of what he calls, “fundamental ontology.”
But this is irrelevant to our concerns here.
92  Although remarkably similar terms, Sabzawārī’s (and earlier Islamaic philosophers’) use
of ‘general matters’ (al-umūr al-ʿāmma) is significantly more restrictive than Wolff’s ‘gen-
eral metaphysics’: It does not include the categories substance and accident. In the course
of discussing Sabzawārī or others who use ‘al-umūr al-ʿāmma’, however, ontology must
include both general matters as well as substance and accident. After all, the latter cat-
egories are fundamental to ontology in any appropriate scholastic or Aristotelian sense.
Thus it is a mistake (and, unfortunately, a common one) to translate ‘al-umūr al-ʿāmma’
by ‘ontology’.
98 Hamid

properties, and internal mappings whose existence is in some sense neces-

sary for propositions expressed in that theory to be true. The proponent of
a given theory may or may not be aware of the ontology entailed by that
theory; the proponent of that theory may not even be committed to the ex-
istence of the objects in the entailed universe of discourse. The sentences
used to express a given philosophical theory belong to the object-language
of that theory; in general, the sentences used in the effort to determine the
ontology of a given theory belong to a meta-language with respect to that
theory. That is, in a meta-language with respect to a given theory, one at-
tempts to determine the ontology expressed by sentences in the object-lan-
guage of that theory.93
Strictly speaking, Shaykh Aḥmad does not practice ontology in the scholastic,
Parmenidean sense.94 Parmenides stands in opposition to his contemporary
Heraclitus, who did not take being per se (as opposed to becoming) as the sole
locus of reality. The way of the Shaykh, we shall see, is closer in spirit to the
dialectical approach of Heraclitus than to the ontological approach of Par-
menides, whose focus on being per se dominates the entire history of Western
metaphysics, including Islamaic philosophy.
At the same time one might ask: What kinds of objects have to exist as a nec-
essary condition for the propositions expressed in Shaykh Aḥmad’s dialectical
metaphysics to be true? The answer to this question is not as straightforward
as one might suppose. This is because the very notion “object” cannot be taken
in isolation. The question is still trapped in the confines of abstract categories
of being per se. Ontology in such a contemporary-logical sense involves the
positing of a single universe of discourse per philosophical theory. Now one
could force an answer to the question about the Shaykh’s so-called “ontology”.
But that would be unnatural or “inadequate” (quoting Lawvere and Rosebrugh
in the above epigraph). We could speak of “multiple ontologies” but that would
be misleading and confusing. It is better to speak of universes of discourse or
categories (plural) in dialectical cohesion. Shaykh Aḥmad is explicit:

93  This paragraph on ontology in the modern-logical sense was inspired in part by John
Corcoran’s review of K. Hodeston “Mathematical Representation: Playing a Role,” Philo-
sophical Studies 168 (2014): 769–782.
94  For convenience, in what follows we will speak elliptically of ontology in the scholastic
(= Parmenidean) sense and of ontology in the contemporary-logical (= meta-linguistic)
sense. ‘The scholastic, Parmenidean sense’ is short for ‘any one of a family of related
scholastic, Parmenidean senses.’ ‘The contemporary-logical sense’ is short for ‘any one of
a family of related contemporary-logical senses.’
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 99

It has been established in Wisdom (ḥikma), through the inferential-in-

dicator of Wisdom (dalīl al-ḥikma), that all of the motes of existence, of
both the invisible and visible realms, including [what are traditionally
classified as] substances and accidents, are [at once] correlational acci-
dents and also correlational substances; meaning that a given substance
is an accident in relation to its cause from which it has emanated; and
that cause [in turn] is an accident with respect to its own cause, and so
forth. Likewise we say that a given substance is a substance with respect
to its accident, and that a given accident is a substance with respect to
that which subsists through it.95

To the traditional practitioner of ontology in the scholastic, Parmenidean

sense, this is outrageous. In ontology the respective ranges of applicability of
the concepts “substance” and “accident” are fixed. An Aristotelian substance
is a locus of being in an absolute sense, not a relative one. However, Shaykh
Aḥmad is saying that whether or not something appears as a substance or an
accident depends on the perspective of some universe of discourse in which
it functions. In one universe, a given thing may function as a substance; with
respect to a higher u
­ niverse, it functions as an accident. The mapping from the
higher universe (locus of relative cause) to the lower universe (locus of relative
effect) involves what the Shaykh calls emanation (ṣudūr). His specific techni-
cal term for this mapping is ‘jiha’ (aspect,96 functor). In a single universe of
discourse, in an absolute ontology in the contemporary-logical sense, what the
Shaykh is doing appears odd. But when one switches to a conceptual system of
multiple universes of discourse within a dialectical unity of development and
sublation (aufheben), when we move from absolute ontology to correlational
categories or universes of discourse in dialectical movement and cohesion,
then one can see that what the Shaykh says makes perfect sense.
Ontology in the scholastic sense, as practiced in post-Avicennan Islama-
ic philosophy, from Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Suhrawardī down to Mīr Dāmād
and Mullā Ṣadrā, became preoccupied with dualisms and their solution via

95  JK2, vol. 2, pp. 293–294. Note that dalīl al-ḥikma (the inferential-indicator of Wisdom)
involves, at once, the activity of the highest mode of cognitive intuition (fuʾād) in cohe-
sion with a cogent discursive movement to an established conclusion. The structure and
content of cogent discursion in the context of dalīl al-ḥikma needs further study: For an
initial exploration, see I. S. Hamid, “A Foundation for Shīʿī Metaphysics,” 94–103. See also
fn. 151.
96  The word ‘aspect’ here is being used in a somewhat outdated astronomical sense of
‘direction’.
100 Hamid

reductionist abstractions.97 The existence-essence controversy that dominat-

ed later Illuminationist and Peripatetic debates is a case in point: “Existence”
(wujūd) is a concept of being; “essence” (māhiyya) is a concept of being. These
two concepts are incommensurate with each other: Being cannot be an exten-
sion of both concepts because then each thing would be two things (i.e., two
beings). This would lead to an indefinite regress; and so on. Therefore any real
being is the extension of only one of them. However, the essentialist (such as
Aristotle, Suhrawardī, or Mīr Dāmād) can only with great difficulty account
for the genuine unity of the cosmos, if at all.98 And the existentialist (such as
Mullā Ṣadrā or Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī) can only with great difficulty account for genu-
ine multiplicity, if at all.99
A spirit common to (the legendary) Hermes, Lao-Tzu (Taoism), Heraclitus,
Shaykh Aḥmad, Hegel, and Whitehead suggests a way out of these reduction-
ist dead ends. The chasms and dualisms that are posited within the paradigm
of ontology largely result from what Alfred North Whitehead calls the “fallacy
of misplaced concreteness.” This fallacy occurs when the intellect abstracts
from its experience of the world (or some significant subsystem of it) a set
of concepts, and then identifies the external world with the extension of one
or more of those concepts on the basis of abstract conceptual analysis. Often
the concepts involve some apparent binary opposition or mutual incompat-
ibility (such as mind versus body, spiritual versus material, or existence versus
essence). In such a case one has to either pull an intellectual high-wire act to
maintain both concepts (dualism), or else abandon one of the concepts and
identify the entirety of reality (or some significant subsystem of it) with the
extension of the other concept (reductionism). This is exactly the trap that
Islamaic scholastic philosophy fell into:

I noticed many of the seekers penetrating deeply into the divine sciences,
and supposing that they have penetrated deeply into the[ir] intended ob-
ject (maʿnā)—but it is only a deep penetration into semantics (alfāẓ),
nothing else …100

97  Cp. the crisis in later Western philosophy engendered by the Cartesian dualism of mind
and body, which Whitehead pointed to as involving the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
See the next paragraph.
98  For a profound discussion of Aristotle’s struggle with this matter, see G. R. G. Mure, Aris-
totle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 176; pp. 182–183.
99  See, e.g., F. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1975), pp. 37–38.
100  JK2, vol. 1, pp. 279–280.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 101

The “semantics” being criticized here involves an analysis of conceptual

forms via peripheral consciousness. Such analyses involve merely abstract
thought that in no manner can demonstrate anything about the True (= die
Sache selbst) or provide cognizance (maʿrifa).101 In the effort to overcome the
fallacious dualisms and reductionisms entailed by traditional scholasticism,
one must leave ontology behind and seek recourse to objective logic. The ex-
pression ‘objective logic’ is due to Hegel;102 a usage of this expression closely
related to our own is due to the contemporary mathematician William Lawvere
(a deep and critical student of Hegel’s dialectic). As a formal science, objective
logic is a relatively new and highly abstract discipline, closely connected or
identified with the branch of mathematics called category and topos theory,
of which Lawvere is one of the seminal developers. Yet that formal develop-
ment is inspired by an ancient idea, one that finds its roots in Hermeticism,
Taoism, alchemy; and, most importantly for the purposes of Shaykh Aḥmad,
in the teachings of the Qurʾān and the Ahlulbayt. It is not as though other
philosophers or intellectuals never read or were not influenced by these two
sources; the problem is that the cobwebs of Hellenic and Hellenistic thought,
and related alien influences, kept getting in the way of the presuppositionless
movement of consciousness:

The symbol of those who have taken comforters (awliyāʾ) in lieu of God
is that of the spider: It builds a house and moves into it. Yet the flimsiest
of houses is indeed the spider’s house. If they could only know! (Q 29:41)

In this āya the Qurʾān observes two universes of discourse: the world of those
who go outside the walāya (dynamic loving) of God, and the world of the spi-
der. Two points of application are relevant here. First, in stepping outside the
four-way system of categories and the presuppositionless objectivity required
in order to seek truth by means of this framework, the walāya of God has now
become mixed with alien absolute axioms and principles (“comforters in lieu
of God”). The result is manifested in the dead-ends of the flimsy framework

101  See Section 4.1. Put another way: Thought restricted to hypothetical first principles con-
ceived and manipulated through formal discursion is abstract. True concrete thought in-
volves a mode of consciousness and experience that i) is inseparable from the True, i.e.,
die Sache selbst, and ii) moves in cohesion with the world through the True; cp. p. 93 f.
102  According to Hegel,
  The objective logic thus takes the place rather of the former metaphysics which was
supposed to be the scientific edifice of the world as constructed by thoughts alone. If
we look at the final shape in the elaboration of this science, then it is ontology which
objective logic most directly replaces in the first instance.
  See G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), p. 20.
102 Hamid

that is ontology.103 Second, this āya provides an example of objective-logical

prehending, of the movement of objective-logical consciousness between two
universes of discourse.
But how does the mind or psyche prehend or grasp any necessary connec-
tion between the symbol (such as the spider’s house) and the symbolized?
From the perspective of ontology, this is pleasant enough to meditate upon,
but in the final analysis is it not merely an analogy or metaphor, not a proof per
se? The next āya addresses this:

And those are the symbols we propound to the people and no one pre-
hends (ʿaql) them except the knowers (Q 29:41).

Here a verbal form of the gerund ‘ʿaql’ is being used. As the terminology of
doctrinal theology (kalām) and falsafa began to dominate the educated dis-
course of Muslim civilization, the original, dynamic meaning of this gerund
was lost, and substituted with various Aristotelian and Neoplatonist-inspired
abstractions that divorce intellectual activity and movement from process. For
example, the Intellect becomes, in yet another ontological dead-end for our
scholastic, Peripatetic, and Illuminationist philosophers, an absolutely simple
(basīṭ) substance immune from process, even from creation.104
However, based on the use of the gerund ‘ʿaql’ in the Qurʾān and the aḥādīth
of the Ahlulbayt, the primary philosophical use of this word for the Shaykh is
to mention either a) a movement or activity of consciousness that constitutes
a faculty—in which case ‘ʿaql’ is synonymous with ‘taʿaqqul’ and translated by
‘prehending’; or b) an organ of prehending (mashʿar, literally, locus of aware-
ness), the origin and source of a mode of cognitive experience that lies beyond
the mind or psyche per se, and which constitutes that which actually does the
movement or activity and has the faculty—in which case we translate ‘ʿaql’
by ‘nexal-consciousness’ (‘nexus’ for short).105 The movement performed by
nexal-consciousness is constituted by prehending, i.e., grasping the binding

103  At the end of an extensive critique of a point in Peripatetic and Illuminationist ontology,
the Shaykh concludes, “In sum, their “proofs” are flimsier than a spider’s house.” See JK2,
vol. 3, p. 231.
104  See fn. 153. Note that active nous in the Aristotelian sense is concrete in that its activity
is one with its object. But active nous in that sense is also abstract in that its activity is
utterly bifurcated from process; see, e.g., De Anima 430a20 ff.
   The āya Q 29:41 is quoted by the Shaykh in many places, in contexts bearing on the
current discussion; see, e.g., JK2, vol. 2, p. 130.
105  See JK2, vol. 3, pp. 583–584. There is also an objective-logical mapping between, on the
one hand, i) the relationship of the Nexus of the Whole (ʿaql al-kull) to the whole macro-
cosm; and ii) the relationship of the particular nexus (ʿaql juzʾiyy) associated with a given
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 103

connection (ʿuqla [from ‘ʿaql’]) between the symbol’s universe of discourse,

on the one hand, and that of the symbolized, on the other. According to the
āya, only “the knowers” can exercise this objective logic correctly and cog-
nize the cogency of its movement.106 Put another way: The struggle to think
­objective logically, according to Shaykh Aḥmad, involves the cultivation of a
cognitive intuition proper to an organ of prehending (mashʿar) higher than
that of the mind or psyche (ṣadr, i.e., nafs in the Hellenistic sense), i.e., proper
to the nexus (ʿaql) itself.107
Even in the organ of prehending constituted by the mind or psyche (the
locus of conceptual discursion), rules to specify the cogent movement of
thought from one universe of discourse to another, to codify objective logic,
were never developed by Aristotle or in the Aristotelian tradition, including
the Avicennan and Illuminationist traditions. It is only in the last century that
mathematicians have begun to codify a system of formal rules for objective
logic with respect to the organ of prehending constituted by the mind per se.
A brief exposition follows.

microcosm to that microcosm. Each particular nexus is a mode (ra‌ʾs) of the Nexus of the
Whole; see JK2, vol. 1, pp. 4–5.
   Note that, following the usage of Shaykh Aḥmad, ‘prehending’ has a strict sense and a
broad sense. In the strict sense, the one most often used by the Shaykh, prehending (ʿaql,
taʿaqqul) is constituted by the activity of the second cognitive mode of experience, that of
the nexus proper; each object of prehending constitutes a maʿnā in the strict sense. In the
broad sense, the activity of each of the three modes of cognitive experience constitutes
a kind of prehending; in this usage each object of prehending constitutes a maʿnā in the
broad sense. Cp. pp. 92–93.
106  Entering the ranks of “the knowers” mentioned in the āya involves a phenomenological
dialectic of praxis and prehending whose details lie beyond the scope of this chapter.
It is analogous to Plato’s dialectic of learning and knowing. In Aristotle, the dialectic is
severed: Bifurcation occurs between learning and knowing, between practice and theory,
and between praxis and prehending; see pp. 117–118. The author is currently completing a
book project in which certain aspects of the phenomenology of consciousness and action
are developed and examined in detail; see fn. 142.
107  The distinction that the Shaykh draws between nafs (in the sense of ‘psyche’ as opposed
to that of ‘ego’) and ʿaql is analogous to a distinction found in Plato and Aristotle: that
between dianoia and nous. It is also analogous to a distinction found in Kant and Hegel:
that between the Understanding (Verstand) and Reason (Vernunft). According to Kant,
Reason, although a higher mode of grasping than the Understanding, cannot but sub-
serve sense perception. That is, Reason for Kant constitutes a mode of abstract, even sub-
jective, thought and does not intuit any real object (maʿnā, what Kant called noumenon).
For Shaykh Aḥmaḏ, by contrast (as well as for Hegel, albeit with different terminology
and philosophical context), nexal-consciousness (Reason for Hegel) constitutes a mode
of concrete, objective, thought that intuits the real object (maʿnā) that grounds the appear-
ance of that object. But see fns. 76 and 77.
104 Hamid

In one’s thought and meditation on some significant subsystem of the world

(i.e., fact) around or within one’s self, one seeks to mirror this subsystem in a
system of concepts that will accurately reflect or shadow the reality of the sub-
system. This system or class of concepts (of objects, properties, or processes) will
then, for a given set of investigators, constitute a mutually agreed-upon category
(= universe of discourse). To the degree that one is engaged in a genuine struggle
to reflect this subsystem, the observer is engaged in objective thought. Once a
system of concepts is defined, one can identify or express initial propositions (=
axioms) in this universe of discourse. The rules of thought governing the effort
of deduction from the axioms are subjective in the sense that thought is now
restricted to movement within a single universe of discourse or category. Even
if the axioms are false it does not affect the rules governing deduction. Yes, in
order for the deduction to constitute a proof of some proposition of interest, the
premises must all be true as well as known to be true. But the chain of reasoning
involved in establishing a relation of implication between the premises and the
conclusion does not depend on the propositional truth of the premises. For these
reasons Lawvere calls deductive logic subjective logic.
Let us extend this idea. Operating strictly within a given category or uni-
verse of discourse constitutes a subjective endeavor. There are many such
universes; furthermore, each discipline of human investigation may contain
within it many other categories as well. The movement of thought from one
category to another is analogous to the movement of the thought of the inves-
tigator in one’s effort to shadow the world (or a subsystem of it). Speaking from
a cosmological perspective, the investigator himself is a universe, a microcosm
seeking to reflect within himself the macrocosm, the world at first appearance
external to his subjective self. From this point of view, one can view objectivity
as involving stepping outside a given universe of discourse of interest and into
another, accompanied by the effort to translate that other universe into the
given one and vice versa. This could be the effort to translate the fact that is
the macrocosm (or a significant subsystem of it) into a system of concepts and
objects of thought. But it can also involve the movement of thought from one
category into another and back. The study of the cogent movement of thought
in the effort to translate or transform the concepts of objects and mappings of
one category or universe of discourse into those of another, with a view to i)
critique and clarify the original concepts, and ii) discover new concepts within
one or the other of those universes, constitutes the science of objective logic as
developed in contemporary mathematics and logic.
A terminological note. With respect to an object language meant to subserve
some degree of peripheral (= conceptual) consciousness: The word ‘fact’ (with
lower-case ‘f ’) is used in a broad sense to denote the world or any subsystem
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 105

of the world; this is close in meaning to the Arabic ‘wāqiʿ’. The opposite of fact
is fiction. Fact and fiction contrast with concept: The word ‘concept’ is used to
denote or name the form of conceptual thought that is grasped by the mind per
se. Given an expression or linguistic symbol (word, name, phrase or sentence): It
expresses its sense (viz., the conceptual entity grasped by the mind) and denotes
its denotation (e.g., the fact that is being named). A special kind of conceptual
entity is the proposition, the proper bearer of the properties true and false (in
narrow senses of ‘true’ and of ‘false’ common to formal logic and correspondence
theories of truth). The expression ‘true proposition’ denotes what in Islamaic
philosophy is called nafs al-amr (heart of the matter, philosophical truth), i.e.,
the objective referent of any knowledge-producing discursive judgment.
With this in mind, mention should be made of one of the key discoveries of
contemporary logic. In the words of Lawvere and Rosebrugh:

The long chains of correct reasonings and calculations of which subjec-

tive logic is justly proud are only possible within a precisely defined uni-
verse of discourse, as has long been recognized.108

Given a declarative sentence, it expresses a true proposition or a false proposi-

tion with respect to a specified universe of discourse. But there is a third possi-
bility. In the course of formulating and using a sentence to express a conceptu-
al thought, if one predicates a property belonging to one universe of discourse
of an object belonging to another, one runs the strong risk of making a category
mistake.109 That which is expressed by a sentence involving a category mistake
is neither true nor false; rather, the object of conceptual thought it expresses
is incoherent. In traditional Muslim intellectual thought, the Arabic adjective
that comes closest to expressing the idea of incoherence is, perhaps, ‘muhmal’
(unintelligible).
Shaykh Aḥmad was keenly aware of the spirit behind the above points. One
of his main criticisms of the falāsafa is that they consistently and persistently
make category mistakes.110 He could see this clearly because in his dialectics
he always operated in a framework of multiple (yet objectively cohesive)

108  F. William Lawvere and Robert Rosebrugh. Sets for Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), p. 239.
109  For example: The statement, “The number two is blue”, involves a category mistake; physi-
cal color cannot be predicated of non-physical numbers. The statement, “The numeral
two is blue”, does not involve a category mistake; physical color can be predicated of phys-
ical numerals.
110  There are at least two words used by Shaykh Aḥmad to mention a category (= universe of
discourse): ‘rutba’ and, less often ‘ṣuqʿ ’. He often, but not exclusively, uses the latter word
106 Hamid

universes of discourse. His opponents could not grasp his point, in part be-
cause they operated within a single universe of discourse in the context of on-
tology in the scholastic sense.111 And a single universe of discourse constitutes
a subjective box, in the sense of ‘subjective’ explained above.
Given two categories or universes of discourse, or within a single universe:
Rather than speaking of conceptual distinctions between opposites, it is often
more appropriate to speak of dialectical contrasts. That is, the question of how
one category is objectively mirrored or transformed into another category in-
volves a struggle with and discovery of dialectical contrasts between the two
categories. This dialectical contrast will more precisely reflect or shadow the
general movement of the subsystem of the world that is being investigated.
Overemphasis on rigid conceptual distinctions in scholastic ontology incurs
the risk of running afoul of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness discussed
earlier. In particular: The natural cohesion of the continuous and the discrete
(or the existential and the essential) in macrocosmic and microcosmic fact is
cut asunder in a purely ontological conceptual analysis of fact.
A symbol of this point may be observed in the North Pole and South Pole
of a magnet: From a conceptual point of view these are two distinct, discrete
things. But there is no such discrete thing as a North Pole or a South Pole.
Rather, what we have are two modal extremes of a unified and continuous
electromagnetic field. Borrowing from a Hegelian object-language of dialec-
tics, we say that the North Pole and South Pole each constitutes a moment of
the electromagnetic field. A moment of any fact is a modality of that fact that
is inseparable from the whole fact. Shaykh Aḥmad has precise terms that he
often uses to make exactly this point, e.g., ‘musāwiq’ (coterminous, dialecti-
cally reciprocal or inseparable). The notion of the movement of consciousness
and reality between pairs of coterminous contrary opposites (ḍiddayn)—as it
occurs between universes of discourse as well as within any one of them—con-
stitutes one of Shaykh Aḥmad’s most ubiquitous themes.112
Let us recall a matter (introduced in Section 4.1) that must be taken into
consideration for what follows. Conceptual thought is specific to the organ of
prehending (mashʿar) that is constituted by what is normally called the mind,

in the context of pointing out a category mistake. He often, but not exclusively, uses the
former word to mention a concrete category or topos. See below, p. 110 ff.
111  Note that Aristotle did not, explicitly at any rate, establish a single-universe-of-discourse
ontology. Rather, his system was one of a hierarchy of universes of discourse, each of
which he called a genus. The first philosopher in the Aristotelian tradition to make ex-
plicit a conception of ontology as a distinct demonstrative science with a single universe
of discourse embracing all being was Ibn Sīnā (inspired by an analysis of Fārābī).
112  See Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid al-ḥikmiyya, e.g., observations 3, 7, and 11.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 107

psyche, or soul (nafs). Thought in this context is a special case of something

more general, viz, consciousness. So in the preceding paragraphs where we
spoke of the movement of thought, we may speak more generally of the move-
ment of consciousness. Rephrasing our earlier discussion: According to Shaykh
Aḥmad there is a scale of cognitive experience and praxial consciousness, con-
sisting of three organs of prehending relevant to inference in general: a) pe-
ripheral consciousness (= psyche/periphery, nafs/ṣadr), the organ of concep-
tual learning (taʿallum) and knowing (ʿilm); b) central consciousness (= nexus/
center, ʿaql/qalb),113 the organ of objectual (maʿnawī) prehending (taʿaqqul)
and objective certainty (yaqīn); and c) singular consciousness (= blaze-flux,
fuʾād), the organ of true philosophical cognizance (maʿrifa).114
One of the most important applications of the Shaykh’s dialectical method
is to the traditional problem of existence and essence. The concept and fact of
existence (= being qua for-other-than-itself ) is always relative to a specific cat-
egory. Essence (= becoming qua for-itself ) is always relative to a specific catego-
ry. Viewed from a higher category, a moment of being qua for-other-than-itself
will constitute becoming qua for-itself. Viewed from a lower category, a mo-
ment of becoming qua for-itself will constitute being qua for-other-than-itself.
In Shaykh Aḥmad’s cosmological hierarchy of universes, essence and existence
are always correlational, form a coterminous (musāwiq) pair of contrary op-
posites, and constitute a dialectical process of development:

Know furthermore that the accidentality (ʿaraḍiyya) of each thing we

have mentioned is the aspect (jiha) of its need for its contrary (ḍidd). So
the accidentality of existence is the aspect of its need, with respect to its
appearance (ẓuhūr), of essence. The accidentality of essence is the aspect
of its need, with respect to its realization (taḥaqquq), of existence. Due
to this the accidentality of each one follows the entityness (dhātiyya) of
the other.115

113  T
 here are two phenomenological senses of ‘qalb’. In the context of an organ of pure pre-
hending, the word ‘qalb’ is generally used synonymously with ‘ʿaql’; see, e.g., JK2, vol. 2,
pp. 311–313. In the context of an organ that mediates both nexal consciousness and ego-
istic anti-consciousness (jahl), then ‘qalb’ is used to mention the centre (qalb)—though
not the primordial onset—of existential consciousness (wijḏān, cp. fn. 85); see, e.g., JK2,
vol. 1, pp. 551–552. Further elaboration belongs to a phenomenology of consciousness and
action that is beyond our current scope; see fn. 106.
114  In previous research, we translated ‘fuʾād’ by ‘heart-flux’. See, e.g., I. S. Hamid, “A Founda-
tion for Shīʿī Metaphysics,” 83–86 and elsewhere. It is our intention to update this discus-
sion in future publications.
115  JK2, vol. 1, p. 591. Thus the point made by Aristotle in The Parts of Animals (640a 18, and
elsewhere in the corpus), viz., “Becoming is for the sake of substance, not substance for
108 Hamid

Furthermore, when concrete presuppositionless meditation considers the

appearance and reality of a given fact, that fact is seen to manifest itself to con-
ceptual thought via its structure. Yet nexal-consciousness (ʿaql) actually intuits
(= prehends) the reality or content of that which lies behind the structure of
that fact qua real object (maʿnā). The appearance (ẓuhūr) and structure (ṣūra)
of a given fact owe their realization to the “material” reality (ḥaqīqa māddiyya,
also maʿnā) of the fact which remains invisible to consciousness until it ap-
pears via that structure. We thus have another dialectical contrast, that of real-
ization and appearance—mentioned explicitly by Shaykh Aḥmad in the quote
above. One may speak of this as the dialectical unity of reality and appearance.
The spirit of the above observation flows from the following comprehen-
sive guiding principle enunciated by Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq; it is arguably the
most important single inspiration for the cosmological framework of Shaykh
Aḥmad:

Servitude [yielding and receptivity, mirror, diversity, essence, yin, appear-

ance, microcosm, subjectivity] is a jewel whose ultimate reality is lord-
ship [acting and activity, light, unity, existence, yang, reality, macrocosm,
objectivity]. So what is lost in servitude is found in lordship; what is hid-
den in lordship is attained in servitude.116

the sake of becoming”, is no longer tenable as an absolute principle. See G. R. G. Mure,

Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 7.
   The gerund ‘taḥaqquq’, translated here by ‘realization’, more precisely means “be-
coming true”, where ‘true’ is being used in a sense expressing something like “aletheia”
in Plato’s sense or “Wahrheit” in Hegel’s sense. However, ‘truth’ in this sense does not
express “energeia” (“actuality”) in Aristotle’s sense. In contradistinction to Aristotle and
his followers (such as Plotinus and the Islamaic Illuminationists), for Shaykh Aḥmad the
development of a concrete fact towards the True, constituted by the dialectical process
of appearance and realization, of truth manifesting in appearance and of appearance
becoming truth, is everlasting: “[On the road] to My Love there is no final goal and no
end”; see JK2, vol. 1, pp. 498–499. This issue marks a major point of difference between
Shaykh Aḥmad and Mullā Ṣadrā. For the Mullā, substantial motion ends in conjunction
(ittiṣāl) with the Active (and Divine) Intellect which, as pure energeia, is not in any way
subject to substantial motion (ḥaraka jawhariyya); see, e.g., JK2, vol. 3, p. 667. For Shaykh
Aḥmad even the Active (but contingent (mumkin) and not-Divine) Intellect is in process;
cp. fn. 153.
116  This quote is repeated throughout the works of the Shaykh. Its first occurrence in Sharḥ
al-Fawāʾid is found in JK2, vol. 1, p. 331. Its source is Miṣbāḥ al-Sharīʿa, an early collection
of lectures attributed to Imām Ṣādiq. The identity of the compiler is disputed. Shaykh
Aḥmad often restates this meta-principle in an alternate form; see fn. 149.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 109

This can provisionally be called the fundamental dialectical (meta-)principle.

The implications of this meta-principle for the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad
and for dialectics in general are beyond the scope of this chapter. The expres-
sions in square brackets hint at its broad range of application.
In the spirit of this meta-principle, Shaykh Aḥmad now makes one of his
most ingenious moves: Matter (= content, mādda) is identical to existence;
form (= structure) is identical to essence. The second half of this sentence is
not controversial in the history of ontology in the Parmenidean sense; the first
half is very much so. Identifying form (ṣūra) with essence is non-controversial
because this is basically what Aristotle did; his theory of substance or locus of
being builds on the idea that what constitutes a reality is its essential struc-
ture which, following Plato, is called form. The essence (māhiya) is just that
essential form or structure from the perspective of the question of definition
(“What is it?”).
The most fundamental guiding principle of Platonic and Aristotelian meta-
physical thinking involves the identification of the real (whose locus is iden-
tified with being per se) with the intelligible. This meta-principle guides the
entire spectrum of ontological speculation from Platonism through Peripa-
teticism, Neoplatonism, Classical Islamaic philosophy, and Illuminationism
up to the time of Shaykh Aḥmad. The main reason that Plato and Aristotle
identify being with essential form, not matter, is that matter per se is not, ac-
cording to them, capable of being grasped by discursive or intelligent thought.
Allegedly neither real nor intelligible, matter (according to Aristotle) is only
potentially real.
Traditional falsafa follows this principle uncritically. In falsafa, following
Plato and Aristotle, intelligibility is a faculty of the psyche, i.e., soul (nafs)
or mind. In the Shaykh’s phenomenology of the three organa of prehending
(mashāʿir, s. mashʿar), the faculty of nexus (ʿaql), higher than that of the nafs,
is capable of grasping the specific material reality (ḥaqīqa māddiyya) that con-
stitutes a given fact (i.e., its maʿnā).117 This works in Shaykh Aḥmad’s system, in
part, because the matter of a given fact, its being qua for-other-than-itself, in
a higher category constitutes a mode of becoming qua for-itself with an asso-
ciated structure. Thus it can be intuited objective-logically. Furthermore, one
finds that, in concept, matter qua matter carries many of the characteristics of
existence per se: unity, being unconditioned, and so forth. One of Mullā Ṣadrā’s

117  See fn. 107. For the identification of maʿnā with ḥaqīqa māddiyya, see JK2, vol. 1, p. 283.
Note that, in the object language of the Shaykh, ‘material’ does not mean “physical”; mat-
ter qua being-for-other-than-itself has as many states as there are degrees of contingent
(mumkin) reality.
110 Hamid

most important contributions to metaphysics lies, not so much in the doctrine

that existence is principial (aṣīl) whereas essence is not, but in establishing the
fact that the concept “existence” has an extension in external reality. Further-
more, existence is an active principle. However, our Mullā could not identify
existence with matter because, following his Aristotelian presuppositions, the
latter is a purely potential (and hence passive) principle.
Shaykh Aḥmad takes the next step. According to his inverse and dialecti-
cal hylomorphism118 in the relationship between matter and form in a relative
entity or substance, matter, and not form, is the active and acting principle
of being (qua for-other-than-itself) and reality. Going further, the relationship
between matter and form is no longer to be understood within a static ontol-
ogy but within a dynamic dialectics. Form is no longer the active or actualizing
principle in a substance, neither is form now merely passive or potential: Form
is the receptive and responding principle of becoming (qua for-itself) and ap-
pearance. The identity of matter with existence is now a philosophically viable
position.
Another result of the fundamental dialectical principle is that a given entity
can only be defined (“What is it?”) in terms of an intra-cohesive structure inter-
nal to that entity as well as an inter-cohesive structure through which it relates
to other entities; no entity stands alone or through itself. For each given entity
(dhāt) Shaykh Aḥmad posits six entitiative (dhātiyy) properties:119 quantum
and quality, space and time, and, finally, topos (rutba) and aspect or functor
(jiha).120 Each entity, whether microcosmic (such as a human being) or mac-
rocosmic (such as a larger universe of entities and mappings between them),
constitutes a concrete topos (i.e., the factual extension of a closed121 conceptual
category or universe of discourse) with an associated objective and directed
mapping (= functor) onto another concrete topos. An entity or substance

118  See, e.g., JK2, vol. 3, pp. 209–213. The expression ‘dialectical hylomorphism’ is an accurate
and convenient name for Shaykh Aḥmad’s general metaphysical position. In comparison:
Philosophical positions developed via a dialectic paradigm of metaphysical meditation
and praxis include original Taoism (Lao-Tzu), objective idealism (Hegel), dialectical ma-
terialism (Marx), and dialectical hylomorphism (Shaykh Aḥmad). See also fn. 89.
119  The adjective ‘entitiative’ is a back-formation from ‘entity’.
120  See JK2, vol. 1, p. 449 ff. A quantum (kamm) is a “substantial amount” (qadar jawhariyy) of
matter unique to a specific entity (here ‘substantial’ is a back-formation from ‘substance’
in the metaphysical sense). Quantum in this sense is analogous to the “monad” of Leibniz
or the “actual entity” of Whitehead. The words ‘topos’ and ‘functor’ are used as technical
terms in formal objective logic, i.e., mathematical category and topos theory.
121  Closed: Informally, closure with respect to a category captures the idea that no objects or
arrows (= mappings) that do not fit naturally in the category are included; and none that
fits naturally is excluded.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 111

cannot be truly defined without taking its characteristic higher and lower ob-
jective mappings or functors into account.
The ultimate purpose of dialectical metaphysics and objective logic is the
cognizance (maʿrifa) of God the True and of the world through that cogni-
zance of the True.122 At each stage in the dialectical ascent of objective logic,
the nexus intuits the matter behind the form of the fact that is being medi-
tated upon in its relationship with some other fact. At each stage of the vertical
movement, within each topos (rutba) one encounters contrary opposites in
dialectical contrast. What is intuited as matter is found to still manifest itself
with a dialectical structure of continuity and discreteness, of existence and
essence, of being and becoming, of determination and choice, of space and
time, and so forth. But with persistent application of cosmological meditation
on the objective “horizons” (āfāq, i.e., macrocosms, large scale universes of dis-
course) and on the subjective “egos” or “selves” (anfus, i.e., microcosms, small
scale universes of discourse), via the prehending of the nexus (ʿaql) and in
concert with persistent praxis, eventually the organ of prehending that is the
blaze-flux (fuʾād) opens and the goal that is the cognizance (maʿrifa) of God is
achieved. This is the true starting point of the science of Wisdom.
Here one enters a singular concrete topos, corresponding to a special uni-
verse of discourse. Every dialectical contrast vanishes, and every attribute
of perfection stands in a dialectical unity (coincidentia oppositorum) with,
not its contrary opposite, but rather its contradictory opposite. God is Far in
His Not-Farness and Not-Far in His Farness; God is Near in His Not-Nearness
and Not-Near in his Nearness. This phenomenological topos of cognizance (=
the phenomenological True, die Sache selbst) constitutes, at once, the reality
of one’s self-qua-appearance and the appearance of God-qua-Reality. When
one steps out of the topos of cognizance and looks back at it, one sees that
this very act of cognizing God through the blaze-flux leaves, via the media-
tion of the nexus, a very precise shadow (ẓill) on the mind as the grasp of
objective propositional truth (nafs al-amr): Between God and creation there
is no continuity; between God and creation there is no discontinuity.123 This
corresponds to two things: the way that God describes Himself literally in the
Qurʾān and the aḥādīth of the Ahlulbayt; and to the way that God describes
Himself cosmologically and phenomenologically, via the topos of cognizance,
to the dialectical unity of reality and appearance that constitutes the servant.
In the topos of cognizance every distinction and dialectical contrast in the
world is phenomenologically bracketed. Then one immediately cognizes that

122  See JK2, vol. 1, p. 284, ll. 2–5; p. 287 et passim. See also fn. 76.
123  E.g., JK2, vol. 1, pp. 161–162.
112 Hamid

what is the case for the phenomenological True is the case for God the True.
And what is not the case for the phenomenological True—qua phenomeno-
logical—is not the case for God the True.
The concept “transcendence” does not extend to God (i.e., extension of
concept) in propositional truth (nafs al-amr): Shaykh Aḥmad is no Ismāʿīlī.
The concept “immanence” does not extend to God in the nafs al-amr: Shaykh
Aḥmad is no Ṣūfī. Even the concept “analogical gradation” (i.e., “tashkīk”) does
not extend to God: The Shaykh is no traditional Ishrāqī. Furthermore, based
upon an ingenious sublation of ontological terminology, both the univocity
(ishtirāk maʿnawī) of ‘existence’ and its equivocity (ishtirāk lafẓī) with respect
to God are negated (space does not allow us to follow his argumentation here).

4.3 The Followers of Mullā Ṣadrā and the Philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad

O examiner into this discourse of mine! Beware of saying, “This is some-

thing that not one of the scholars nor any of the philosophers has said.”
For if you are following them dogmatically then there is nothing for us to
discuss with you. Otherwise, genuinely seek to understand and compre-
hend; you will be delivered. And do not belie that of which you have no
knowledge, even before its hermeneutic has reached you.
Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir124

In his Annotations on Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid,125 Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī takes issue with the
Shaykh’s rejection of tashkīk and of the univocity (ishtirāk maʿnawī) of “exis-
tence”. He first attempts an argumentation from authority, which he knows
proves nothing. He then tries to rescue tashkīk via an appeal to an alleged dis-
tinction between analogical gradation in the general sense (tashkīk ʿāmm) and
analogical gradation in the specific sense (tashkīk khāṣṣ). He gives the reader
little indication as to the exact propositional content of tashkīk khāṣṣ; he says
only, in effect, “It’s very difficult”. But the entire point of theoretical falsafa, from
the time of al-Kindī onwards, is to achieve and to express conceptual knowl-
edge of propositional truth (nafs al-amr) to the best of human ability. Mullā
ʿAlī’s appeal to expressions such as ‘tashkīk khāṣṣ’ is just as vacuous as Mullā
Ṣadrā’s appeal to locutions such as ‘alā naḥwin ashraf’ (in a more noble way) to
take the panentheist, or even pantheist, sting out of some of his more daring
propositions. When we read Mullā ʿAlī’s annotations, we find him repeatedly

124  JK2, vol. 3, p. 133. The last sentence of this epitaph is adapted from Q 10:39.
125  A manuscript of this work is available in the Marʿashī Collection in Qom (MS Marʿashī
5653).
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 113

falling back on what amounts to claims of higher meanings that cannot be

articulated or established in a clear propositional form (nafs al-amr). But that
is fundamentally un-philosophical.126
Shaykh Aḥmad elsewhere acknowledges that statements made by Mullā
Ṣadrā and his followers such as, “The simple reality is, in its simplicity, all mat-
ters” (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa kull al-umūr), may have some interpretation that corre-
sponds to the philosophical nafs al-amr. “But if the [inward] hermeneutic of
the text is correct then the expression is void. And if we take it on its outward
meaning then it is void both outwardly and inwardly.”127 The way the concept
of tashkīk is posed in Mullā Ṣadrā’s existential version of Illuminationism with
respect to God involves a category mistake. The topos of cognizance cannot be
grasped by either continuity or discontinuity.
The attempt by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī to escape Shaykh Aḥmad’s criticism of tashkīk
in its single-universe-of-discourse-ontology version fails. When God is includ-
ed in a concrete topos of tashkīk, then the conceptual point in the universe of
nafs al-amr where the Names of God express one identical concept can be ap-
proached continuously as an asymptotic limit, although never actually reached.
If it could be reached, the entire point of tashkīk would be vitiated and we would
be back to explicit anthropomorphism or pantheism. Only in the concrete topos
of cognizance does the simultaneous negation of both continuity and disconti-
nuity, of both transcendence and immanence, take place. Tashkīk can only ap-
proach this topos in a one-sided manner: It always leans to one side of the op-
position between continuity and discontinuity, viz., continuity. In the topos of
cognizance that is the True, singularity results: Object, property, and mapping
(jiha) are identical in every respect and every way. There is no other mapping or
functor from or onto this single (aḥad), solitary singularity (ṣamad): “It begets
not, nor is it begotten” (Q 112:3). And the conceptual, propositional truth of these
points is grasped and known via the shadow left by the blaze-flux on the mind.
Towards the end of his notes, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī takes the Shaykh to task for af-
firming contradiction in the nafs al-amr with respect to God. Joining together
contradictory opposites cannot be conceptualized, let alone realized, he al-
leges (echoing traditional Aristotelian logic). Mullā ʿAlī’s mistake lies in the
fact that he was not aware of the notion of a universe of discourse; his system

126  Then, when Shaykh Aḥmad solves a thorny problem by an application of logic that steps
outside the straitjacket of only-one-universe-of-discourse ontology, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī cries
foul and (amazingly) accuses the Shaykh of sophistry!
127  JK2, vol. 2, p. 595. Elsewhere, the Shaykh says that this statement is incoherent (muhmal);
see p. 105 and JK2, vol. 2, p. 449 ff.
114 Hamid

of tashkīk constitutes a rigid one-universe-of-discourse ontology. There are a

couple of points to be made.
First, for the purposes of nafs al-amr a special universe of discourse is
needed that is a shadow and symbol of the concrete topos of cognizance. Note
that contradiction cannot be affirmed in the distinctions of conceptual un-
derstanding in some universes of discourse, but they can be affirmed, if not
conceptualized, in other categories. For example, in a mathematical topos fun-
damentally characterized by continuity as opposed to discreteness, the law of
the excluded middle does not hold.128 Furthermore, there are also universes
of discourse (in the context of formal systems of logic) where it is permissible
that some contradictions be true. In any conceptual topos that is a shadow
of the concrete topos of cognizance, certain contradictions are true. As for
the impossibility of conceptualization of contradiction in such a topos, God
qua God cannot be conceptualized by the mind so that difficulty is moot: The
impossibility of conceptualization in a symbolic, relatively abstract, topos ex-
actly shadows the phenomenology of contradiction in the primordial concrete
topos cognized by the blaze-flux.
Second, one must remember that Shaykh Aḥmad is operating in complete
awareness and application of the universe-of-discourse framework. The chains
of implication of a given proposition remain within the universe of discourse,
as previously discussed. Given a contradiction, it logically implies every other
proposition within its universe of discourse, not absolutely. Within the uni-
verse of natural numbers: Given the contradiction “Two is even and it is not
the case that two is even”, every proposition in that universe is one of its impli-
cations. Of those implications, an infinite number of them are false; therefore
that contradiction is also false.129 But the contradiction “Two is even and it
is not the case that two is even” does not logically imply, e.g., the proposition
“Leaves are green”. To suggest that the former does logically imply the latter is
to commit a category mistake.130

128  A standard way of expressing the law of excluded middle is as follows: Every proposition
p is either true or false. In the universe of discourse of natural numbers, the proposition
“Two is even” is either true or false. Put another way, given a proposition, it has one of
two truth-values: true or false. However, in some toposes there are more than two truth-
values. See, e.g., John Bell., A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), pp. 5–7, 102–105.
129  Rule of deductive logic: Every proposition that implies a false proposition is false.
130  Objections may be raised to the last statement of this paragraph. For example, what is
the metaphysical status of universes of discourse? Are they objective or merely subjec-
tively posited? If merely subjectively posited, then can not one simply expand the uni-
verse of discourse to include other domains so that, without falling into incoherence,
a given contradiction implies every proposition in the larger universe? One answer
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 115

Now the situation in that single, singular, and symbolic universe of dis-
course which corresponds to the topos of cognizance is special. As mentioned
above, there is a mapping from the phenomenological, concrete topos of cog-
nizance onto that category of conceptual thought within which we can express
true propositions about God qua God. And each true proposition about God
qua God is either a tautology131 or a contradiction within the category. Given a
contradiction in this singular universe of discourse, such as “God is Near and
it is not the case that God is Near”, it also implies an infinite number of propo-
sitions. But none of these implications lie outside the universe of discourse
that is a shadow of the concrete topos of cognizance. Indeed, in the unique
category corresponding to the topos of cognizance, every contradiction is
also a tautology, and every tautology is true. For in the topos of cognizance
God is characterized by no-continuity and by no-discontinuity. Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī
objects: Allowing contradictions to be predicated of God entails the negative
consequence that God is, at once, a necessary and a contingent being. But the
concept of contingency does not belong to the symbolic universe of discourse
(ṣuqʿ) that corresponds to the concrete topos of cognizance; therefore it is not
the contradictory opposite of necessity. Mullā ʿAlī thus makes another category
mistake!
Over the course of his annotations, Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī veers from extreme praise
of Shaykh Aḥmad to charges of sophistry and back again. His notes illustrate
an often cursory, even superficial, reading of the Shaykh’s work in philoso-
phy on the part of the Mullā and his students. Sabzawārī restricted himself to
some obscure notes on Shaykh Aḥmad’s introduction to Sharḥ Risālat al-ʿilm.132
Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī133 (d. ca. 1239/1823–24) reaches only some five out of

involves the position that universes of discourse do have objective import. For example,
Shaykh Aḥmad explains that there is no factual continuity or discontinuity that spans
both Contingency (ḥudūth) and Necessity (wujūb); hence there can be no concrete con-
ceptual thought of a true universe of discourse, in appropriate senses of ‘concrete’ and
‘true’, which encompasses both concepts “contingency” and “necessity”. The traditional
scholastic method of semantic analysis is upended: Objective-logical thought constitutes
a concrete shadow (ẓill) of the nature and flow of the domain of reality that it is about.
Universes of discourse and the conceptual entities which constitute them are not subjec-
tively and abstractly, but objectively and concretely, posited. This is in accordance with the
fundamental dialectical principle; see also Shaykh Aḥmad’s alternative formulation of
this meta-principle, quoted in fn. 149. This discussion deserves further critical refinement
that is beyond our current scope.
131  See I. S. Hamid, “A Foundation for Shīʿī Metaphysics,” 78.
132  Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i Ḥakīm Sabzavārī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Teh-
ran: Shirkat-i Chāp u Intishārāt-i Uswa, 1376 Sh./1996–97), pp. 579–601.
133  Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī, Sharḥ al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, ed. Muḥammad Masʿūd Khudāwardī
(Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1391 Sh./2012).
116 Hamid

127 pages of al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, and only 70 out of 840 pages of Sharḥ al-
Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya.134 Shaykh Aḥmad himself responded to many of the criti-
cisms and misunderstandings but, as Corbin points out, “no one has paid any
attention”.135 Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījānī, author of his own commentary
on al-Mashāʿir,136 shows signs that he made some effort to understand Shaykh
Aḥmad with limited success. Most of the comments where he mentions the
Shaykh seek to defend Mullā Ṣadrā from criticism, although he occasionally
approves of Shaykh Aḥmad’s interpretation. On the other hand, and by his
own admission, he hardly delves into or questions any of the philosophical
positions taken by the Shaykh or the details of his philosophical system as ex-
pressed in the latter’s commentary. The reason for this, Lāhījānī says, is that
he does not dispute the Shaykh’s claim that his philosophical system is an ex-
pression of the teachings of the Ahlulbayt; however, he does not understand
the Shaykh well-enough to engage his ideas critically and chooses to defer the
matter to someone granted the knowledge to be able to do so.137
The attitude of Lāhījānī is indicative of two general points: The chief falāsafa
of Isfahan had difficulty penetrating and comprehending Shaykh Aḥmad’s sys-
tem of dialectical metaphysics. Yet their critical remarks in defense of Mullā
Ṣadrā should not be allowed to obscure the fact that, wherever they did under-
stand the Shaykh, and even in some places where they did not, they thought
he was nothing short of brilliant. Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījānī, despite
disputing some of his criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā, accorded Shaykh Aḥmad a
comparable status in knowledge and learning.138 Careful perusal of the record
shows that, in many instances (including throughout Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī’s Annota-
tions), they went to great pains to make the case that Shaykh Aḥmad and Mullā
Ṣadrā were, in fact, saying the same thing but in different languages.

134  JK2, vol. 4.

135  H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, p. 356. Elsewhere, Henry Corbin emphatically
rejects the notion that Shaykh Aḥmad did not understand the terminology and methods
of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy; rather, he insists, the matter is the other way around: The
philosophers of Isfahan did not try very hard to understand Shaykh Aḥmad’s terminology
and methodology. Corbin is particularly critical of Mullā Ismāʿīl (also known as Wāḥid al-
ʿAyn): “Did Mullā Ismāʿīl, on his part, even make an effort?” See Corbin’s introduction to
his edition of Kitāb al-Mashā‘ir: Le livre des pénétrations métaphysiques. Kitâb al-Mashâ’ir:
texte arabe publié avec la version persane de Badi’ol-molk Mirza, Emadoddawleh/Mollâ
Sadra Shirazi (980/1572–1050/1640), ed. H. Corbin (Tehran: Departement d’Iranologie de
l’Institut Franco-iranien, 1964), p. 49.
136  Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir (Mashhad: Chāpkhāna-yi Khurāsān, 1383/1963).
137  Ibid., p. 191.
138  Ibid., p. 171.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 117

The falāsafa of Isfahan were moving in the direction of an important

thought, although they never came into full possession of it: Mullā Ṣadrā’s doc-
trine of the extra-mental, extra-conceptual reality of existence, along with his
doctrine of substantial motion (al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya), are crucial precur-
sors to the dialectical metaphysics of Shaykh Aḥmad. The Shaykh alludes to
this: Upon reviewing several different theories of essence and existence, he
says that the existentialist position of the contemporary Illuminationists (i.e.,
Mullā Ṣadrā and his successors) is the one closest to his own.139

4.4 Dialectical Metaphysics and the Project of Illuminationism

The True is shown via symbol. The False is shown via disputation.
Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir140

This introduction to the dialectical metaphysics of Shaykh Aḥmad began with

the observations i) that his objective logic involves a presuppositionless move-
ment of cosmological meditation and praxis within the four-part network of
objective mappings between the macrocosm, the microcosm, the Qurʾān, and
the Ahlulbayt; and ii) this system came about in the context of the historical
movement, after Ibn Rushd, of Islamaic philosophy towards the articulation
of a genuinely Islamic (as opposed to Hellenistic) system of metaphysics. In
that context the Illuminationist philosophers of Isfahan were, to a significant
degree, concerned with the Qurʾān and the teachings of the Ahlulbayt: In its
broad outline the four-part system of universes and mappings was familiar to
them. At least one critical difference is that, for the Illuminationists, each cat-
egory or movement of this framework was evaluated separately with respect
to axiomatic presuppositions, in accordance with the doctrine of Aristotelian
cognitivism. For Shaykh Aḥmad, this is a monkey wrench that impedes the
concrete, presuppositionless movement of consciousness that grounds objec-
tive logic. Axioms are provisional with respect to the exigencies of the praxis

139  JK2, vol. 9, pp. 757–758.

140  JK2, vol. 3, p. 313. In a common, strict sense, ‘Illuminationist’ (translation of ‘ishrāqī’) is
used to express a category that applies to Suhrawardī and the adherents of his specific
school. In a broader sense (one sometimes used by Shaykh Aḥmad and his contempo-
raries), the category expressed also includes Mullā Ṣadrā and his followers; their school
may be taken as a distinct type of Illuminationism. Used in an even broader sense, the
same can be said to apply to the Shaykh and his disciples; his philosophy may be viewed
as a recasting of the Illuminationist paradigm. From an historical prespective, then, the
traditions of Suhrawardī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and Shaykh Aḥmad constitute successive stages in
the development of the Illuminationist project.
118 Hamid

involved in learning and working in the field. Recall a passage cited near the
outset of this philosophical essay (p. 89): “We mean by ‘ḥikma’ that wisdom
which is, at once, both theoretical and practical.” The purpose of axioms and
foundations is not to provide some absolute set of unassailable truths, but,
rather, to “concentrate the essence of practice and in turn use the result to
guide practice”.141
This insight constitutes a special case of another dialectical guiding prin-
ciple, one often repeated by Imām ʿAlī, and a favorite of Shaykh Aḥmad:

Through nexal-consciousness (ʿaql) the depths of praxial wisdom (ḥikma)

are fathomed; through praxial wisdom the depths of nexal-consciousness
are fathomed … Cosmological meditation (tafakkur) constitutes the life
of the heart of the one with vision, just as a walker with a light walks in
the darkness beautifully free of entrapments and with few interruptions.142

The first and crucial sentence of this tradition expresses what may be called the
fundamental (meta-)principle of sublation (aufheben).143 One of its entailments
is that axioms are provisional: To render them absolute stunts (= “entraps”) the
progressive and self-transcending movement of the presuppositionless con-
sciousness that is facilitated and deepened via persistent meditation (tafak-
kur) and praxis (ʿamal).
In this regard Sabzawārī makes a curious point. In the main text of Sharḥ
al-Manẓūma he remarks, “Not one of the philosophers has claimed that both
[existence and essence] are principial [i.e. that they are both in fact extensions
of the concept “being”].”144 Then, in a note to this passage he adds, “Among
our contemporaries there is someone [Shaykh Aḥmad] who does not consid-
er the principles of philosophy [as canonical]: This person claims that both
[existence and essence] are principial.”145 Although Sabzawārī makes his
point in a pejorative context, he is correct when he says, in effect, that Shaykh

141  F. William Lawvere, “Foundations and Applications: Axiomatization and Education,”
Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 9 2 (2003): 213–224 (213).
142  This principle provides the engine of the process of prehending and practicing alluded to
earlier; see fn. 106.
143  A full discussion of this principle is beyond our scope. In an upcoming work, currently
entitled The Logical Foundations of Islamic Economics, this principle and its application
are discussed in considerable detail.
144  Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid yā Sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi ḥikmat: qismat-i
umūr-i ʿāmma u jawhar u ʿaraḍ, ed. M. Muḥaqqiq (3rd ed., Tehran: University of Tehran
Press, 1369 Sh./1990), p. 44.
145  Ibid., p. 212.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 119

Aḥmad does not absolutize the principles and axioms of traditional scholastic
­philosophy. Let us place this in a wider context.
In the history of philosophy there are two main approaches to metaphys-
ics and cosmology, viz., ontology and dialectics. As practiced by the falāsafa,
ontology in the scholastic, Parmenidean sense is generally based on Aristote-
lian cognitivism. With respect to a single universe of discourse, Aristotelian
cognitivism holds that there are ultimate, absolute, and true first principles
(axioms); according to Aristotle, the principles are known to be true via the
rational intuition of the metaphysician. A feature of Aristotelian cognitivism
is that the process of learning that ends in rational intuition (nous) and the
immediate cognition of the first principles is divorced from the process of ra-
tional discursion (dianoia) and cognition via deductive demonstration.146 In
Illuminationism, the effort to determine the correct set of axioms is aided by
“mystical” insight (involving one of the higher sub-modes of central, nexal con-
sciousness, or even singular, blaze consciousness), which plays the role of a
process of learning that ends in cognition of the first principles. Each addition-
al proposition in the metaphysical system is then established via discursive
derivation (= deduction) from the presuppositions, viz., the first principles (al-
legedly) known to be true. The bifurcation of learning from discursive know-
ing provides another instance of an opposition abstracted from the dialectical
development of the microcosm in cohesion with the rest of the world. So it
comes as no surprise that Shaykh Aḥmad rejects Aristotelian cognitivism with
respect to ontology in the Parmenidean sense, although he does accept that
Platonic deductivism applies to that endeavour. In accordance with Platonic
deductivism, the practitioner of ontology in the scholastic sense generally
does not know if the principles (= presuppositions) are true; in the best-case
scenario one only knows that one’s metaphysical deductions follow from the
principles.147
The dialectical, Heraclitean approach to metaphysics is, in contrast, based
upon Hermetic cognitivism throughout an interconnected network of univers-
es of discourse. The first (meta-)principle of Hermetic cognitivism is encapsu-
lated in the statement of Imām ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā to the Hermeticist ʿImrān

146  The cleavage of rational intuition from rational discursion in Aristotle is discussed admi-
rably by Mure, op. cit., p. 219.
147  Cp. the earlier description of scholastic and Parmenidean senses of ‘ontology’ (p. 24). The
distinction between Aristotelian cognitivism and Platonic deductivism (and the defini-
tion of each) derives from John Corcoran and Hassan Masoud, “Plato’s Mathematical De-
ductivism,” Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 21 (2015): 199; the name ‘Aristotelian cognitivism’ is
due to Idris Samawi Hamid.
120 Hamid

al-Ṣābīʾ.148 Hermetic cognitivism holds that, given an interconnected system of

concrete categories, the primary philosophical struggle of the m ­ etaphysician is
to identify the best symbolic category in which to contextualize the cosmologi-
cal investigation of any specific fact. Put another way, the objective-logical sym-
bolic category (mithāl) in effect takes the place of the ontological first principle
or axiom. Once the proper symbolic category is determined, provisional axi-
oms are intuited via an objective-logical investigation of the symbolic category
in conjunction with its correspondence to some other cosmological category
of fact.149 Furthermore, there is no divorce of learning from knowing, of prac-
tice from theory. Echoing the guiding principle of sublation, the Shaykh says,

Practicing is the cause of the rule-based light called practical (ʿamalī)

potential; knowing is the cause of the cosmic light called cognitive or
theoretical (ʿilmī) potential. And through practicing (ʿamal) the depths of
knowing (ʿilm) are fathomed; through knowing the depths of practicing
are fathomed.150

This statement expresses what we may call the second (meta-)principle of Her-
metic cognitivism, also encapsulated within the fundamental (meta-)principle
of sublation expressed by the tradition of Imām ʿAlī. A genuine dialectical phi-
losophy cannot absolutize axioms and principles, cannot restrict itself to Ar-
istotelian cognitivism. The move from ontology to dialectics, from the priority
of presuppositional subjective logic in a single universe of discourse to that of
presuppositionless objective logic in a cohesive network of multiple, intercon-
nected universes of discourse, must keep axiomatic systems fluid, not fixed.
If one cardinal philosophical sin may be attributed to the scholastic (as well
as classical) traditions of Islamaic philosophy, it was an inability to step out-
side their ontological paradigm governed by an ossified subjective logic and
absolutized axioms. Although it was, to an important degree, the very aim of
the Illuminationist project to take this step, in the end it failed in this task
(despite other important accomplishments). The remark made by Jonathan
Barnes in a slightly different (but related) context summarizes a key aspect
of how Shaykh Aḥmad viewed pre-dialectical Islamaic and Illuminationist

148  See the epigraph that begins Section 4.2.

149  The objective-logical intuition of provisional axioms is guided, in large part, by applica-
tion of one of Shaykh Aḥmad’s most important meta-principles, expressed as an interpre-
tive formulation of the fundamental dialectical principle (see p. 108): “Every impression
(athar) imitates the descriptor (ṣifa) of its proximate impressor [i.e., agent] (muʾaththir).”
See, e.g., Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid, JK2, vol. 1, p. 337.
150  Sharḥ al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, JK2, vol. 4, p. 633.
Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī 121

philosophy: “Thought was fettered; and if the old thinkers and scientists sang,
they sang in chains.”151
Only an objective logic can provide the appropriate, continual philosophical
linking mechanism between the higher modes of cognitive experience
(including so-called “mystical” consciousness), on the one hand, and
propositional knowledge on the other. It is only the objective mapping of the
categories of nexal prehending and singular cognizance onto true propositions
(nafs al-amr), expressed within the appropriate universe of discourse, that
makes Illuminationism a genuinely viable philosophical project. Yet, ironically,
it is exactly this mechanism that traditional Illuminationism misses, in both its
essentialist formulation (Suhrawardī) as well as its existentialist formulation
(Mullā Ṣadrā).152 The role of higher cognitive intuition and praxis stops at
each presumed-to-be-known-to-be-true first principle (= presupposition);
discursive deduction then takes over from cognitive intuition. Each first
principle is absolutized and, contrary to the meta-principle of sublation quoted
earlier, is not itself susceptible to progressive development via higher cognitive
intuition and praxis. But if we want to genuinely fulfill the hope and promise
of Illuminationism then something else is needed. Neither the subjective-
logical system of absolute cognitivism systematized by Aristotle, nor the
single-universe-of-discourse ontology ossified by the scholastic tradition, is
appropriately suited to the task of subserving a dynamic metaphysics to be
developed in true cohesion with all the modes of cognitive experience.
Shaykh Aḥmad’s ḥikma constitutes the dialectical phase of Islamaic phi-
losophy and Illuminationism. Analogously, Suhrawardī’s ḥikma constitutes the
essentialist phase of Illuminationism; that of Mullā Ṣadrā constitutes its exis-
tentialist phase. Crucially, the latter’s theory of substantial motion (al-ḥaraka
al-jawhariyya) took traditional metaphysics in a processual (and Islamic) di-
rection as far as it could go without breaking out of ontology in the Parmeni-
dean sense. But Mullā Ṣadrā did not go far enough,153 and most of the philoso-

151  Jonathan Barnes, introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Ox-
ford University Press, 1993), p. xi. Sorely needed is a comparative study of i) the structure
and content of scientific discursion in cohesion with cognitive intuition (of the fuʾād),
in Shaykh Aḥmad’s framework of dalīl al-ḥikma (inferential-indicator of wisdom); and
ii) the structure and content of scientific discursion in bifurcation from cognitive intuition
(of the nous), in Aristotle’s framework of apodictics (scientific demonstration), developed
in Posterior Analytics. Cp. fn. 95.
152  For a summary discussion regarding Suhrawardī’s essentialism and Mullā Ṣadrā’s existen-
tialism, as well as their sublation in Shaykh Aḥmad’s dialectical hylomorphism, see, e.g.,
JK2, vol. 3, pp. 295–301.
153  For example: The budding (Heraclitean in spirit) process metaphysics implicit in the the-
ory of substantial motion is vitiated by residues of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ontology.
122 Hamid

phers of Isfahan could not see the next step. In the context of the historical
movement from Islamaic towards Islamic philosophy: The next revolution in
Illuminationist metaphysics would involve breaking out of the chains of Par-
menidean ontology and moving into the open, dynamic spaces of Heraclitean
dialectics. Bringing this revolution to pass, viz., the shift in metaphysics from a
rigid ontology and subjective logic to a flexible dialectics and objective logic:
This was the great accomplishment and contribution of Shaykh Aḥmad ibn
Zayn al-Dīn al-Aḥsāʾī.

Acknowledgements

The author owes a debt of gratitude to N. Wahid Azal, John Corcoran, Hassan
Ebrahimi, Ali Y. Al-Hamad, William Lawvere, Abbas Mirakhor, Bilal Muham-
mad, and Yahya Seymour. Thanks are due to Reza Pourjavady and Isabell Mill-
er for their editorial suggestions, as well as to two anonymous reviewers; this
work would be significantly worse off but for their criticism. The inspiration
for this work comes from Mawlānā Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī
Ṭālib (ʿalayhi wa-ʿalayhim wa-ʿalā Āli Muḥammmadin al-ṣalātu wa-l-salām); to
him we humbly dedicate this chapter.

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al-Rashtī, Sayyid Kāẓim b. Qāsim al-Ḥusaynī. Jawāhir al-ḥikam, 15 vols. Basra: Maktaba
al-Ghadīr, 2011.
Sabzawārī, Mullā Hādī. Rasāʾil-i Ḥakīm Sabzavārī. Ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī.
Tehran: Shirkat-i Chāp u Intishārāt-i Uswa, 1376 Sh./1996–97.
Sabzawārī, Mullā Hādī. Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid yā Sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi ḥikmat: qismat-
i umūr-i ʿāmma u jawhar u ʿaraḍ. Ed. M. Muḥaqqiq. Tehran: University of Tehran
Press. 3rd ed., 1369 Sh./1990.
al-Ṭāliqānī, Muḥammad Ḥasan. al-Shaykhiyya: Nashʾatuhā wa-taṭawwuruhā wa-
maṣādir dirāsātihā. Beirut: al-Āmāl li-l-Maṭbūʾāt 1420/1999–2000.
Weiss, Frederik G. (ed.). Beyond Epistemology: New Studies in the Philosophy of Hegel.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.
 chapter 3

Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī

Sajjad Rizvi

1 Life

Originally from Mazandaran, ʿAlī b. Jamshīd Nūrī was an established teacher of

philosophy in Isfahan and renowned as a major ‘philosopher concerned with
theology’ (ḥukamāʾ-i ilāhiyyīn).1 After his preliminary studies in his hometown
and his juristic formation in Qazvin where he studied fiqh (substantive law)
and uṣūl al-fiqh (legal theory and hermeneutics) with Sayyid Ḥasan Qazwīnī,
he studied in Isfahan with Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (d. 1197/1783) and Mīrzā
Abū l-Qāsim Mudarris Khātūnābādī (d. 1202/1788).2 Through the former, he as-
sociated himself with a significant group of his fellow countrymen engaged in
the study of philosophy and mysticism. Bīdābādī’s father Mullā Muḥammad

1  Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim al-āthār dar aḥwāl-i rijāl-i daw-
ra-yi Qājār (Isfahan: Maṭbaʿ-yi Muḥammadī, 1337 Sh./1958), vol. 4, pp. 1264–1267, §668;
Muḥammad ʿAlī Khiyābānī Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab fī tarājim al-maʿrūfīn bi-l-
kunya aw al-laqab ([Tehran:] Chāpkhāna-yi Saʿdī, 1326–31 Sh./1947–53), vol. 4, pp. 249–250;
Mahdī Bāmdād, Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān dar qarn-i 12 u 13 u 14 hijrī (Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-i
Zuwwār, 1347 Sh./1968), pp. 154–155; Muḥammad Ḥasan Zunūzī, Riyāḍ al-janna, ed. ʿAlī Rafīʿī
ʿAlamrawdashtī (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Āyat Allāh Marʿashī Najafī, 1370 Sh./1991), vol. 4, pp. 23–
24; Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt (Beirut: al-Dār al-Islāmiyya, 1991),
vol. 4, pp. 391–393; Riḍā-Qulī Khān Hidāyat, Tadhkira-yi Riyāḍ al-ʿārifīn (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-
yi Mahdiyya, 1937), p. 328; idem, Majmaʿ al-fuṣaḥāʾ (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Amīr Kabīr, 1957),
vol. 2, p. 496; Muḥammad b. Sulaymān Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, ed. Muḥammad-Riḍā
Barzagar-Khāliqī and ʿIffat Karbāsī (Tehran: Shirkat-i Intishārāt-i ʿIlmī u Farhangī, 1383
Sh./2004), pp. 191–210, 238–229; Murtaḍā Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ,
selected and edited by Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat
u falsafa-yi Īrān, 1384 Sh./2005), p. 130; Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn, Aʿyān Shīʿa (Beirut: Dār al-
Taʿāruf, 1983), vol. 8, p. 368; Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Ḥukamāʾ va ʿurafāʾ-yi muta‌ʾakhkhir az
Ṣadr al-muta‌ʾallihīn (Tehran: Anjuman-i Islāmī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1359 Sh./1980),
pp. 33–40; Ghulām-Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī: Zindagī, āthār, falsafa
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sanāʾī, 1371 Sh./1992), pp. 65–69; Āshtiyānī, “Muqaddima”, to Mullā
Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manāhij al-sulūkiyya (Qom: Daftar-i Tablīghāt-i Islāmī,
1378 Sh./1999), pp. 86–95. For a brief discussion of the philosophers in this period, see Seyyed
Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006),
pp. 235–239.
2  ʿAlī-Riḍā Dhakāwatī Qarāghuzlū, “Murāsala-yi ḥakīm u faqīh,” Kayhān-i Farhangī 33 (Ādhar
1365 Sh./March 1986): 8–12 (9).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_005

126 Rizvi

Rafīʿ Gīlānī was a well-known scholar, and he moved to Isfahan settling in the
suburb of Bīdābād.3 Bīdābādī himself was a philosopher inclining to theosis
(ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih), which meant that he believed philosophy was a practice
and way of life by which one acquires a resemblance to the divine (al-tashab-
buh bi-l-bāriʾ), famed as a mystic (ahl-i sayr u sulūk), and as someone known for
his piety and even miracles (ṣāḥib al-maqāmāt wa-l-karāmāt).4 A contempo-
rary witness, the Niʿmatullāhī Sufi Muḥammad Jaʿfar Kabūdarāhangī, known as
Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh (d. 1238/1823), claims that the Bīdābādī circle was renowned
for their mystical and spiritual practices (riyāḍat u mujāhada-yi nafsānī) along-
side their ʿirfān (mystical) orientation in their study of metaphysics.5 More

3  ʿAbd al-Nabī Qazwīnī, Tatmīm Amal al-āmil, ed. Sayyid Aḥmad Ḥusaynī (Qom: Maktabat Āyat
Allāh Marʿashī Najafī, 1407/1987), p. 162; Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 7, p. 124; Zunūzī,
Riyāḍ al-janna, vol. 4, pp. 422–438.
4  Muḥammad Hāshim Āṣaf ‘Rustam al-ḥukamāʾ’, Rustam al-tawārīkh, ed. M. Mushīrī (Teh-
ran: Intishārāt-i Amīr Kabīr, 1348 Sh./1969), pp. 405–408; Hidāyat, Tadhkira, vol. 1, pp. 66–70;
Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 1, pp. 187–188; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾīq,
ed. Muḥammad Jaʿfar Maḥjūb (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Bārānī, 1339 Sh./1960), pp. 98, 214–215;
Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, p. 166; Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 7, pp. 116–118; ʿAbbās
Qummī, Fawāʾid al-Raḍawiyya fī aḥwāl ʿulamāʾ al-Jaʿfariyya (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī,
1359 Sh./1980), pp. 618–619; Ghulām-Ḥusayn Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī bar sayr-i taṭawwurī-i ḥukamāʾ
u ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿUlūm-i Insānī u Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī, 1391
Sh./2012), pp. 300–303; Ata Anzali, Safavid Shiʿism, the Eclipse of Sufism, and the Emergence of
ʿIrfān (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rice University, Houston, 2012), pp. 258–262. Bīdābādī was himself
originally from Mazandaran and had been the recipient of the patronage of the previous
Zand ruler, ʿAlī-Murād Khān (d. 1785); his interest in the occult and in alchemy may also
account for ʿAlī Nūrī’s interest in Ibn Turka and the occult. A number of works have been
published on Bīdābādī and some of his mystical works as well: ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī, Āshinā-yi
ḥaqq: sharḥ-i aḥwāl u akfār-i Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (Qom: Intishārāt-i Nihāwandī, 1379
Sh./2000); ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī: Iḥyāʾgar-i ḥikmat-i shīʿī dar qarn-
i dawāzdahum-i hijrī (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿUlūm-i Insānī u Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī, 1381
Sh./2002); ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ḥātim, Rāʾid al-ʿirfān al-Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (Beirut: Dār
al-Hādī, 2002), pp. 7–24; Mīr Sayyid Ḥasan Mudarris Hāshimī, Sharḥ-i Risāla-yi sayr u sulūk
mansūb bi Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (Isfahan: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1376 Sh./1997); ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī
Khūʾī, Tadhkirat al-sālikīn: nāmahā-yi ʿirfānī-i Āqā Muḥammad-i Bīdābādī (Qom: Nūr al-
Sajjād, 1385 Sh./2006); Muḥammad Bīdābādī, Ḥusn-i dil, ed. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī and Muḥammad
Khwājawī (Qom: Intishārāt-i Nihāwandī, 1376 Sh./1997).
5  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh Kabūdarāhangī, Mirʾāt al-ḥaqq, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥaqīqat, 1383 Sh./2004), pp. 69–70. He had studied with Mahdī Narāqī
and Mullā Miḥrāb Gīlānī and was acquainted with ʿAlī Nūrī, although his main teacher in
ḥikmat was Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Muẓaffar Iṣfahānī (d. 1198/1784) who was a student of
Bīdābādī. On Iṣfahānī, see Zunūzī, Riyāḍ al-janna, vol. 4, pp. 502–503; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī,
Makārim vol. 1, pp. 70–71; ʿAlī Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, vol. 3, pp. 254–258; ʿAbd al-Razzāq
‘Maftūn’ Dunbulī, Tajribat al-aḥrār wa-taṣliyat al-abrār, ed. Ḥasan Qāḍī Ṭabāṭabāʾī (Tabriz:
Dānishgāh-i Tabrīz, 1971), p. 160.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 127

r­ecent studies have traced the modern tendency of ʿirfān in the Shiʿi shrine
cities of Iraq back to the Bīdābādī circle.6
Bīdābādī had studied with Mīrzā Muḥammad Taqī Almāsī (d. 1159/1746),7
who was the prayer-leader in Isfahan under Nādir Shah (r. 1736–47), and the
theologian-philosopher Mullā Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī
(d. 1174/1760), as well as Sayyid Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad Nayrīzī (d. 1173/1760),
the Dhahabī pīr—they had all been students of Mullā Ṣādiq Ardistānī
(d. 1134/1722), the leading philosopher (inclining towards mysticism) in Isfa-
han. We know very little about Ardistānī apart from the claims of his saintly
nature, the influence of Mullā Ṣadrā upon him, and his interest in mysticism
not just in theory but also in practice such that he was described in biographi-
cal sources as a ‘divine mystic’ (ʿārif-i rabbānī).8 Similarly, we know little about
Khwājūʾī beyond his role as a teacher in Isfahan whose students included, along-
side Bīdābādī, Mullā Mahdī Narāqī (d. 1209/1794) and Mullā Miḥrāb Gīlānī
(d. 1217/1802)—apart from one treatise critiquing the ‘estimative’ nature of
time (defending Mīr Dāmād’s position on perpetual creation) and another on
the mystical concept of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd), most of his works
that have been published are on the scriptural disciplines.9 About Nayrīzī, we
know quite a bit more due to his role in the Dhahabī order—and through
him, we can trace lines of transmission and dissemination of philosophy

6  E.g. Ḥāṭim, Rāʾid al-ʿirfān, pp. 17–18, citing Sayyid Kāẓim ʿAṣṣār.
7  Qazwīnī, Tatmīm, p. 82; al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, vol. 9, p. 197; Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-
adab, vol. 1, p. 168; Khwānsārī, Rawḍāt al-jannāt, vol. 2, p. 88; Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 264–266;
Mīr Sayyid ʿAlī Janāb, Rijāl u mashāhīr-i Iṣfahān (al-Iṣfahān) (Isfahan: Sāzmān-i Farhangī-
Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1385 Sh./2006), pp. 630–631, 647. Jalāl Humāʾī suggests in his
Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān that Almāsī might have been the first person to teach the works of Mullā
Ṣadrā but this is not corroborated in any source of the period.
8  Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥazīn Lāhījī, Tārīkh u safarnāma-yi Ḥazīn, ed. ʿAlī Dawānī (Tehran: Markaz-i
Asnād-i Inqilāb-i Islāmī, 1375 Sh./1996), p. 192; Qazwīnī, Tatmīm, p. 135; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh,
Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, p. 165; Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 1, pp. 104–105; Amīn, Aʿyān
al-Shīʿa, vol. 8, p. 128; Āshtiyānī, ‘Muqaddima’, p. 97; Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-Kawākib al-
muntashara fī l-qarn al-thānī baʿd al-ʿashara [Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa], ed. ʿAlī-Naqī Munzawī
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1372 Sh./1952), pp. 359–360; Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī,
pp. 250–256.
9  Qazwīnī, Tatmīm, p. 67; Ṭihrānī, Kawākib, pp. 62–64; Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 7, p. 2421;
Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 2, pp. 105–107; al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, vol. 3, p. 402;
Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, p. 48; Khudrī, Ḥukamāʾ, pp. 274–281; Sayyid Mahdī Rajāʾī, Aḥwāl
u āthār-i Mullā Ismāʿīl-i Khwājūʾī (Isfahan: Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1378 Sh./1999). His published
works include: al-Arbaʿūna ḥadīthan; al-Durar al-multaqaṭa; al-Rasāʾil al-fiqhiyya; al-Rasāʾil
al-iʿtiqādiyya; Miftāḥ al-falāḥ; Ibṭāl al-zamān al-mawhūm; Risālat tajassum al-aʿmāl; Risālat
waḥdat al-wujūd; Thamarat al-fuʾād.
128 Rizvi

and mysticism in the shrine cities of Iraq in the eighteenth century.10 Given
Nayrīzī’s metaphysical espousal of waḥdat al-wujūd, the key notion of monism
that became the focus of controversy and philosophical discussion from the
eighteenth century in particular (although it was much contested in Shiʿi con-
texts before), he was known as the ‘second Ibn ʿArabī’.11 Like many Sufi masters,
he expressed his ideas in verse—most of his works are epic poems upon which
his disciples and later followers wrote commentaries.
Bīdābādī was famed for his asceticism and known as a spiritual master as
well as teacher of ḥikmat texts—some Dhahabī sources even describe him as a
master in their order, although the reliability of the claim is doubtful.12 Work-
ing as a grocer, he was a philanthropist and a skilled alchemist—this latter
brings into focus the interest that his circle had in the occult, as we shall see
later with Nūrī.13 His positions in fiqh were known such as his insistence on the
necessity of convening Friday prayers (wujūb ʿaynī, a position that may indi-
cate his Akhbārī tendencies).14 Nūrī indicates his possible Akhbārī sympathies,
citing his commitment to precautionary agency (iḥtiyāṭ) and his adherence
to the manual Ḥadīqat al-muttaqīn fī maʿrifat aḥkām al-dīn of the Akhbārī
inclined Muḥammad Taqī Majlisī (d. 1070/1661).15 His main work, al-Mabda‌ʾ
wa-l-maʿād, is a study of the nature of being and its expression in the human

10  Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 2, pp. 216–219; Asad Allāh Khāwarī, Dhahabiyya: taṣawwuf-i
ʿilmī, āthār-i adabī (Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 1362 Sh./1983), pp. 297–337;
Iḥsān Allāh Istakhrī, Uṣūl-i taṣawwuf (Tehran: Kānūn-i Maʿrifat, n.d.), pp. 414–461;
Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 270–274; Anzali, Safavid Shiʿism, pp. 204–221. Some of Nayrīzī’s
works, mainly on mystical topics, have also been published: Qaṣīda-yi ʿishqiyya; Anwār
al-walāya wa-mishkāt al-walāya; Mīzān al-ṣawāb dar sharḥ-i Faṣl al-khiṭāb-i Quṭb al-Dīn
Muḥammad-i Nayrīzī; Tarjuma-yi manẓūm-i ḥadīth-i nūrāniyyat.
11  See Sajjad H. Rizvi, “The takfīr of the Philosophers (and Sufis) in Safavid Iran,” in Camilla
Adang, Hassan Ansari, Maribel Fierro, Sabine Schmidtke (ed.), Accusations of Unbelief in
Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfīr (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 244–269.
12  Khāwarī, Dhahabiyya, p. 325.
13  He is credited with a number of treatises on alchemy—see Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i
muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 178–79.
14  On this issue, see Rasūl Jaʿfariyān, Namāz-i jumʿa: zamīnahā-yi tārīkhī u āgāhīhā-yi
kitābshināsī ([Qom:] Shūrā-yi Siyāsatgudhārī-i umūr-i a‌ʾimma-yi Jumʿa, 1372 Sh./1993),
pp. 35–37; Andrew Newman, “Fayd al-Kashani and the rejection of the clergy/state alli-
ance: Friday prayer as politics in the Safavid period,” in Linda Walbridge (ed.), The Most
Learned of the Shiʿa: The Institution of the Marjaʿ Taqlid (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), pp. 40–45; Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 48–51.
15  Dhakāwatī Qarāghuzlū, “Murāsala-yi ḥakīm u faqīh,” 9. At the very least, this indicates
that Bīdābādī supported the idea of emulating and following the precepts of a dead jurist
(taqlīd al-mayyit), which is normally considered impermissible in uṣūlī moral agency. Cf.
Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 44–47.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 129

that follows the themes and concerns of Mullā Ṣadrā.16 His glosses on al-Asfār
al-arbaʿa of Mullā Ṣadrā were published in the margins of the Tehran litho-
graph of 1282/1865, and another set of glosses on al-Mashāʿir are extant on the
margins of MS Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1020.17 As he taught the Metaphysics of
al-Shifāʾ of Avicenna, a set of glosses is extant on the margins of MS Astān-i
Quds-i Riḍawī 786 dated 1082/1672.18 He also glossed Qurrat al-ʿuyūn of his con-
temporary Mahdī Narāqī, defending the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd.19 Most
of his other works are on Sufi topics (his treatise Sayr u sulūk) and glosses on
Qurʾānic exegeses of Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1090/1681) and Niẓām al-Dīn
Nīsābūrī (d. 730/1330)—a holograph of this latter work is MS Tehran, Univer-
sity of Tehran 1854 dated 14 Rajab 1173/1760.20 Bīdābādī’s students included Āqā
Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Mudarris Khātūnābādī (d. 1202/1788), Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Sayy-
id Ṣadr al-Dīn Dizfūlī (b. 17 Ṣafar 1174/1760, d. 14 Shaʿbān 1258/1842), a renowned
mystic associated with the Dhahabī order who also did much to spread ʿirfān
in the shrine cities of Iraq,21 Mullā Miḥrāb Gīlānī (d. 14 Jumāda I 1217/1802),
described as a ‘Sufi’ and a member of the Dhahabī order,22 Muḥammad Ḥasan

16  Al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, in Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Muntakhabātī az āthār-i ḥukamā-
yi ilāhī-i Īrān (Qom: Daftar-i Tablīghāt-i Islāmī, 1378 Sh./1999), vol. 4, pp. 376–418.
17  Āshtiyānī, “Muqaddima”, pp. 98–99. Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī (d. 1257/1841), a leading
student of Nūrī, cites these glosses extensively in his Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya, see ʿAbd Allāh
Zunūzī, Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya wa maʿārif-i rubūbiyya, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Teh-
ran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1976), p. 425 (citing Bidābādī’s gloss on the
meaning of the divine attribute of ‘life’ from his marginalia on al-Asfār). The text was
completed on 6 Rabīʿ I 1240/October 1824 and dedicated to Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh. See Muṣṭafā
Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra-yi dastnivishthā-yi Īrān (Dinā) (Tehran: Kitābkhāna, Mūzi u Markaz-i
Asnād-i Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1389 Sh./2010), vol. 8, pp. 1075–1076.
18  Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 180–181.
19  Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, p. 182, citing Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-
Shīʿa, vol. 17, p. 75.
20  Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 173–174.
21  Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 5, pp. 1558–1559; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3,
p. 219; Sayyid ʿAbbās Qāʾim-maqāmī, “Āthār u afkār-i Ṣadr al-Dīn ‘Kāshif’ Dizfūlī,” Kayhān-i
Andīsha 38 (1370 Sh./1991): 77–93 (82–85); Ḥāṭim, Rāʾid al-ʿirfān, pp. 20–24; Karbāsīzāda,
Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 112–114. He wrote a number of works in mysticism such
as Qāṣim al-jabbārīn, Hidāyat al-sālikīn, Miṣbāḥ al-ṭarīqa and Mirʾāt al-ghayb. He seems
to have been the leader of a branch of the Dhahabiyya as well. The following works have
been published: Mirʾāt al-ghayb; Miṣbāḥ al-ʿārifīn; Ḥaqq al-ḥaqīqa li-arbāb al-ṭarīqa.
22  Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 5, p. 385; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 3,
pp. 622–623; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, p. 255; Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, p. 192;
Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, p. 207; Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 123–125. Gīlānī
was also a student of the philosopher Mullā Mahdī Narāqī. He used to teach Fuṣūṣ al-
ḥikam, the Mathnawī and the Asfār. He did not write much: a short treatise on the unity of
being (waḥdat al-wujūd), and a gloss on Gawhar-i murād, the Safavid mystico-theological
text of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī.
130 Rizvi

Qazwīnī Ḥāʾirī (d. 1240/1824) a teacher in the shrine cities of Iraq and author
of a popular mystico-ethical text Kashf al-ghiṭāʾ ʿan wujūh marāsim al-ihtidāʾ,23
Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī Gīlānī (d. after 1206/1792), another member of the circle and
author of an Arabic treatise al-Tuḥfa,24 Mahdī Narāqī (d. 1209/1794) arguably
the most important philosopher of the 18th century,25 Sayyid Aḥmad Ardakānī
(d. 1245/1830) who translated al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād and Sharḥ al-Hidāya of
Mullā Ṣadrā into Persian,26 and the prominent jurist Shaykh Muḥammad
Ibrāhīm Karbāsī (d. 1261/1845).27 What is significant is that in the person of
Bīdābādī, we can discern the confluence of philosophy and mysticism not just
in terms of the theoretical study but also the practice. His works attest to this
interpretation, as do his networks of formation and knowledge dissemination.
Bidābādī’s circle, which later included Nūrī, embraced a number of scholars
from his native region of Gīlān and included his friend the prominent jurist
Abū l-Qāsim Gīlānī, better known as Mirzā-yi Qummī (d. 1231/1815) whose own
interest in Sufism and philosophy was well known despite his critique of ‘deca-
dent’ Sufis.28
Khātūnābādī, Nūrī’s other main teacher, was a philosopher and a jurist
who was descended from a prominent sayyid family that had produced lead-
ing scholars of the late Safavid period—he was a scion of the Majlisī family.29

23  Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 137–138; Raḥīm Qāsimī, Bazm-i maʿrifat
­(Isfahan: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1388 Sh./2009), pp. 95–96.
24  Aʿẓam Rijālī, Āthār u afkār-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-yi mashhūr-i Iṣfahān az qarn-i davāzdahum
tā ʿaṣr-i ḥāḍir (Isfahan: Dānishgāh-i Āzād-i Islāmī, 1383 Sh./2004), vol. 1, pp. 67–78;
Gīlānī, Risālat al-tuḥfa, in Āshtiyānī (ed.), Muntakhabātī, vol. 4, pp. 677–880, and also in
Nūrī, Rasāʾil-i falsafī, pp. 71–312; Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 316–319; Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i
muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 166–67.
25  Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 156–60, and see Chapter One in this volume.
26  Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 309–311; Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 165–66;
Sayyid Aḥmad Ardakānī, Mirʾāt al-akwān: Taḥrīr-i sharḥ-i Hidāya-yi Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī,
ed. ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1375 Sh./1996); idem, Mabda‌ʾ u maʿād, ed.
ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1362 Sh./1983).
27  Mīrzā Muḥammad Mahdī Lakhnawī Kashmīrī, Nujūm al-samāʾ (Qom: Maktaba-yi Baṣīratī,
1397/1976), vol. 1, pp. 67–68; Karbāsīzāda, Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 133–135.
28   Cf. Ḥusayn Mudarrisī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, “Falsafa u ʿirfān az naẓar-i Mīrzā-yi Qummī,” in
Qummiyyāt: majmūʿa-yi maqālāt darbāra-yi Qumm (New Jersey: Zagros Publishers, 1386
Sh./2007), pp. 183–195. On Qummī, see Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 5, pp. 42–
44; Zunūzī, Riyāḍ al-janna, vol. 1, pp. 522–523; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 3,
pp. 911–919.
29  Zunūzī, Riyāḍ al-janna, vol. 1, pp. 524–525; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 1, pp. 129–
133; Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 3, p. 504; al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, vol. 8, p. 111;
Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, pp. 16–17; Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 303–305; Karbāsīzāda,
Ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih-i Bīdābādī, pp. 101–103.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 131

Prayer-leader at the Masjid-i Shāh in Isfahan for some thirty years, he taught
at the Madrasa-yi Chahār-bāgh.30 He had studied philosophy with Bīdābādī
and his teacher Khwājūʾī, fiqh and uṣūl with Sayyid Mahdī Ṭabāṭabāʾī ‘Baḥr al-
ʿulūm’ (d. 1212/1799),31 and was the author of a few works such as a Sharḥ Nahj
al-balāgha, a short Persian Qurʾānic exegesis, a set of glosses on the four books
of classical Shiʿi ḥadīth, and a gloss on Fayḍ Kāshānī’s Qurʾānic exegesis (prob-
ably al-Ṣāfī is meant). Khātūnābādī represented the old Safavid clerical estab-
lishment that complemented the new clerical elites from the North. Nūrī was
probably his most famous student.
If one wished to trace a lineage of teachers and disciples linking Nūrī back to
Mullā Ṣadrā—and this is not identical to a chain of transmission of his works
since most were still using Avicenna’s Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ and al-Ishārāt
wa-l-tanbīhāt as the key texts in philosophy (the evidence of the biographical
dictionaries and the licenses authorising transmission, the ijāzāt, suggest as
much), then it would look something like this: Bīdābādi → Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī
and Mullā Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī and Muḥammad Taqī Almāsī → Ṣādiq Ardistānī →
Āqā Ḥusayn Tunikābunī → Mullā Ṣadrā. However, one ought to exercise some
caution with such constructed genealogies, thinkers usually did not see them-
selves as constituting a link in a chain, but it was much later when an individ-
ual wished to make sense of his lineage that he would articulate such a chain,
using its authority to make claims for himself and for his qualification to trans-
mit to the next generation.
Nūrī was the recipient of the patronage of Jaʿfar Khān Zand (r. 1199/1785–
1203/1789) who bestowed, through the mediation of Mīrzā Muḥammad
Bāqir Nawwāb, the tax revenues of a number of villages upon him including
ʿAliyābād and Ḥabībābād near Isfahan.32 Since Jaʿfar Khān took Isfahan in

30  On this royal seminary also known as Madrasa-yi Sulṭānī, see Sayyid Muṣliḥ al-Dīn
Mahdawī, Iṣfahān dār al-ʿilm-i sharq: madāris-i dīnī-i Iṣfahān, ed. M. Riḍā Nīlfirūshān
(Isfahan: Sāzmān-i Farhangī-Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1386 Sh./2007), pp. 103–
106.
31  Baḥr al-ʿulūm may have had mystical inclinations; see Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3,
p. 217, even though it is perhaps not the most reliable source. It would account for one link
to mysticism in the shrine cities, an issue that still requires further research. A text Risāla-
yi sayr u sulūk has been published (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1361 Sh./1982) although
its attribution to him is not uncontroversial. He is mentioned in some Dhahabī sources,
usually as a disciple of Nayrīzī; see Khāwarī, Dhahabiyya, pp. 309, 322. Another contem-
porary source mentions his spiritual states and miracles, see Zunūzī, Riyāḍ al-janna, vol.
4, pp. 587–618.
32  Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 172.
132 Rizvi

1199/1785 and died four years later, the grant of the villages was probably made
in that period.33 Furthermore, since we do not have a birth date for Nūrī, we
can probably deduce from this grant and the death date of Bīdābādī, that Nūrī
is likely to have been at the very least advanced in his twenties around 1199/1785
suggesting a birth date of around 1173/1760. Later in life, he wrote a number of
works in response to notables at the Qajar court and even Fatḥ ʿAlī Shah—and
perhaps that political relationship extended to networks established in his
home town since the first ‘capital’ of the Qajars before they moved to Tehran
in 1778 was Sarī in Māzandarān. In matters of fiqh, he was a close confidant
of first Mīrzā-yi Qummī, the prominent jurist and friend of Bīdābādī, then
Shaykh Ibrāhīm Karbāsī and Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir Shaftī (d. 1260/1844).
Although he was not known for his expertise in jurisprudence, Nūrī was closely
associated with the leading jurists of his time both in Iran (Qummī in Qom
whom he visited regularly, Shaftī and Karbāsī in Isfahan) and in Iraq (Sayy-
id ʿAlī Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Shaykh Jaʿfar and his son ʿAlī Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ).34 These
friendships attest to his prominence and fame in the seminary and demon-
strate that his scholarly reputation extended from Isfahan to other seminary
centres in Iran and in the shrine cities, although we cannot necessarily deduce
from his role the significance of ḥikmat and ʿirfān in this period. His court links
are also indicated by the fact that Nūrī had been requested by Muḥammad
Ḥusayn Khān Marwī to come to Tehran to teach in his new madrasa estab-
lished in 1232/1817; however, citing his ‘two thousand’ students in Isfahan, he
sent in his stead Zunūzī.35

33  See Rustam al-ḥukamāʾ, Rustam, pp. 447–450; Birgitt Hoffmann, Persische Geschichte
1694–1835 erlebt, erinnert und erfunden. Das Rustam al-tawārīḫ in deutscher Bearbeitung
(Bamberg: AKU Verlag, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 734–739; Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, pp. 171–172;
John Perry, “The Zand dynasty,” in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville (ed.),
The Cambridge History of Iran. Volume 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 63–103 (93–94); idem, Karim Khan Zand
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 298–299; Mehdi Roschanzamir, Die Zand-
Dynastie (Hamburg: Hartmut Lüdke Verlag, 1970), pp. 97–103; Abū l-Ḥasan Ghaffārī-i
Kāshānī, Gulshan-i murād: Tārīkh-i Zandiyya, ed. Ghulām-Riḍā Ṭabāṭabāʾī-Majd (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Zarrīn, 1369 Sh./1990, pp. 687ff; Riḍā-Qulī Khān Hidāyat, Fihris al-tawārīkh,
ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Nawāʾī and Mīr Hāshim Muḥaddith (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿUlūm-i
Insānī u Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī, 1373 Sh./1994), pp. 300, 417, 421.
34  On these jurists as heading the anti-Akhbārī front of the time, see Andrew Newman,
“Anti-Akhbārī Sentiments among the Qajar ʿUlamāʾ,” in Robert Gleave (ed.), Religion and
Society in Qajar Iran (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 155–173, (pp. 162–165). On Nūrī’s visits
to the shrine cities, see Dhakāwatī Qarāghuzlū, “Murāsala-yi ḥakīm u faqīh,” 9.
35  ʿAbbās Ṭārimī, “Ḥawza-yi falsafī/ʿirfānī-i Tihrān I,” Khiradnāma-yi Ṣadrā 13 (1377 Sh./1998):
65–71. (66–67); Āshtiyānī, ‘Introduction’, to ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī, Anwār-i jaliyya, ed. Sayyid
Jalāl Āshtiyānī (Tehran: McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, 1354 Sh./1976), p. 39.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 133

Once established in Isfahan, he began teaching at the Madrasa-yi Shamsi-

yya, which, because it was in the neighbourhood of that name, was known as
Madrasa-yi Kāsagarān.36 According to Khwānsārī, Nūrī in his mature years had
white hair and a white beard; he was fond of smoking a water-pipe (ghalyān).
In one anecdote, it is recorded that Nūrī visited the jurist Sayyid ʿAlī Ṭabāṭabāʾī
(d. 1231/1816) who did not smoke but arranged for a pipe to be brought for
Nūrī.37 He began to puff on the pipe but no smoke came—frustrated he turned
to Sayyid ʿAlī and said, ‘The water-pipe that the Akhbārīs forbid is none other
than this one!’38 In the year 1245/1829, when Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh was on procession,
he passed by Isfahan and held court in Jazz, a village near the city and various
notables came to meet him including Mullā Nūrī.39 When he died in Isfahan
on 22 Rajab 1246/6 January 1831, his body was taken to Najaf. There, Shaykh ʿAlī
b. Jaʿfar Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1254/1837) received it and led the prayer, and he was
buried at the shrine in a grave at Bāb al-Ṭūsī. His surviving son Mīrzā Ḥasan
was a philosopher who taught a number of famous thinkers of the next genera-
tion in Tehran, and his grandson ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn also had scholarly credentials.

2 His Students

His students included: Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Rāz-i Shīrāzī (d. 1287/1869) a re-
nowned Dhahabī shaykh;40 Mullā Āqā Ḥakīm Qazwīnī (d. 1282/1865); Shaykh
Ibrāhīm Karbāsī (mentioned above), Mullā Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad Jaʿfar
Iṣfahānī (d. 1282/1865), who was the grandson of Ismāʿīl Khwājūʾī and the au-
thor of works on philosophy and exegesis including a short Persian treatise
on the unfolding of existence titled Jalawāt-i Nāṣiriyya dedicated to Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shah;41 Sayyid Raḍī Lārījānī Māzandarānī (d. 1270/1854), a mystically

36  Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, pp. 50–51. On this madrasa, see Mahdawī, Iṣfahān
dār al-īlm-i sharq, pp. 216–218.
37  Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 191.
38  On Sayyid ʿAlī, see Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, pp. 337, 506; Mudarris Tabrīzī,
Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 3, pp. 370–372.
39  Hidāyat, Fihris, pp. 417, 421.
40  Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 2, pp. 59–60; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, p.
330; Istakhrī, Uṣūl, pp. 496–506; Khāwarī, Dhahabiyya, 364–386. Cf. Leonard Lewisohn,
“The Qawāʾim al-anwār of Rāz-i Šīrāzī and Shiʿi Sufism in Qajar Persian,” in Denis Her-
mann and Fabrizio Speziale (ed.), Muslim Cultures of the Indo-Iranian World during the
Early Modern and Modern Periods (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz/IFRI, 2010), pp. 247–271.
41  Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 2, p. 324; Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf
al-Shīʿa (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1983), vol. 5, p. 127 §523; Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Mahdawī, Sayrī dar
tārīkh-i takht-i fūlād-i Iṣfahān (Isfahan: Anjuman-i Kitābkhānahā-yi ʿUmūmī-i Iṣfahān,
134 Rizvi

i­ nclined thinker and teacher of Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1306/1889) who
played a prominent role later in the establishment of the ʿirfān curriculum in
Tehran;42 Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Tunikābunī (who later moved to and
taught in Tehran); Mīrzā Sulaymān Tunikābunī (d. 1270/1853), the father of the
author of the prominent Qajar biographical dictionary Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ;43 his
own son Mīrzā Ḥasan (d. 1306/1888) who wrote a short treatise on mysticism
titled Asfār-i arbaʿa (and, in fact, the famous gloss by Nūrī on this element of
the opening of Mullā Ṣadrā’s work is transmitted by him) as well as glosses on
the Asfār and Shawāriq;44 and, of course, Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1289/1873).45
To continue the Gīlānī theme, most of his major students were also fellow
countrymen from the north (Langarūd, Tunikābūn, Māzandarān). The pres-
ence of Sufis among his students and contemporaries brings into question the
reliability of the story cited by Tunikābunī of Nūrī’s meeting with Abū l-Qāsim
Sukūt Shīrāzī during which he allegedly refused to shake the hand of the Sufi
whom he considered to be both impure and an unbeliever (najis u kāfir ast).46
Alternatively the anecdote—from a rather anti-Sufi source—might be accu-
rate but, instead of reflecting an anti-Sufi bias, demonstrate Nūrī’s embroil-
ment in intra-Sufi polemics since Sukūt was a Nūrbakhshī but most of Nūrī’s
affiliates were Dhahabīs.
Apart from Sabzawārī, his most important students for the transmission of
philosophy were:
1. Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad Ṣādiq Lāhījānī Langarūdī
(d. 1260/1844) who was a commentator on al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya and al-
Mashāʿir, that latter in particular, was heavily influenced by Nūrī.47 Two

1370 Sh./1991), vol. 1, p. 116. The text was recently published and attributed to Mullā Ismāʿīl
Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahānī (d. 1304/1887) who had been a student of Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī, see
Jalawāt-i Nāṣiriyya, ed. ʿAlī-Riḍā Jawānmardī Adīb (Tehran: Bunyād-i Ḥikmat-i Islāmī-i
Ṣadrā, 1394 Sh./2015). Another work, which has also been published in the name of Darb-i
Kūshkī, is also attributed to Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī, see “Sharḥ-i ḥadīth-i Ra‌ʾs al-Jālūt,” ed.
Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, Nāma-yi Farhangistān 12–13 (1378 Sh./1999): 121–126.
42  Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 145; Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, pp. 96–97; Amīr Saʿīd
Ilāhī, “Ārā’ u aḥwāl-i Sayyid Raḍī Lārījānī,” Kayhān-i andīsha 62 (Mihr 1374 Sh./1995):
65–73; idem, “Sayyid Raḍī Lārījānī,” Iṭṭilāʿāt: Ḥikmat u maʿrifat 56 (Ābān 1389 Sh./2010):
55–60.
43  Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, p. 101; Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 192.
44  Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Mahdawī, Aʿlām-i Iṣfahān (Isfahan: Markaz-i Iṣfahānshināsī, 1386 Sh./2007),
vol. 2, p. 505.
45  See chapter 4 in this volume.
46  Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 192.
47  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 1059; Raḥīm Qāsimī, Gulzār-i muqaddas (Isfahan: Sāzmān-i
Farhangī-Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1389 Sh./2011), vol. 1, pp. 249–250; Mahdawī, Aʿlām-i
Iṣfahān, vol. 2, pp. 306–307; Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījānī, Sharḥ-i risāla-yi Mashāʿir, ed.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 135

glosses on the Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād cycle are attributed to him: on the gloss of
Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713) on Shams al-Dīn Khafrī (d. 942/1535),
and on the ‘new’ commentary of ʿAlī al-Qūshjī (d. 879/1474)—the latter is
dated 1255/1239. He supposedly wrote an incomplete mystical exegesis
titled Miftāḥ al-khazāʾin. Qāsimī and Mahdawī record a death date of 9
Rabīʿ II 1260/28 April 1844 and state that Karbāsī led his funeral prayers
after which he was buried in Wādī al-Salām in Najaf near the shrine to the
prophets Hūd and Ṣāliḥ.48 Lāhījānī had studied with Karbāsī and Mīrzā
Abū l-Qāsim Khātūnābādī as well as Nūrī, and was famed as the teacher
of the next generation who were significant teachers in Tehran such as
Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī, Sayyid Raḍī Māzandarānī, Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa
(d. 1314/1897) and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. He taught the latter
three texts in ʿirfān such as Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam—this influ-
ence is clear in the texts’ many citations of that tradition.
The commentary on al-Mashāʿir should be placed within the desire of
the circle of Nūrī to gloss the Sadrian text but also to refute the hostile
commentary of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1241/1826).49 In the text,
which was edited by Āshtiyānī based on three manuscripts the earliest
dating from 1255/1839 suggesting that it was written before then and
hence late in his life, he rarely cites other works but consistently responds
to the positions of Aḥsāʾī that he cites, each time beginning with the
phrase, ‘the Shaykh claims’ (qāla l-shaykh). Most of the commentary is on
the first section on ontology. Lāhījānī states that his aim in the work was
to clear up confusions and respond to the ignorance of his time—allud-
ing to Aḥsāʾī—­especially since those who do not understand the claim
maintain it is undemonstrative and rhetorical when it is fact they who
fail to see the argument.50 Most of his corrections of Aḥsāʾī relate to the

Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Kitābfurūshī-i Zuwwār, 1342 Sh./1963). Āshtiyānī’s
edition of the text is extremely useful because he consistently comments in footnotes on
the relevant views of Nūrī on the same text. The gloss on the ʿArshiyya is cited by Ṭihrānī,
Dharīʿa, vol. 12, p. 368.
48  Qāsimī, Gulzār-i muqaddas, vol. 1, p. 249; Mahdawī, Aʿlām-i Iṣfahān, vol. 2, p. 307.
49  Corbin in his edition and translation of al-Mashāʿir relied heavily on the commentary
of Aḥsāʾī; see Mullā Ṣadrā, Le livre des pénétrations métaphysiques: Kitāb al-mashāʿir, ed.
H. Corbin (Tehran/Paris: L’Institut français, 1964). Apart from the lithograph, there is a
modern edition of Aḥsāʾī’s Sharḥ al-Mashāʿir (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Balāgh/Muʾassasat al-
Iḥqāqī, 2007). The recently published edition and English translation of al-Mashāʿir draws
heavily in its interpretation on Lāhījānī; see Mullā Ṣadrā, The Book of Metaphysical Pen-
etrations, tr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited and annotated by Ibrahim Kalin (Provo: Brigham
Young University Press, 2014).
50  Lāhījānī, Sharḥ-i risāla-yi Mashāʿir, pp. 15–19, 24.
136 Rizvi

metaphysics of Mullā Ṣadrā since the former often criticises both the no-
tion of the ontological primacy of existence (aṣālat al-wujūd) as well as
its modulation (tashkīk). Aḥsāʾī famously held that both existence and
essence come into extra-mental reality simultaneously and are instaured
by God, contrary to Mullā Ṣadrā who held that essences were unreal and
merely posited in the mind and hence could not be instaured by God.51
Similarly, Lāhījānī defends the Sadrian doctrine of God, insofar as He is
the simplest reality being identical to all things, by referring to narrations
from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.52 In fact, this strategy of combating Aḥsāʾī’s use of
the narrations by citing scripture is conscious and also in line with his
position that true philosophy, following the Sadrian tradition, arises from
the prophetic intellectual inheritance.53
2. Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī (d. 1257/1841) had already studied jurisprudence
with Mīrzā-yi Qummī before coming into the service of Nūrī.54 The latter
sent him to Tehran to teach at the Madrasa-yi Khān Marwī—at the re-
quest of the court and with the patronage of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh—and thus he
was central to the establishment of the philosophical curriculum, and
especially the works of Mullā Ṣadrā there, perpetuated by his students
who included his son ʿAlī as well as Mīrzā Ḥasan Ṭāliqānī and other fig-
ures. He was a prolific glossator on the works of Mullā Ṣadrā including
al-Shawāhid, al-Asfār, al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, and Asrār al-āyāt, all works
that had been of interest to his teacher. Of his independent works, two in
Persian stand out: Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya wa maʿārif-i rubūbiyya on the nature
of God dedicated to Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh and completed 6 Rabīʿ I 1240/29 Octo-
ber 1824, and Anwār-i jaliyya glossing (at the request of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh
when on procession in Fars and completed two years later in 1247/1832)
the famous narrative of Kumayl on the nature of reality (mā l-ḥaqīqa)
reported from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.55
In the Lamaʿāt, he broadly follows Mullā Ṣadrā and cites his work co-
piously, and on the Peripatetic tradition he draws upon the Ishārāt and
Tajrīd cycles of text. The text is divided into twenty chapters starting with
the proof for the existence of God (including the importance of the ele-
ment of infinite regress in the cosmological argument) and its

51  Ibid., pp. 40, 182–187, 253.

52  Ibid., p. 236.
53  Ibid., p. 19.
54  Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 2, p. 390; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 5,
p. 1551; Bāmdād, Sharḥ, vol. 6, pp. 147–148; Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, pp. 116–117.
55  Zunūzī, Lamaʿāt, and idem, Anwār.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 137

relationship to key Sadrian doctrines such as the primary and objective

reality of existence (aṣālat al-wujūd), its modulation (tashkīk), and the
singular reality comprising all things (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa kull al-ashyāʾ) albeit
within the Avicennan framework of radical contingency. The remaining
chapters examine the divine attributes of which he devotes the most
space (as was the tradition) to the nature of divine power and knowledge.
Like his teacher, he displays an interest in Mīr Dāmād and his theory of
perpetual creation in al-Qabasāt but puts forward an independent Avi-
cennan position, criticising the positions of Mullā Ṣadrā and Mīr Dāmād
in favour of Avicennan eternalism (ḥudūth dhātī) in which creation is
merely a logical result of the Necessary Being.56 In fact, he tries to recon-
cile them by arguing that they both understood that Avicenna’s position
was the most satisfactory. Elsewhere he defends Mullā Sadrā’s position on
divine knowledge as one stemming from presence and the identity thesis
(ittiḥād al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl), drawing upon the analogy with human
knowledge which, like the external senses are considered to be faculties
of the soul (reflecting the strong internalism of Mullā Ṣadrā), and defend-
ing God’s knowledge of particulars by rejecting Avicenna’s account of
representational knowledge.57 Reading the text, one gets the distinct im-
pression of a thinker steeped in the Avicennan as well as the Sadrian
tradition.
Anwār-i jaliyya is a more mystically inclined work and the most de-
tailed commentary on the famous narration. Like the Lamaʿāt (to which
he intermittently refers back), he begins with an extensive metaphysical
introduction on the Sadrian doctrines of the primacy of existence and its
modulated nature, pointing towards monism, and then drawing upon
scriptural proofs to corroborate his positions.58 It is only after that that he
begins the commentary proper. He links his reading of the text with the
school of Ibn ʿArabī even citing previous major Shiʿi figures within it such
as ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī (d. 736/1336) and Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī
(d. after 909/1504).59 Kāshānī’s own commentary is cited extensively. He
also connects this tradition of monism with a mystical reading of the (in)
famous namaṭ IX of Avicenna’s al-Ishārāt.60

56  Zunūzī, Lamaʿāt, pp. 18–19, 34–35, 171–172.

57  Ibid., pp. 81–82, 318–320.
58  Ibid., pp. 25–28, 31–34, 54–62.
59  Ibid., pp. 360–364.
60  Ibid., pp. 249–250.
138 Rizvi

3. Mullā Ismāʿīl b. Samīʿ ‘Wāḥid al-ʿAyn’ Iṣfahānī (d. 1277/1860), who was a
commentator of the Asfār, ʿArshiyya and Mashāʿir, as well as glossator of
Shawāriq al-ilhām (dated 1272/1855, printed on the margins of the Tehran
1267/1851 lithograph). Like his teacher, he defended the school of Mullā
Ṣadrā, especially against Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī.61 He was also a teacher
of Sabzawārī. In later life, at the request of the court, he moved to Tehran;
while accompanying the Shah to Sulṭāniyya, he fell ill and died in Gīlān.
In the introduction to the Sharḥ al-ʿArshiyya, Iṣfahānī clarifies the
need to write a commentary on the valuable work of Mullā Ṣadrā, which
truly revives the ancient (Neoplatonic) tradition because of the vicious
refutation of Aḥsāʾī—‘may God preserve him from misfortunes and
­errors’—that may mislead students.62 He claims to have been commis-
sioned by his friends and dear ones, perhaps an allusion to Nūrī’s order to
refute Aḥsāʾī. His text draws upon the glosses of Nūrī and systematically
responds to Aḥsāʾī’s critique. He explicitly says so and then proceeds to
defend the key doctrines of the primacy, modulation, and unity of
­existence—the systematic nature of their presentation recalls the text-
book of his student Sabzawārī, the Sharḥ ghurar al-farāʾid.63 As expected,
he defends Mullā Ṣadrā against the charge of absolute monism (that only
God exists and all that we perceive is literally in God, a notion known as
sinkhiyyat al-wujūd) and glosses the famous doctrine of the simple reality
to express the absolute dependence of creation upon God.64 Repeatedly,
Iṣfahānī claims that Aḥsāʾī’s refutations are inaccurate because they
merely reflect his misunderstanding of the text of Mullā Ṣadrā and not
the inadequacy of the proofs.65 Sometimes he takes up certain debates,
for example, on the Platonic forms adjudicating between Avicenna and
Suhrawardī, of course taking the latter’s side and affirming the impor-
tance of the ‘imaginal realm’ (ʿālam al-mithāl).66 Similar to the previous
two thinkers, he uses scriptural proof texts to refute Aḥsāʾī.

61  Tunikābunī, Qiṣaṣ al-ʿulamāʾ, p. 41; Muʿallim Ḥabībābādī, Makārim, vol. 6, pp. 2152–2153;
Mudarris Gīlānī, Muntakhab, pp. 45–46; Ṭihrānī, Dharīʿa, vol. 5, p. 57; vol. 10, p. 202; vol.
21, p. 38; Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī, Sharḥ al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, ed. Muḥammad Masʿūd
Khudāwardī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1391 Sh./2012);
the glosses on al-Mashāʿir were printed on the margins of the 1315/1898 Tehran lithograph.
62  Ibid., pp. 134–135.
63  Ibid., pp. 171ff.
64  Ibid., pp. 195–199.
65  Ibid., p. 211.
66  Ibid., pp. 216–221. Mullā Ṣadrā’s own position on Platonic forms is not so straightforward;
see Rüdiger Arnzen, Platonische Ideen in der arabischen Philosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2011), pp. 203–211.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 139

Ṣadūqī Suhā mentions thirty-five students in all—most of them studied the

works of Mullā Ṣadrā and the Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274)
the main textbook in philosophical theology from the medieval period
via the explanatory paraphrase Shawāriq al-ilhām of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī
(d. 1072/1661), the son-in-law and student of Mullā Ṣadrā, the fruit of which
was no doubt the marginalia of Nūrī and Ismāʿīl Wāḥid al-ʿAyn Iṣfahānī on
the Tehran 1267/1851 lithograph. Many of his famous students also became in
turn teachers of the Shawāriq and the works of Mullā Ṣadrā. The Shawāriq cov-
ers the first three sections (maqṣad) of the Tajrīd, namely the ontology (umūr
ʿāmma), the categoriology (al-jawhar wa-l-ʿaraḍ) and the proof of the existence
of God and His attributes (ithbāt al-Ṣāniʿ), which were the philosophically
critical sections much glossed by Khafrī and Āqā Jamāl and were central to
the debates within Avicennan kalām from the medieval period if not from the
late Timurid one.67 The Shawāriq inducted students into the study of philo-
sophical theology and was a propaedeutic to the higher study of the works of
Avicenna (particularly at this stage it seems al-Ishārāt but not the metaphysics
of al-Shifāʾ which had been popular until the eighteenth century but was no
longer), and Mullā Ṣadrā. Zunūzī and Tunikābunī took Nūrī’s teachings to Teh-
ran, thus initiating the formation of what is called by Sayyed Hossein Nasr the
‘school of Tehran’ in philosophy and mysticism, which owes much to the me-
diation of his network. Another major line of influence on philosophy that re-
verted to Tehran and also to the modern seminary in Qom is mediated through
Sabzawārī. For the transmission of his mystical and even occult ideas, Sayyid
Raḍī Lārījānī Māzandarānī is the key figure; his own inclinations led to an ac-
cusation of takfīr from Ibrāhīm Karbāsī, a friend of Nūrī.68 Perhaps due to this
attack, he took the invitation of Mīrzā Ismāʿīl Gurgānī, a comptroller at court,
to move to Tehran to teach.69 Mīrzā Ḥasan, Nūrī’s son, remained an important
teacher in Isfahan and continued his father’s interest in philosophy and mysti-
cism, tying the two together in a short treatise titled Risāla-yi Asfār-i arbaʿa dar
sulūk.70 Alongside Sayyid Raḍī, he was a teacher of Qumsha‌ʾī, who established

67  Khafrī, Shams al-Dīn, Taʿlīqa bar ilāhiyyāt-i Sharḥ-i Tajrīd-i Mullā ʿAlī Qūshchī, ed. Fīrūza
Sāʿatchīān (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1382 Sh./2004), which covers the proof for the ex-
istence of God (maqṣad III); part of Khwānsārī’s gloss dealing with the incipience of the
cosmos, criticising Mīr Dāmād’s position of perpetual creation (ḥudūth dahrī) has been
published in Sabʿ rasāʾil, ed. Tūysirkānī, pp. 229–237. Cf. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī, Kitābshināsī-i
Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Āyat Allāh Marʿashī Najafī, 1382 Sh./2003), pp. 97–
101, 121–124.
68  Āshtiyānī, ‘Muqaddima’, to Mullā Ṣadrā, Shawāhid, pp. 89–90.
69  Ṭārimī, “Ḥawza,” pp. 67–69.
70  Āshtiyānī, ‘Muqaddima’, p. 102. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Ḥukamāʾ, p. 151. Mīrzā Ḥasan apparent-
ly spent some time teaching ḥikmat in Karbala (perhaps through his association with
140 Rizvi

the Tamhīd al-qawāʿid of Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 835/1432) as a key text in the
study of ʿirfān in Tehran.71 However, it is quite clear given the evidence of Nūrī’s
ownership and glossing of the work of Ibn Turka that the introduction of his
occultist’s ideas into the seminary curriculum of ʿirfān may well have started
with Nūrī.

3 His Works

Nūrī was a prolific glossator who presented the work of Mullā Ṣadrā through
his comments. He also exhibited an interest in the works of Mīr Dāmād and
the occult, in particular, lettrism (ʿilm al-ḥurūf) that played a major role in his
conception of philosophy.72 In terms of the works of Mullā Ṣadrā, he wrote
glosses on both metaphysical works and those in philosophical theology and
scriptural disciplines:
1) Gloss (ḥāshiya) on Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Kāfī focuses primarily on the section on
divine unity (kitāb al-tawḥīd).73 The original commentary of Mullā Ṣadrā
is in itself incomplete. A number of the glosses concern a Sadrian expla-
nation of the relationship between God and the cosmos as being in a
state of togetherness (maʿiyya) and within the paradigm of a modulated
order of being (tashkīk), which is Mullā Ṣadrā’s understanding of Ibn
ʿArabī’s monism.74
2) Gloss on Asrār al-āyāt comprises a brief set of notes printed with the text
of Mullā Ṣadrā.75 These are just some marginal glosses on his copy of the
text. In one place, he comments on the importance of death as a stage in

nascent Shaykhī circles), and also in Tehran, where his students included Jilwa. His gloss
on the Sharḥ al-Hidāya of Mullā Ṣadrā was published in the margins of the Tehran litho-
graph of 1313/1895.
71  On the course of ʿirfān since the Qajar period and the development of curricula and ideas,
see Zoheir Esmail, Between Philosophy and ʿIrfān: Interpreting Mullā Ṣadrā from the Qājārs
to Post-revolutionary Iran, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Exeter, Exeter, 2016.
72  His interest seems to arise from both Shiʿi lettrism and the tradition associated with the
school of Ibn ʿArabi; on which, see Pierre Lory, La science des lettres en Islam (Paris: Dervy,
2004).
73  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 273; there are two manuscripts mentioned: MS Qom,
Gulpāyigānī 1233, and MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1265 which specifies only kitāb
al-tawḥīd. The glosses are published in Mullā Ṣadrā, Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Kāfī, ed. Muḥammad
Khwājawī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi ʿUlūm-i Insānī u Mutālaʿāt-i Farhangī, 1370 Sh./1991), vol.
3, pp. 397–462; vol. 4, pp. 403–428.
74  Mullā Ṣadrā, Sharh Uṣūl al-Kāfī, vol. 3, pp. 446–448; vol. 4, pp. 419–420.
75  Mullā Ṣadrā, Asrār al-āyāt, ed. Muḥammad Khwājawī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Ḥikmat u Falsa-
fa-yi Īrān, 1360 Sh./1981).
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 141

the process of human becoming which allows the animal spirit to be

transformed into an angelic one for the afterlife.76 In another place, he
has a long comment on the nature of the path or bridge of unity along
which all the friends of God traverse towards success in paradise; he says
that in fact this path or bridge is identical to the soul of the believer on
the path to God, thus internalising what is often externalised as part of
the landscape of the afterlife.77
3) Gloss on Mafātīḥ al-ghayb is broadly systematic and demonstrates, in
particular, his interests in scriptural ʿirfān and lettrism.78 The original text
is Mullā Ṣadrā’s major exposition of the nature of the scripture and how
it reveals reality and opens the seeker to the homologies between the
books of scripture, the cosmos and the human; as Nūrī says, it is God who
reveals Himself through the human created in His image and through the
scripture and the cosmos.79 On the mystical exposition of the perfect
human, he engages in a lettrist analysis of the name Muḥammad.80 Else-
where, he states that the descent of multiplicity from unity is mediated
by the proliferation of letters and so the reversion to the One requires
meditation upon words and letters, mediated by the person of the Imām
who possesses walāya.81 Throughout the text, he stresses the importance
of the method of ta‌ʾalluh, of theosis, a process of understanding and tast-
ing reality that is beyond the level of reason; it is the rational faculty that
needs to be tamed by the love of the intimates of God and those trained
in walāya.82 It is only then that the seeker can truly understand the divine
language of scripture, as he will have purified his heart and mind. Once
the inner person is pure and focused upon the manifestation of the di-
vine, he can read the text and begin to see the points from which mean-
ings ascend, citing the famous mystical saying that is attributed to ʿAlī
that each verse has an outer and inner sense as well as the limits and ris-
ing points of meaning (ḥadd, muṭṭalaʿ).83

76  Ibid., p. 158.

77  Ibid., p. 191.
78  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 453, citing MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1388 which
I have consulted. The gloss has been published in Mullā Ṣadrā, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, ed.
Muḥammad Khwājawī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Muṭālaʿāt u Taḥqīqāt-i Farhangī, 1363
Sh./1984), pp. 787–881.
79  Ibid., p. 789.
80  Ibid., p. 792.
81  Ibid., p. 791.
82  Ibid., pp. 788–789, 795–804.
83  Ibid., pp. 810–811. The report is given in Sahl al-Tustarī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed.
Muḥammad Bāsil al-Sūd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2002), p. 16, and on the authority
142 Rizvi

4) A set of glosses on al-Mashāʿir is attested in a Tehran lithograph of

1315/1897.84
5) Gloss on al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya is found in a singular manuscript that at-
tracted the attentions of his contemporary Mullā Ismāʿīl Wāḥid al-ʿAyn
Iṣfahānī and Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, the latter in a more critical vein.85
These glosses primarily concern the second part of the text of Mullā
Ṣadrā on the nature of the human and its reversion to the One
(al-maʿād).
6) Gloss on al-Asfār al-arbaʿa is a series of notes usually commenting on the
metaphysics and at times drawing out the mystical sense of Mullā Ṣadrā’s
magnum opus. It was printed on the margins of the Tehran lithograph of
1282/1865 and again in the old Qom edition of the 1950s. Nūrī’s own gloss-
es primarily are found in the first section of the first journey and are rela-
tively sparse compared to Sabzawārī; he does not comment at all on the
natural philosophy of the second journey (although his student Mullā
Ismāʿīl Wāḥid al-ʿAyn Iṣfahānī does) nor on the third journey on divine
attributes or even on the fourth on the nature of the soul. A number of
glossators discussed what Mullā Ṣadrā meant by the four journeys them-
selves. In a gloss reported from his son Ḥasan, Nūrī argues that the pur-
pose of the journeys is to make the human being realise that we live in a
disintegrated and plural reality which is illusory and hence that we need
to be integrated and understand the basically monistic nature of reality;
as the seeker approaches God, he understands that the proof of the vera-
cious (burhān al-ṣiddīqīn) is not only an ontological affirmation of God
but also the only means to understand the totality of reality, hence the
return to the sobriety of plurality in this universe in which the presence

of the fifth Imām al-Bāqir in Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī, ed. Sayyid Hāshim Rasūlī Maḥallātī (Beirut:
Dār al-Maḥajjāʾ al-Bayḍāʾ, 1991), vol. 1, p. 11.
84  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 408, citing MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1934, pp. 49–
205. However, this information is wrong as the gloss in the manuscript is on al-Ḥikma al-
ʿarshiyya. The gloss was on the margins of the lithograph produced by Aḥmad Ardakānī
Shīrāzī in Tehran in 1315/1897. Another manuscript in MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī
1020, pp. 25–66, contains some glosses of Nūrī on the metaphysics and was copied in
1218/1804 by a student of Nūrī in Isfahan.
85  M S Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā 1934, fols. 49–205 [ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī et al., Fihrist-i nuskhahā-
yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi Majlis-i shūrā-yi Islāmī (Qom: Daftar-i Tablīghāt-i Islāmī, 1376
Sh./1997), IX.2, p. 645]. There are numerous copies of the Mullā Ismāʿīl commentary,
which was also published on the margins of the lithograph of Mullā Ṣadrā’s original text:
manuscripts include MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā 4346. It has now been published in a
critical edition (2012). For the hostile commentary, see Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, Sharḥ
al-ʿArshiyya, ed. Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad al-Dabāb, 3 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat Shams Hajar, 2005).
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 143

of God everywhere can only happen once he has found God.86 This is a
clear expression of Mullā Ṣadrā’s own monism filtered through the school
of Ibn ʿArabī.
7) Gloss on al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya is a series of notes partly in Arabic and
partly in Persian on a set of issues about the nature of being and on the
human soul taken from the first four sections (mashāhid) of Mullā Ṣadrā’s
text.87 In particular, he keeps returning to ishrāqs 3, 4 and 5 of the first
section that deal with the relationship between existence and essence
and between the reality of being and things that exist.88 His focus is thus
upon the ontology of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā in this gloss.
He wrote a number of glosses on the works of the Safavid thinker Mīr Dāmād
that indicate, in particular, his interest in lettrism and the desire to perpetuate
his occultist heritage. We can trace a lineage of scholarly transmission from
Nūrī back to Mīr Dāmād in the following manner: Nūrī → Bīdābādī → Nayrīzī
→ Mīr Muḥammad Hādī Qazwīnī → Jamāl al-Dīn Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713) →
Ḥusayn Khwānsārī (d. 1098/1687) → Mīr ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ḥusayn known as Khalīfa
Sulṭān (d. 1064/1654) and Sayyid Aḥmad ʿAlawī (d. 1060/1651) → Mīr Dāmād.89
The works in this category included the following:
First, there is the gloss on Jadhawāt u mawāqīt. The original text is perhaps
Mīr Dāmād’s most important work in Persian and a major attempt to recon-
cile metaphysics with the hermeneutics of theophany found in scriptural texts
and a lettrist understanding of reality.90 The editor has drawn on Nūrī’s glosses
in the codex 1674 in the Kitābkhāna-yi Malik (Tehran), though only a few are
given. They are comprised of thoughts that derive from the school of Ibn ʿArabī
and Mullā Ṣadrā such as his gloss upon the nature of the emanation of letters

86  The glosses are in the older Qom/Beirut edition of the text (1981) and not in the new
SIPRIn one; see Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, ed. R.
Luṭfī et al. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 16–17.
87  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 313 citing two manuscripts from which I have consulted MS
Tehran, University of Tehran 870, fols. 73–102 [ʿAlī-Naqī Munzawī, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi
khaṭṭī-yi kitābkhāna-yi markazī-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Dānishgāh,
1952), vol. 3, pp. 243–45].
88  Nūrī, Ḥāshiya ʿalā l-Shawāhid, fols. 73r–88r, 94r–98r.
89  Most of these figures are well known. Khalīfa Sulṭān was a major courtier, vizier and son-
in-law of Shāh ʿAbbās I; see Iskandar Bay Munshī, ʿĀlam-ārāʾ-yi ʿAbbāsī, ed. Īraj Afshār
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Amīr Kabīr, 1335 Sh./1956), vol. 3, pp. 1681–1682; Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh
Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ wa-ḥiyaḍ al-fuḍalāʾ, ed. Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī al-Ashkiwarī
(Qom: Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-Marʿashī al-Najafī, 1401/1981), vol. 2, pp. 51–55; Amīn, Aʿyān
al-Shīʿa, vol. 6, p. 164; Rula Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid
Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 99–105.
90  Mīr Dāmād, Jadhawāt u mawāqīt, ed. ʿAlī Awjabī with the glosses of ʿAlī Nūrī (Tehran:
Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1380 Sh./2001).
144 Rizvi

and numbers from the One, denying that this entails a common genus be-
tween them and affirming the ontological priority of existence as the very stuff
of the One and the many, as well as lettrist discussions such as the value of Abū
Turāb, the nickname of Amīr al-muʾminīn (which also occurs in the glosses on
Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of Ibn Turka).91 Given the relative absence of the occult
in the work of Mullā Ṣadrā, reading Nūrī is sometimes like reading what a let-
trist Mullā Ṣadrā might be.
Second, he wrote a gloss on Nibrās al-ḍiyāʾ wa-taswāʾ al-sawāʾ fī sharḥ bāb
al-badāʾ wa-ithbāt jadwā l-duʿāʾ. The original text is divided into two sections,
the first on the nature of God’s creative agency and the theological problem of
badāʾ or how it seems to human beings that God changes His mind, and the
second is a lettrist discussion that draws, often verbatim, on the well-known
Risāla-yi Ḥurūf of Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 835/1432).92 The first section is pref-
aced with a long preliminary on the walāya of the imāms and proof texts that
support it, no doubt to demonstrate why the scriptural basis of badāʾ should
be accepted. Nūrī’s glosses on section one demonstrates his debt to the con-
ceptual framework of Ibn ʿArabī: while agreeing with Mīr Dāmād that badāʾ
cannot be reduced to an analogy with legislative abrogation (naskh), he re-
jects the idea that it follows from a view that essences are ontologically prior
(aṣālat al-māhiyya), which is attributed to Mīr Dāmād, and argues instead
that one can understand the distinction between the divine decree (al-qadr)
and the process of existentiation (takwīn) by an analogy to the levels of re-
ality that unfold from the One as expounded in the cosmogonic scheme of
Ibn ʿArabī.93 It is not essence that is produced by the One since the first cre-
ation is the Muḥammadan reality (equivalent to the first nous), an existent
from which all existents ensue; thereby he rejects the ontological priority of
essence and the idea that essences issue from God in terms of the emanative
process.94 Similarly, the unreality of the divine attributes, often associated in
the Shiʿi tradition with a Muʿtazilī influence, is explained here in terms of the
distinction between the unemanated and ineffable level of the divine essence
(aḥadiyya) and the emanated and ‘shadowy’ level of the attributes and other

91  Ibid., pp. 295–296.

92  Mīr Dāmād, Nibrās al-ḍiyāʾ wa-taswāʾ al-sawāʾ fī sharḥ bāb al-badāʾ wa-ithbāt jadwā
l-duʿāʾ, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī with the glosses of ʿAlī Nūrī (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb,
1374 Sh./1995). On Ibn Turka and his risāla, see Matthew Melvin-Koushki, The Quest for a
Universal Science: The Occult Philosophy of Ṣāʾin al-Din Turka Iṣfahānī (1369–1432) (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, 2012), esp. pp. 88–90, 463–475.
93  Mīr Dāmād, Nibrās, pp. 56, 64, 65.
94  Ibid., pp. 66–72.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 145

effects of the One.95 The recovery of human agency follows the same pattern
of transposing divine determinism with a voluntarism that acknowledges the
dominance of the divine names over the human realm, culminating in a saying
attributed to Amīr al-muʾminīn which he repeats extensively in other works
(such as the glosses on Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam), that the differentiation between
God and His creatures is not characterised by remoteness but by distinction
and analogy of the attribute (al-tamyīz baynūnat al-ṣifa lā baynūnat ʿuzla),
which echoes a famous paradoxical formula encoded in the Nahj al-balāgha
on the distinction and analogy of God and creation, namely that God is nei-
ther identical to nor distinct from his creation.96 His glosses on the second
section are fewer but show not only his interest in lettrism but also his clear
engagement with the work of Ibn Turka whose Kitāb al-Mafāḥiṣ was clearly in
his mind as he wrote—and corresponds with his discussion on letters, their
values and significance discussed in his glosses on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam
of Ibn Turka.97
Third, he added a gloss on Mīr Dāmād’s Taqwīm al-īmān, which is one of
his main works on philosophical theology.98 The comments are fairly sparse
and often involve a correction of Mīr Dāmād’s metaphysics based on Mullā
Ṣadrā. For example, he criticises the former’s understanding of existence and
its relationship to the predicable of genus based on the latter’s concept that
it is existence that is ontologically prior (aṣālat al-wujūd) when considering
any entity.99 Elsewhere, he corrects Mīr Dāmād on the dynamic nature of ex-
istents by indicating Mullā Ṣadrā’s conception of motion in substance (ḥaraka
jawhariyya).100 One suspects that the brevity of the glosses suggests that they
were written for personal use.
In kalām, he has sets of glosses on some further works of the Safavid era
that reflect his own teaching on the subject. First, he wrote a gloss upon the
gloss of Jamāl al-Dīn Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713) upon the gloss of Khafrī upon
the Sharḥ al-Tajrīd of Qūshjī (d. 879/1474).101 Another gloss focuses on the

95  Ibid., p. 66.

96  Ibid., p. 67; Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, p. 67; cf. al-Sayyid al-Raḍī (compl.), Nahj al-
balāgha, ed. Ṣubḥī al-Ṣāliḥ (Qom: Dār al-Hijra, 1386/1967), p. 40.
97  Mīr Dāmād, Nibrās, pp. 81, 82, 97, 101, 109–114.
98  Mīr Dāmād, Taqwīm al-īmān wa-sharḥuhu Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq al-ḥakīm al-ilāhī Sayyid
Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī al-ʿĀmilī maʿ taʿlīqāt al-ḥakīm al-ilāhī Mullā ʿAlī al-Nūrī, ed. ʿAlī Awjabī
(Tehran; Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1376 Sh./1997), based primarily on the ḥāshiya in MS Mashhad,
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 7517.
99  Mīr Dāmād, Taqwīm, pp. 257–258, n. 7.
100  Ibid., p. 274, n. 8, and also pp. 276, n. 3, 277, n. 3.
101  Khwānsārī, as we saw above, appears in his lineage back to Mīr Dāmād. Cf. Dirāyatī,
Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 115, which cites MS Qom, Marʿashī 7347, fols. 1b–85a, although the
146 Rizvi

Shawāriq ­al-ilhām of Mullā Ṣadrā’s student ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī.102 He signs

them as ‘Nūrī’, and covers mainly sections of the first part of the text on ontol-
ogy defending Mullā Ṣadrā’s position on, for instance, motion in substance that
was denied by Lāhījī (and which was one of the most common positions dis-
puted in eighteenth century thinking). A third gloss is on the Qurrat al-ʿuyūn
fī aʿizz al-funūn of Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1090/1680), a text on theology in
twelve chapters that draws upon rational and scriptural argumentation to
present Shiʿi positions on everything from knowing God and His attributes to
understanding the resurrection and the afterlife.103 The original text was com-
pleted two years before Fayḍ’s death in 1088/1677, and demonstrates that his
‘scripturalist’ turn late in life did not obviate the need for rational theology, and
perhaps it was for this reason that Nūrī was attracted to it.
He glossed one work by a contemporary. A ḥāshiya on the Sharḥ al-fawāʾid
of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī is highly critical of his abilities in metaphysics.104
He condemns much of Aḥṣāʾī’s speculations as polemical sophistries, and ve-
hemently defends the monistic doctrine of being that was advocated by Mullā
Ṣadrā whom Ahṣāʾī had targeted by saying that the idea that the philosophers

catalogue [Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi ʿumūmī-

yi Āyatullāh Najafī Marʿashī (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Āyatullāh Marʿashī Najafī, 2008), XIX,
p. 147] only mentions a gloss but not the glossator; Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī, Kitābshināsī-i Tajrīd, pp.
125–126.
102  These glosses were published on the margins of the lithograph prepared by Riḍā Tājir
in Tehran in 1311/1893, which I have consulted (there is an earlier one dated 1274/1858).
The lithograph has a number of glosses in the margins, the most prolific being by Nūrī’s
student Mullā Ismāʿīl (signed ‘Muḥammad Ismāʿīl’), Nūrī’s son Mīrzā Ḥasan and Āqā
ʿAlī Ṭihrānī. For a useful discussion of the Shawāriq, its tradition, ideas and commen-
taries, see Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Dar ḥikmat u maʿrifat: Majmūʿa-yi maqālahā u
muṣāḥiba-hā-yi ḥikmī, ed. Ḥasan Jamshīdī (Qom: Pazhūhishgāh-i Farhang u Andīsha-yi
Islāmī, 1385 Sh./2006), pp. 77–121.
103  Cf. Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 4, p. 355, citing MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11869,
and MS Qom, Marʿashī 6995 (nastaʿlīq, 32 ff, contemporary to the author); I have consult-
ed the latter. For Qurrat al-ʿuyūn, I have consulted MS UCLA Minasian 120. There is also
a lithograph of the Qurrat al-ʿuyūn [fī l-maʿārif wa-l-ḥikam] appended to his al-Ḥaqāʾiq fī
maḥāsin al-akhlāq, copied by Muḥammad Luqmān b. Abī l-Qāsim al-Ḥusaynī, Tehran,
1299/1882, pp. 165–251. Given that Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī wrote a critical gloss on the
text, it is quite likely that Nūrī’s gloss is a response to it.
104  On Aḥsāʾī, see Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, pp. 337–338. Cf. Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol.
4, p. 273 citing MS Qom, Marʿashī 5653 [Ḥusaynī, Fihrist, XV, p. 50]. This is a very clear
manuscript. For the original text and a study, see Idris S. Hamid, The Metaphysics and
Cosmology of Process According to Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī: Critical Edition, Translation
and Analysis of Observations in Wisdom (Ph.D. Dissertation, SUNY at Buffalo, 1998). An-
other edition of the text is: Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid, ed. Shaykh Rāḍī Āl Salmān, 3 vols. (Beirut:
Muʾassasat Fikr al-Awḥad, 2006).
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 147

held that the term ‘existence’ has shared semantic content (ishtirāk maʿnawī)
between the concept and its reality is a false a­ ccusation: rather, he argued that
the mode of homonymy is a special case of modulation (al-tashkīk al-khāṣṣī).105
Throughout this gloss, Nūrī staunchly defends the positions of Mullā Ṣadrā and
the monistic reading of Ibn ʿArabī naturalised in the ḥikmat tradition—it is a
correction of the text from that perspective. For example, he takes the con-
cept of lights that emanate from the divine and explains how the expression in
the saying that Aḥsāʾī uses really fits the monistic reading of the relationship
between the one and the many.106 He completes the gloss with a repetition
and explanation of the four journeys of the mystic that structure Mullā Ṣadrā’s
magnum opus.107 Along the way, we get another glimpse of his interest in the
occult through a numerological and lettrist examination of the tripartite Shiʿi
profession of faith.108
Apart from these glosses, he wrote a number of independent works, mainly
short treatises in Arabic and Persian. There are numerous copies of a Tafsīr
sūrat al-tawḥīd purporting to be a philosophical commentary.109 The text
seems incomplete, only consisting of the following: an introduction that in-
cludes fawāʾid: the first on names of the sūra, the second on the contexts of
revelation, the third on the levels of unity, the fourth on whether divine unity
can be established by reason alone or requires revelation, the fifth on the term
‘tawḥīd’. These are then followed by discussions (mabāḥith): the first is on how
to vocalise the term, the second on the grammar of the term, the third on the
derivation of the term. The rest of the text consists of a philosophical commen-
tary on the basmala. Overall there is nothing textually that conclusively points
to it being Nūrī’s composition. Al-Sirāj al-munīr fī l-kashf ʿan al-waḥdāniyyat
al-kubrā is an Arabic epistle on monism and seemingly survives in a single
manuscript.110 There is a brief epistle in Persian on the imamate.111 Another
related epistle examines the infallibility of the Imams in Persian.112 Asrār-i

105  Nūrī, Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Fawāʾid, MS Qom, Marʿashī 5653, fols. 1a, 2a.
106  Ibid., fols. 18a–18b.
107  Ibid., fol. 81a.
108  Ibid., fol. 13a.
109  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 3, p. 143, citing a number of manuscripts: MSS Mashhad, Āstān-i
Quds-i Riḍawī 7511 and 11572, MS Qom, Marʿashī 14614, and MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi
Islāmī 1719, fols. 436–454, which I have consulted.
110  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 80 citing MS Tehran, University of Tehran 3092, fols.
540–623.
111  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 2, p. 151 citing a single manuscript MS Tehran, University of
­Tehran 4354, fols. 173–178.
112  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 7, p. 519 citing two manuscripts: MSS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi
Islāmī 1132 and 17535.
148 Rizvi

­basmala is a Persian mystical investigation into the nature of the name of God.113
Writings on philosophy and legal theory (maqālāt falsafiyya wa uṣūliyya) are
cited in one manuscript.114 Another text contains some glosses on the ideas of
Mullā Ṣadrā.115 This is another short text from the manuscript of his student
Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṣādiq b. Muḥammad Jaʿfar.
Al-Maqālāt al-nūriyya (“Luminous writings”) is attested in a single
manuscript.116 This is a short set of notes on ʿirfān in the hand of the author on
the nature of the emanation of being from God and its reversion through the
human isthmus. This may be the same as Risāla dar ʿirfān.117 It may also be a
short excerpt from al-Raqīma al-nūriyya discussed below. Another text is a set
of thirty-five questions and answers, solicited from the court either directly
from Āqā Muḥammad Khān (d. 1212/1797) or more likely from his nephew Fatḥ
ʿAlī Shāh (d. 1250/1834), on the nature of the human, the soul and its relation-
ship to the body, on Jesus, the Imams and the afterlife (recently published).118
The repetitive nature of the text suggests that it is a compilation of a series
of exchanges of correspondence with the Qajar court. ʿIlm al-Bāriʾ is a short
epistle on divine knowledge in Arabic with a mystical reading.119
Perhaps the most important philosophical work associated with his name
is Risāla basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa, which has been published, and although it might not
be his, it is probably by someone in his circle. His friend Mīrzā-yi Qummī re-
quested it of him, and wrote an incomplete set of glosses on this text.120 While
the title suggests a focus, it is a wider treatise on aspects of the metaphysics of

113  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 1, p. 773 citing two manuscripts of which I have consulted MS
Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1020 in the hand of Nūrī’s student Muḥammad Raḥīm
Ṭāliqānī.
114  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 9, p. 1114 citing MS Tehran, University of Tehran 3092/5.
115  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 530 citing MS Tehran, Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg 534; vol. 4,
p. 805 citing MS Tehran, University of Tehran, Adabiyyāt 387 is probably the same text.
116  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 9, p. 1115 citing MS Qom, Marʿashī 11214, fols. 76–79 [Ḥusaynī,
Fihrist, XXVIII, p. 305].
117  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 7, p. 465, citing a single manuscript MS Tehran, Dāʾirat al-
Maʿārif-i Buzurg 534.
118  Nūrī, “Pursishhā u pāsukhhā-yi ḥikmī”.
119  Dirāyatī, Fihrsitwāra, vol. 7, p. 590 citing one manuscript MS Tehran, Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i
Buzurg 534.
120  Mudarrisī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, “Falsafa u ʿirfān,” pp. 184–185. Cf. Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 2, p. 498,
citing the following manuscripts including MS Tehran, Dānishgāh 2624, MSS Mashhad,
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 8127 and 12040, and MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmi 1719, fol.
388–403 which I have consulted. There is also an edition of the text in Nūrī, Rasāʾil-i
falsafī, pp. 9–62.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 149

Mullā Ṣadrā.121 A set of glosses upon this text is also attributed to Nūrī.122 The
text begins with an examination of this key Sadrian doctrine on monism that
uses the Neoplatonic motif of everything existing immanently in the simple
intellect to describes the nature of God as being and his encompassing of the
totality of existence. The incipit, therefore, reminds one of the famous passag-
es in the Theologia Aristotelis from mīmar X on the one being the cause and
perfection of all things (tamām al-ashyāʾ).123 Partly adopting a kalām style of
dialectical argumentation, the author defends both the ontological primacy
and the monistic reality of existence. The second treatise edited by Āshtiyānī
is more of an ʿirfān defence of the doctrine of being, focusing on the notion
of being-a-thing (shayʾiyya) in which the author cites and glosses a long ex-
tract from the work of Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī.124 As such it acts like a short
summary of Sadrian semantics of being with a primary concern to distinguish
between existence as a concept and as an extra-mental reality in order to show
that being is not one of the five universal predicables (from the tradition of
Porphyry’s Isagoge) that can be applied to existent things that we encounter.125
The Āshtiyānī edition is severely defective based on a single manuscript that
explains the rather disjointed structure.
Another longer version of this titled al-Raqīma al-nūriyya fī qāʿidat baṣīṭ al-
ḥaqīqa has recently been edited—the title is attested in one of the manuscripts
used for the edition.126 It is far more systematic and improves on the Āshtiyānī
text—or rather is a more complete version—based on different manuscripts.127
Nūrī analyses existence from the perspective of ʿirfān. He starts with the con-
cept of existence, and what it means to be a thing.128 Arguably, it brings out the
more mystical side of the legacy of Mullā Ṣadrā. When we ascribe existence
to something contingent, we ascribe an existential r­elationship that it bears

121  The only piece, to my knowledge, in English, on Nūrī is based on an analysis of this trea-
tise; see Janis Esots, “Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī as an exponent of Mullā Ṣadrā’s teachings”, Ishrāq 7
(2016), pp. 44–53.
122  Manuscripts include MS Qom, Marʿashī 11214 and MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī
1719, which I have consulted.
123  ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (ed.), Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿArab [Uthūlūjiyā] (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-
Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1955), p. 134.
124  Rasāʾil-i falsafī, pp. 41–43.
125  Rasāʾil-i falsafī, pp. 53ff.
126  Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya.
127  Nājī based his edition on MS Tehran, Sipahsālār 6459 (naskh, dated 1297/1880, based on
autograph), MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 8127 (naskh, 1303/1886, acephalous), and
a codex (details not given!) in University of Tehran Central Library that he says is a com-
promise between the previous two manuscripts.
128  Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, p. 36.
150 Rizvi

to ourselves and to the Necessary Existent (known as the iḍāfa ishrāqiyya);

in itself, a contingent has no existence but wallows in ontological indigence.129
This is followed by a defence of the ontological primacy of existence within
the dyad of existence-essence that defines contingents and the logical and se-
mantic properties that arise.130 Consistent with his glosses on the work of Mīr
Dāmād, he criticises him for opposing the ontological primacy of existence in
contingent beings.131 One of the results is to distinguish the concept of exis-
tence that is a secondary intelligible and can be analysed as one of the ten Aris-
totelian categories from the very act of being.132 However, allowing for the term
‘existence’ and ‘thing’ to be applied to God requires a discussion of the analogy
between God and the creation that is known as modulation (tashkīk), critically
focusing on the singularity of existence differentiated by levels of intensional
intensity.133 The remainder of the text focuses on the principle of the simple
thing and how God’s existence extends to all that exists, expressing a basic mo-
nism in which essences are purely illusory, and how multiplicity is manifest
and emanates from unity. A striking element of his method is the blending
of the philosophical language of Mullā Ṣadrā, with the mystical terminology
of the school of Ibn ʿArabi and copious citations of Qurʾānic and scriptural
texts including phrases of famous supplications like the Day of ʿArafa attrib-
uted to Imam Ḥusayn that describes God as ‘absent but not lost, present but
not found’.134
Apart from these works, there are sets of Arabic glosses on different ḥadīth
of Amīr al-muʾminīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (to whom in all his works he refers as Qib-
lat al-ʿārifīn or the Pole of the mystics) that pertain to the nature of the cosmos
and of the Imam:
a. Inna l-arḍa ʿalā l-ḥūt—‘The Earth rests upon a whale’.135 Nūrī commented
upon this famous mythical text on the nature of the cosmos in an alle-
gorical manner associating every level upon which the cosmos sits with

129  Ibid., p. 43.

130  Ibid., pp. 46–64.
131  Ibid., p. 61.
132  Ibid., pp. 64–70.
133  Ibid., pp. 74–79.
134  Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, 175. For the phrase in the supplication, see Raḍī al-Dīn ʿAlī Ibn
Ṭawūs, Iqbāl al-aʿmāl (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥujja, 1997), p. 661.
135  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 606, citing a single manuscript. The edition by Ḥāmid Nājī
Iṣfahānī (in Mīrāth-i ḥadīth-i Shīʿa, ed. ʿAlī Ṣadrāʾī Khūʾī and Mahdī Mihrīzī (Qom: Dār al-
Ḥadīth, 1377–83 Sh./1998–2004), vol. XV, pp. 233–242) is based upon a single MS Tehran,
Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg 534 dating from the time of the author. The original ḥadīth
is found in al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, ed. ʿAlī-Akbar Ghaffārī (Tehran: al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya,
1387/1968), vol. 8, p. 89, ḥadīth no. 55; ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, Tafsīr, ed. Sayyid Ṭayyib
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 151

elements of the base nature of humans that tie them to materiality such
as the bull denoting the appetitive and carnal desires of the human being
that take him away from God. The ḥadīth ends with the inability of schol-
ars to understand how far to take the parable and their amazement at the
fact that everything stands on ‘water’—Nūrī in his mystical approach
points to the fact that their lack of comprehension is because they are
incapable of walking on water, an ability that the true friends of God
(awliyāʾ) possess.
b. Al-maʿrifa bi-l-nūrāniyya—that the gnosis of the Imam is luminous. This
was another text that was popular in the Qajar period and some twenty
manuscripts are extant, including three copies of Nūrī’s.136 There is a fa-
mous and extensive gloss by Sabzawārī.137 The text itself upon which the
gloss was made seems to be similar to other material on the divine nature
of the Imam such as the Expository Sermon (khuṭbat al-bayān) and the
sermon of illumination (khuṭbat al-nūrāniyya).138 Nūrī cites and com-
ments on this ḥadīth in his other works as well. His own gloss, following
the long text of the ḥadīth, makes clear his distance from purely literal
and discursive understandings of the text. He identifies himself and his
friends as ‘the brethren of purity and gnosis’ (ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ wa-l-ʿirfān)
who eschew invalidly speculative interpretations (ta‌ʾwīl that in effect are
corruptions of the text—taḥrīf). A proper understanding of this text en-
tails an esoteric taste of the literal sense and only arises once a person on
the mystical path understands the essentially monistic nature of reality.
Nūrī uses his commentary to expound on monism and insists that every-
thing that we think exists and is manifest including our very understand-
ing of that existence stems from the One who alone truly exists, God.

Mūsawī al-Jazāʾirī (Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Nuʿmān, 1387/1968), vol. 2, p. 58; and Muḥammad
Bāqir Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1983), vol. 57, p. 79.
136  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, pp. 625–626, citing the manuscripts of Nūrī: MS Mashhad,
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11287, MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 17353, MS Qom, Ḥaram-i
Ḥaḍrat-i Maʿṣūma 703. The text was critically edited by Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī.
137  Hādī Sabzawārī, Majmūʿa-yi rasāʾil-i faylasūf-i kabīr Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, ed.
Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Idāra-yi Kull-i Awqāf-i Khurāsān, 1349 Sh./1970),
pp. 381–487. There are plenty of other commentaries including ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Hamadānī
(d. 1802), Baḥr al-maʿārif, ed. Ḥusayn Ustād-Walī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1416/1995),
vol. 2, pp. 469–74. Cf. Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 626.
138  The ḥadīth is found in Majlisī, Biḥār, vol. 26, p. 1 (bāb 13, ḥadīth 1). Cf. Rajab al-Bursī,
Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn fī asrār Amīr al-muʾminīn (Beirut: Dār al-Aʿlamī, n.d.), pp. 160–
162, 164–172 for the other sermons. For an analysis of these sermons, see Mohammad
Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Aspects de l’imamisme duodécimaine I: Remarques sur la divinité de
l’Imam,” Studia Iranica 25 (1996): 193–216.
152 Rizvi

Along the way, he cites both the Sadrian idea of God as the simple reality
that encompasses all things (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa kull al-ashyāʾ), and the
Sadrian proof for the existence of God through the very analysis of divine
being known as the proof of the veracious (burhān al-ṣiddīqīn). He con-
tinues with an exposition of how the One emanates existence through
the stages of divine presence through to the perfect human being, the
Muḥammadan reality. As such, the commentary is a classic example of a
Sadrian explanation of a ḥadīth. At the end, he engages in polemics with
some of this ‘contemporaries’ who fail to understand monism because
they assume that matter is the basic principle and hence assume material
continuity between all things that exist. Neither is God matter or materi-
ally continuous with the cosmos nor is the perfect human part of the
same matter as the cosmos.
c. Hal ra ʾayta fī l-dunyā rajulan—‘Have you seen a man in this world?’ This
seems to have been a popular text to gloss in the Qajar period—there are
more than fifty manuscripts of commentaries on it including nine copies
of Nūrī’s gloss.139 Nūrī uses it to gloss the nature of vision, the true nature
of the human being and his faculties as well as the subtle substances and
levels of the human that correspond to the level of reality emanating
from the One. Ultimately what he means by the human being is the per-
fect human being (al-insān al-kāmil) or the cosmic nature of the Imam.
d. Zaynab al-ʿAṭṭāra used to sell perfume to the Prophet and his daughter
and the text is a conversation cited in the varia section (rawḍa) of al-Kāfī
of al-Kulaynī on the nature of the cosmos.140 This is the most extensive

139  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, pp. 630–632, including the following manuscripts of
Nūrī: MSS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 842 and 1819, MS Qom, Fayḍiyya 1570, and
MSS Qom, Marʿashī 7297, fols. 48b–51a, and 3840, fols. 93a–96a. The text has also been
edited by Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (in Mīrāth-i ḥadīth-i Shīʿa, vol. III, pp. 141–160). The
ḥadīth is found in al-Bursī, Mashāriq, p. 231. Other glosses include: the Niʿmatullāhī Sufi
Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh Kabūdarāhangī (Rasāʾil-i Majdhūbiyya, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Teh-
ran: Intishārāt-i Ḥaqīqat, 1377 Sh./1998), pp. 109–110); Mahdī Narāqī, Mushkilāt al-ʿulūm,
ed. Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Raḍawī (Lucknow, 1305/1887), pp. 220–223; Shaykh Aḥmad
al-Aḥsāʾī, Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī, and Abū l-Qāsim mudarris (who may be Khātūnābādī, his
teacher).
140  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 610, citing the following manuscripts: MS Tehran, Univer-
sity of Tehran 3092, MS Tehran, Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg 534, MS Qom, Marʿashī 2010,
fols. 1b–78b, and MS Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1934, pp. 1–46, which I have con-
sulted. The ḥadīth is cited in al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, vol. 5, p. 151, and Ibn Bābawayh, Kitāb al-
Tawḥīd, bāb 38, ḥadīth 1, pp. 269–270. There is apparently a commentary by Mullā Ṣadrā,
MS Tehran, Millī 264 comprising 6 folios in the hand of Muḥammad Ṣādiq Khurāsānī
dated 1259/1843.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 153

commentary that Nūrī wrote on a ḥadīth and another example of a gloss

that expounds on monism.
e. Innā Abā Bakra minnī bi-manzilat al-samʿ—this is an unusual report in a
Shiʿi context in which the Prophet is purported to be praising the caliphs,
striking a similitude of Abū Bakr to his hearing, ʿUmar to his seeing and
ʿUthmān to his feeling.141 Nūrī’s commentary follows the pattern of
Safavid commentaries.
His most extensive independent treatise was Ḥujjat al-Islām yā burhān al-milla
[also known as Radd-i pādrī], an anti-Christian polemical response to Henry
Martyn (1781–1812) with a completion date of 23 Rabīʿ I 1232/1817.142 It is the
longest piece that Nūrī wrote in Persian—although similar to other Qajar era
works, it contains a considerable number of passages in Arabic and hence was
written for a scholarly audience. Martyn, who was a chaplain to the military
of the East India Company, having served as a missionary in India from 1806
to 1810 and translated the New Testament into Urdu, turned his attention to
a Persian New Testament and visited Iran in 1811, seeking to present copies
to the Shah.143 In Shiraz, he became embroiled in disputations with Mīrzā
Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Ḥusaynī Fasāʾī (d. 1255/1839), and wrote two responses

141  Dirāyatī, Fihristwāra, vol. 6, p. 596, citing three manuscripts including MS Tehran, Ma-
jlis-i Shūrā 1020. The original ḥadīth is cited in the following: Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Ibn
Bābawayh, ʿUyūn akhbār al-Riḍā (Najaf: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḥaydariyya, 1390/1970), vol. 1, p. 280;
idem, Maʿānī l-akhbār, ed. Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī al-Kharsān (Najaf: al-Maṭbaʿa al-
Ḥaydariyya, 1391/1971), p. 387; Sayyid Hāshim al-Baḥrānī, Tafsīr al-burhān (Qom: Maṭbaʿ-yi
Ismāʿīliyān, 1412/1981), vol. 2, p. 240; ʿAbd ʿAlī Ḥuwayzī, Tafsīr Nūr al-thaqalayn (Qom: al-
Maṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1383/1965), vol. 3, p. 164. Ḥuwayzī cites the text from ʿUyūn complet-
ing it to note that the ḥadīth does not denote approval of the caliphs but rather that the
faculties of the human such as sight, hearing and so forth are held accountable on the day
of judgement and particularly on the issue of whether they testified to the walāya of ʿAlī.
142  Ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī. There are numerous manuscripts (18) of this text, sometimes
under the title Radd-i pādrī (which denotes the genre).
143  John R. C. Martyn, Henry Martyn (1781–1812), Scholar and Missionary to India and Persia:
A Biography (Lampeter: E. Mellen Press, 1999), pp. 95–128 for a useful if uncritical narra-
tive; Avril Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (Richmond: Curzon Press,
1993), pp. 89–102, 107–114. For a discussion of these polemics and Persian responses, see
ʿAbd al-Hādī Ḥāʾirī, Nakhustīn rūyārūyīhā-yi andīshagarān-i Īrān bā du rūya-yi tamaddun-i
būrzhūwāzī-i gharb (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Amīr Kabīr, 1367 Sh./1988); for the Safavid back-
ground to the polemics, see Rasūl Jaʿfariyān, Siyāsat u farhang-i rūzgār-i Ṣafawī (Tehran:
Nashr-i ʿIlm, 1388 Sh./2009), pp. 965–998. A number of the sources seem rather confused
about the text and suggest that Nūrī’s critique is aimed at the Mīzān al-ḥaqq of Martyn;
however, Mīzān al-ḥaqq was a Christian polemic originally written in Arabic in 1829 and
then translated into Persian in 1832 by the German missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander
(1803–65). Iṣfahānī in his introduction to the edition (pp. xxxii–xxxiii) discusses the rela-
tion between the two texts, and also gives a full list of the refutations of Martyn in Iran.
154 Rizvi

to his Arabic critique of Christianity.144 He also debated with Sufis like the
Nūrbakhshī Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim ‘Sukūt’ Shīrāzī (d. 1239/1823), which may ac-
count for a Sufi response from the Niʿmatullāhī Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh Iṣfahānī
(d. 1234/1818).145 Most Shiʿi responses to Martyn in Iran and India followed the
‘argument from reason’ by providing philosophical objections to Christianity,
as well as rational defences of the Islamic notion of prophecy and revelation.146
Another response was the Ithbāt al-nubūwa of Mīrzā ʿĪsā Khān Qāʾim-Maqām
Farahānī known as Mīrzā-yi Buzurg (d. 1239/1824), which was published by his
son Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim (d. 1251/1835); he also passed on the request from the
court, in particular, from the Qajar prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā (d. 1251/1835), for Nūrī
to write the refutation.147 The request was partly due to the weakness of Fasāʾī’s
response and the need for a more robust defence, which Nūrī himself recog-
nised. Another impetus for Nūrī’s work could have been another refutation by
the famous jurist Mīrzā-yi Qummī (d. 1231/1816), a close friend of his teacher
Bīdābādī as we have seen above and an acquaintance of his own; this incom-
plete work titled Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān focused on Martyn’s attack on the divine ori-
gins of the scripture.148 His ambivalence towards Sufi leaders and disdain for
their work could also signal a need for a response as he felt that previous works,
like that of Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh, were inadequate.149 Nūrī’s work was written at
roughly the same time as another philosophical refutation by Mullā Aḥmad
Narāqī (d. 1245/1829) titled Sayf al-umma, commissioned by the same Qajar
prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā and completed in 1233/1817. Nūrī states that he wrote

144  A manuscript that contains Fasāʾī’s Arabic text and Martyn’s two Persian responses is MS
Oxford, Bodleian Or. 765. These texts were translated in Samuel Lee, Controversial Tracts
in Christianity and Mohammadanism by the Late Rev. Henry Martyn and Some of the Most
Eminent Writers of Persia (Cambridge: J. Smith, 1824). Lee’s work included the response of
Mullā Muḥammad Riḍā Hamadānī (d. 1237/1822) titled Irshād al-muḍillīn fī ithbāt khātam
al-nabiyyīn.
145  Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh, Risāla-yi radd-i pādrī, ed. Maḥmūd Riḍā Isfandyār (Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Ḥaqīqat, 1387 Sh./2008), esp. p. 44 on the request of ʿAbbās Mīrzā. Sukūt-i Shīrāzī was
sometimes claimed as a Niʿmatullāhī but seems to have been Nūrbakhshī; see ʿAbd al-
Ḥusayn Zarrīnkūb, Dunbāla-yi justujū dar taṣawwuf-i Īrān (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Amīr
Kabīr, 1369 Sh./1990), p. 317. On Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh, see Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn Shīrwānī, Bustān
al-siyāḥa (Tehran: Sanāʾī, 1315/1895), pp. 82–83; Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq, vol. 3, p. 221.
146  Cf. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries, pp. 170–179. Another response of this type was
Muḥammad Taqī Kāshānī, Hidāyat al-mustarshidīn fī radd al-muḍillīn, ed. Ḥamīḍ Riḍā
Kiyānī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhūhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1396 Sh./2017).
147  See ʿAlī-Qulī Mīrzā Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana, Iksīr al-tawārīkh, ed. Jamshīd Kiyānfar (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Wīsmān, 1370 Sh./1991), pp. 539–540.
148  Ed. Sayyid Ḥusayn Mudarrisī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Waḥīd 10 (1351 Sh./1972): 115–118.
149  Nūrī, Ḥujjat al-Islām, pp. 27, 73, describes Sufis as a Satanic group of heretics who in their
ignorance and ability to misguide are like Christian missionaries.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 155

the work at the request of his scholarly friends and dedicated it to Fatḥ ʿAlī
Shāh, the same ruler to whom Martyn sent his work, adding that the need was
great because of the increasing lack of intellectual skill among the scholars of
his age.150 Significantly, all the major responses to Martyn were commissions
from the court, not least because he had dedicated his Persian translation of
the New Testament and his vindication of Christianity to the King; it demon-
strates the role of the court, as in the Safavid period before it, as the forum for
polemics with missionaries.
In terms of method, Nūrī insisted upon using only rational arguments and
drew upon his training in ḥikmat. Starting with rational premises, he dem-
onstrates the invalidity of his opponents’ argument, followed by the truth of
his own position, in order to demonstrate the truth of Islam.151 For example,
in his section on miracles, especially the splitting of the moon into two, he
cites the Sadrian idea of motion in substance (ḥaraka jawhariyya) to prove its
possibility.152 This proof is prefaced by his critique of the position of ʿAbd al-
Razzāq Lāhījī, the famous theologian and son-in-law of Mullā Ṣadrā that mir-
acles are due to a heightened faculty of imagination in the prophet, a theory
that has its origin in the ideas of Avicenna.153 Nūrī is clearly defending Mullā
Ṣadrā against his Avicennan disciple, Lāhījī. The text itself is divided into two
preliminary principles followed by a series of arguments. The preliminaries
concern the nature of being and its division into perfect and imperfect, fol-
lowed by a discussion of the dual nature of the human being as inclined to the
good and to heaven on the one hand, and as inclined to the bad and to hell on
the other. He then moves on to the nature of prophecy and contrasts Jesus,
critiquing the notion of his divinity and the doctrine of the trinity as well as
the doctrine of sacrifice and redemption, to Muḥammad, as a more rational
exemplar. The proof in favour of Muḥammad then progresses to a discussion
of the privileged nature of the Qurʾān and of miracles. Along the way there is
an important discussion of walāya from the perspective of ḥikmat, the cosmo-
logical status and authority that the prophets and the Shiʿi Imams have, cit-
ing by way of example ʿAlī’s presence at the time of Dhū l-Qarnayn.154 In fact,
this is the major theme of the text, an exordium on walāya that fits within the
Qajar interest in the issue across the divide between Sufis and ḥukamāʾ that
was growing at the time.

150  Nūrī, Ḥujjat al-Islām, pp. 4–7.

151  Ibid., pp. 10–11.
152  Ibid., pp. 184–186.
153  Ibid., pp. 179–184.
154  Ibid., pp. 266–273, 292–293.
156 Rizvi

Finally, Nūrī exhibited an interest in the occult and in the school of Ibn
ʿArabī. He wrote a set of glosses on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of Ibn Turka
Iṣfahānī, the famous occultist of the Timurid period, and another set of glosses
on his Tamhīd al-qawāʿid. He may well have established the ground for the
promotion of the latter text as a key work in the ʿirfān curriculum. The gloss
on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam demonstrates not only his deep affinity to and
understanding of the Shiʿi school of Ibn ʿArabī (in particular, to monism) but
also his skill as a lettrist. His attempt at reconciling this school and lettrism
with a Shiʿi commitment is clear through his extensive use of ḥadīth especially
attributed to ʿAlī to exemplify the point; for example, monism is reconciled
with Shiʿi ḥadīth.155 He repeats in an abbreviated form his commentary on the
famous ḥadīth on the luminous gnosis of the Imam.156 He even seems to point
towards one tendency in the modern ʿirfān tradition, namely the notion that
Ibn ʿArabī was a crypto-Shiʿi. For example, on the question of the seal of saint-
hood (khatm al-walāya), where it is famously stated that Ibn ʿArabī claimed
this status for himself during the Muḥammadan dispendation, he argues that
if that was indeed his position, he was wrong since it is the prerogative of the
Twelfth Imam.157 He then goes on to claim that he saw in ‘an old manuscript’
a statement in the hand of Ibn ʿArabī where he makes it clear that it is the
Twelfth Imam who is the seal.158
His gloss on the Kitāb al-Mafāḥiṣ of Ibn Turka, perhaps the magnum opus
of early modern lettrism, is less well known but still significant.159 Nūrī’s in-
terest in the occult work of Ibn Turka is clear: he owned and annotated the
oldest manuscript of his collected works, now preserved as MS Tehran, Majlis-
i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 10196 and these glosses include a set on al-Mafāḥiṣ.160 This

155  Ṣā’in al-Dīn Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. Muḥsin Bidārfar (Qom:
Intishārāt-i Bīdār, 1420/1999), vol. 1, pp. 13, 16, 63, 117, 135, 191, 206, 219, 323; vol. 2, p. 701 and
passim.
156  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 258.
157  On the issue of the seal of sainthood and its Shīʿī interpretation, see Henry Corbin, En
Islam iranien (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), vol. 3, pp. 198–200; Michel Chodkiewicz, The Seal of
Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn ʿArabī (Cambridge: The Islamic
Texts Society, 1993), pp. 49, 136–137; ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ʿAnāqa, “Khatm-i walāyat az dīdgāh-i
Ibn ʿArabī u Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī,” Pazhūhishnāma-yi zabān u adabiyyāt-i Fārsī I 3 (winter
1388 Sh./2009): 87–110.
158  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 200.
159  Melvin-Koushki, Quest, pp. 330–378, 573–574.
160  M S Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 10196, fols. 52a–118b; Melvin-Koushki, Quest, p. 80; on
the codex, see Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, “Majmūʿa-yi rasāʾil-i Khujandī,” Farhang-
i Īrān-zamīn 14 (1345–46 Sh./1966–67): 307–312. While Nūrī’s hand is in relatively clear
nastaʿlīq, the age of the text and the nature of the fading ink make his glosses at times very
difficult to read.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 157

codex is the earliest and arguably the most valuable collection of Ibn Turka’s
works since at least one text might be an autograph. The whole codex is heavily
annotated with numerological observations. Letters have a cosmogonic role as
well as a scriptural reality that descends with prophecy.161 The descent of being
into the cosmos is an expression of both the letters as well as the person of the
perfect human being in the form of the Prophet and ʿAlī—for which he cites
the narration, ‘If it were not for you, I would not have created the spheres.’162
All this is within a monist context as he cites the famous narration of God
being alone and persisting in His solitude.163 Throughout the text, he sees his
job as the elucidation of the various allusions that are made, perhaps in the
first instance clarifying their meaning for himself and his circle. His approach
is to locate lettrism within the idiom of the mystical metaphysics of the school
of Ibn ʿArabī.

4 His Philosophical Thought

While the most famous figure of Qajar philosophy, Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī owes
his fame to his role in the dissemination of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā, espe-
cially through his composition of what became the central philosophy school-
text of the modern period, the Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid, and through his glosses
on the works of Mullā Ṣadrā, the individual who was responsible for reviving
the study of philosophy in its traditional home of Isfahan was Sabzawārī’s
eminent teacher and who was also commentator on the work of Mullā Ṣadrā
(d. 1045/1635–6), Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī.164 The Afghan sack of Isfahan 1134/1722 and
the interregnum that followed drove philosophers out of the city, as Mullā

161  Ibn Turka, Mafāḥiṣ, fol. 53b.

162  Ibid., fol. 56b.
163  Ibid., fol. 57b.
164  For studies of Sabzawārī, see Sajjad H. Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran: Locating the
life and work of Mulla Hadi Sabzavari (d. 1289/1873),” Iranian Studies 44 (2011): 473–496;
Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī. On Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid or what is more popu-
larly known as Sharḥ-i manẓūma, see the editions by T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh (Teh-
ran: McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, 1348 Sh./1969) and by M. Mohaghegh (1999). It has
been translated as The Metaphysics of Sabzevari by M. Mohaghegh and T. Izutsu (Tehran:
Iran University Press, 1362 Sh./1983). For a wide-ranging and thoughtful modern com-
mentary, see Murtaḍā Muṭahharī, Sharḥ-i mabsūṭ-i Manẓūma, 4 vols. (Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Ḥikmat, 1404/1984).
158 Rizvi

Muḥammad Naʿīmā Ṭāliqānī (d. 1152/1739) described eloquently in the preface

of his major work Aṣl al-uṣūl:165

I was asked to write this when the age had taken up the sword of enmity
against the people during the occupation of the city of Isfahan by the Af-
ghan forces, and their killing of many of the inhabitants and of my fellow
countrymen, and their pillaging of the city and the countryside around
it and the putting to death of many believers, not least among whom
were my friends, my relatives and my family (al-ʿashāʾir wa-l-aqārib wa-
l-ikhwān). I fled to the city of Qom—the city of the sanctuary (baldat
aman wa-amān)—may God preserve her from misfortunes and from the
ravages of the Afghans. I found refuge there far from my family and home.
But there the request was renewed—and I was obliged to comply—and
I did so willingly and determinedly, setting forth the text with the assis-
tance of God and arranging it with an introduction, there chapters and a
conclusion, and I called it Aṣl al-uṣūl.166

The destruction led to the scattering of scholars and the emergence of new
scholarly networks and patronage circles associated with regional court and
cultural centres. However, the displacement of Isfahan was rather momentary
and scholars had flocked back there in the generation before Nūrī—the fact
that his teachers were based there and his intellectual formation was fash-
ioned there testify to this.
Although he was not the first person whose work showed the influence of
Mullā Ṣadrā’s thought—that was probably, after the latter’s students, Mullā
Ṣādiq Ardistānī (d. 1134/1722), who was a teacher of Ṭāliqānī, in his Ḥikmat-i
Ṣādiqiyya—nor the first to write glosses on the works of Mullā Ṣadrā—that
was probably Muḥammad Bīdābādī, his own teacher—Nūrī does seem to have
been the first to place the works of Mullā Ṣadrā at the heart of his teaching and
to write a systematic set of glosses on all his major works.167 Nūrī, therefore,

165  al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, vol. 10, p. 81; Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, al-Ma‌ʾāthir wa-l-āthār, ed. Īraj
Afshār (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Asāṭīr, 1363 Sh./1984), pp. 163, 182; Sayyid Aḥmad Ḥusaynī,
Talāmidhat al-ʿAllāma al-Majlisī (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Āyat Allāh Marʿashī Najafī,
1410/1989), p. 89; Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, pp. 293–299; Henry Corbin, La philosophie iranienne
islamique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1981), pp. 300–334.
166  Mullā Naʿīmā Ṭāliqānī, Aṣl al-uṣūl, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Iranian Acad-
emy of Philosophy, 1359 Sh./1980), p. 2.
167  The text is actually in the hand of Ḥamza Gīlānī quoting his teacher; cf. Ḥikmat-i Ṣādiqiyya,
in Āshtiyānī (ed.), Muntakhabātī, vol. 4, pp. 63–220. It is primarily a study of perception,
sensation and the nature of the soul and its faculties, and demonstrates two Sadrian doc-
trines: that the soul is united with its multiple faculties and that it comes into existence
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 159

represents a critical stage in the transmission of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā to

the Qajar and the modern periods, bridging the generation of students and key
figures of the eighteenth century with the period of the lithographing and dis-
semination of Mullā Ṣadrā’s works and ideas in the modern Shiʿi seminary and
the intellectual world of Iran. A careful study of Nūrī reveals his pivotal role
as well as his contribution to the formation of what is the modern tradition
of ḥikmat and ʿirfān of the Shiʿi seminary, of the study of philosophy, theology
and mysticism with a dash of the occult.
Nūrī’s career demonstrates the key features of the philosophical synthesis
of the early Qajar period that followed on from the themes of ḥikmat in the
eighteenth century such as the rise of the role of Mullā Ṣadrā, a tendency to-
wards an Illuminationist (ishrāqī) reading of Avicennan philosophy through
commentaries on texts of both schools, and the emergence of the discourse of
ʿirfān as a serious development from and specialisation within a tendency of
ḥikmat towards a particular ‘way of life’, and the mixing of inquiry as spiritual
exercise (riyāḍat) and the quest for inner revelation (kashf).168
One eighteenth-century figure, and teacher of Nūrī, in a work of ʿirfān sum-
marised inquiry in his time as consisting of the ways of four types of scholars:
theologians who are people of dialectic (aṣḥāb-i qāl), Peripatetic philosophers
(mashshāʾīn) who are salesmen of discourse (dar bāzār-i guftār), Illumina-
tionist philosophers who see their discipline in terms of spiritual exercise and
inner revelation, and the Sufis who are people seeking direct experience of the
ultimate (ahl-i dhawq) and who pursue the purification of the soul (tazkiya-yi
nafs).169 His own taste was clearly for the latter two, but the twin pillars of the
ḥikmat tradition in the Qajar period became ishrāqī philosophy and a more
theoretically minded approach to mystical speculation within the paradigm

with the body and survives it (jismāniyyat al-ḥudūth wa-rūḥāniyyat al-baqāʾ). But he de-
nies another key Sadrian doctrine, namely, motion in substance (ḥaraka jawhariyīya).
Another text attributed to him demonstrates his adherence to the doctrine of the modu-
lation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd); see Khudrī, Ta‌ʾammulī, p. 252. The espousal of these
two doctrines is a key indicator as anti-Sadrians in the eighteenth century were at pains
to refute them. It seems that before the eighteenth century, the work of Mullā Ṣadrā was
not cited much in either philosophical or philosophical-theological texts; a good example
of this is Sayyid Ashraf ʿAlawī (d. before 1160/1747), a great-grandson of Mīr Dāmād in his
ʿAlāqat al-Tajrīd, mentions a number of important authorities including ones from the
Safavid period but does not once mention Mullā Ṣadrā. See Sayyid Ashraf ʿAlawī, ʿAlāqat
al-Tajrīd, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī, 2 vols. (Tehran: University of Tehran Press/Anjuman-i
āthār u mafākhir-i farhangī, 1381 Sh./2002).
168  On the emergence of ʿirfān, see the excellent recent work of Anzali, Safavid Shiʿism, espe-
cially pp. 190ff.
169  Muḥammad Bīdābādī, Ḥusn-i dil, p. 50.
160 Rizvi

of ‘philosophy as a way of life’.170 The subsequent history of learned scholarly

culture in the seminaries of Tehran and Qom exhibit the influence of this new
configuration.
Nūrī’s main intellectual contribution was to establish the school of Mullā
Ṣadrā with its focus on the metaphysics of existence and its particular approach
to philosophy and mysticism as a singular holistic intellectual endeavour root-
ed in spiritual practice and received as a grace of prophetic inheritance. There
is little that he adds beyond defending, reformulating and refuting detractors;
he rarely adds perspectives and approaches not found in the work of Mullā
Ṣadrā. But in addition to that, retaining the Neoplatonic taste of his masters
and their use of the revived Hellenic tradition of late antiquity, he had a strong
commitment to the occult, especially lettrism, which demonstrates the influ-
ence of Mīr Dāmād. In that sense, he was a unique figure because there are
barely any thinkers in whose work one finds the confluence of the rather differ-
ent thought of Mīr Dāmād and his student Mullā Ṣadrā. I shall indicate some of
the positions that he stresses in metaphysics, ʿirfān, and lettrism.
In metaphysics, his concerns are to defend and establish the positions of
Mullā Ṣadrā not least because they were contested and far from uniformly ac-
cepted in the eighteenth century. This relates to his three central doctrines: the
primacy and the unity of existence (aṣālat, waḥdat al-wujūd), the modulation
of existence defined through intensity in opposition to Ibn Sīnā (tashkīk al-
wujūd bi-l-shidda wa-l-ḍuʿf), and the dynamic of reality mediated by motion
in the category of substance (ḥaraka jawhariyya). Much of this is clear in his
glosses on the work of Mullā Ṣadrā, not least on al-Asfār al-arbaʿa, and but also
critically in his al-Raqīma al-nūriyya. He stresses repeatedly that in our experi-
ence of phenomenal reality it is not things with their properties that are, but
rather they are just aspects of existence.171 Existence is ontologically prior even
if it might seem epistemologically posterior—although through mystically at-
tuned contemplation a person can have a non-discursive vision of the fact that
existence is primary and that essences are illusory.172 Existence is identical to
the being of God and all that exists is named and annexed to Him and exists
by virtue of being contingent and reliant upon Him; in themselves contingent

170  See Sajjad H. Rizvi, “Philosophy as a way of life in the world of Islam: Applying Hadot to
the study of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies 75 (2012): 33–45.
171  Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, pp. 40, 45.
172  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 248.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 161

entities do not exist.173 God’s everlasting countenance is existence and, just

like existence, is hidden but also manifest in a paradoxical manner.174
This is further emphasised in his approach to the graded and modulated na-
ture of existence as being the arranged manifestations of the divine; it is God’s
being and mercy that spreads out and is deployed to manifest the existents
that we experience.175 Hierarchy in existence is defined through the process
of intensity—the higher in the pyramid of being the more intense, and the
lower the more debilitated—and in affirming that, he agrees with Mullā Ṣadrā
on good Neoplatonic bases, while criticising Ibn Sīnā who, on good Aristote-
lian grounds, rejected the possibility of existence permitting of more or less
in terms of intensity.176 In his treatise (or perhaps it is by a student based on
his teachings) on the Simple One being the totality of what exists (basīṭ al-
ḥaqīqa), he argues similarly that God is identical to the totality and perfection
of existence, but also is the noblest and highest degree of being; He is both the
entirety of the pyramid of existence as well as its pinnacle and that pyramid is
arranged hierarchically, differentiated by intensity; this is argued alongside the
proof of the primacy and the unity of existence.177
A corollary of the doctrine of existence is Mullā Ṣadrā’s insistence that the
dynamic of existence, and what ultimately determines the cosmos being cre-
ated anew in time constantly and also what determines the path of perfection
that beings take towards their reversion to the One, is the notion of a changing
self or substance in motion.178 It is through the renewal and changing of the
self that the person or the existent persists in the flowing now (al-ān al-sayyāl).
Ultimately, even his exposition of Mullā Ṣadrā is tinged with a mystical, mo-
nistic emphasis. In a gloss on the nature of the differentia in al-Asfār al-arbaʿa,
he comments:

True differentia is nothing but true being and is neither a substance nor
an accident as has been shown. All things are perishing, fleeting, fading
into being (wujūd), which is singularly true insofar as it is the True One.
It is what it is and there is nothing but it, just as God bears witness that
there is no God but he. The entifications are a level emanated figuratively
from the reality of being and its manifestations. He is the first and the last

173  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 128, 210.

174  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 118.
175  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 68, 113.
176  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 253.
177  ʿAlī b. Jamshīd Nūrī, Rasāʾil-i falsafī: Basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa wa-waḥdat al-wujūd, ed. Sayyid Jalāl
al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Anjuman-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1357 Sh./1978), pp. 9–10.
178  Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, p. 395.
162 Rizvi

and the apparent and the hidden and they are mirrors of his manifesta-
tion. The mirror insofar as it is a mirror fades into the self-disclosure of
the divine. There is no veil between him and you except your being. So
elevate your contemplation until it is clear to you that he is the goal of all
contemplation.179

In ʿirfān, we know that Nūrī upheld the monism of the school of Ibn ʿArabī
and continued the Shiʿi expression of it through glossing significant narrations
of the Imams through its lens. His glosses on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of Ibn
Turka are the obvious source to consider here. There is only the One—and it
is not that we participate in the True One—and all else is a sign and manifes-
tation of the One. The relationship between God and the cosmos is primarily
presented through the very famous formulation of ʿAlī in Nahj al-balāgha: God
is neither identical nor distinct to the creation, he is ‘inside’ everything but
not in the sense of one thing or substance being in another, and He is ‘out-
side’ everything but not in the sense in which a thing or substance is outside
another in the sense of physical contiguity—God is with you wherever you
are (Qurʾān 4:57) and this is not what ‘the ignorant unbelieving Sufis’ (juhhāl
malāḥidat al-ṣūfiyya) think.180 Similarly, in order to gloss the quotation of Ibn
ʿArabī that the essences that determine things in the cosmos—the ‘permanent
archetypes’ (al-aʿyān al-thābita)—have never been existent as independent
entities (mā shammat rāʾiḥat al-wujūd) he cites a version of a famous narration
from Imam al-Kāẓim: ‘God was and there was nothing with Him, and He is as
He was’.181 He relates this to the principle of existence as the ground of every-
thing as opposed to essence. Multiplicity arises through the desire of God—­
insofar as He ‘was’ a hidden treasure—to be known and hence He creates, and
in the first instance manifests Himself through the Muḥammadan reality.182 By
citing here a supplication of the month of ʿAlī, that is Rajab, he insists that the
person of the Imam (and the Prophet before) mediates the mystical unfolding
of nature, and its return to the One.183

179  Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 2, p. 41. Cf. Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, p. 159:
“Existence in reality and in essence is naught but He; what exists in actuality is merely His
essence, His acts, His creation and His mercy that encompasses all things.”
180  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 10, 219; see Sayyid Ṣādiq al-Mūsawī (ed.), Tamām Nahj al-
balāgha (Beirut: al-Dār al-Islāmiyya, 2005), p. 39 (sermon §1).
181  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 63, 123; vol. 2, p. 701 (citing the same narration from Imam
Ṣādiq).
182  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 18, 135.
183  Ibid., pp. 138, 143–144.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 163

Monism is then related to questions on will and determinism. Correct-

ing the doctrine of the school of Ibn ʿArabī by citing a narration from Imam
al-Riḍā, he argues that there is a distinction between the divine intention
(mashiʾa) and will (irāda): the former relates to existence and the latter to the
thing itself. The coming into being of a thing requires a six-stage process: di-
vine knowledge (ʿilm), intention (which is identified with the first emanation
of the Muḥammadan reality of light), will, the measuring out (taqdīr), the de-
cree (qaḍāʾ), and the inscribing into existence (imḍāʾ).184 The intention is that
by which all things are—in the language of Ibn ʿArabī al-ḥaqq al-makhlūq bihi.
That divine intention is related to the totality of existence but the divine will
allows for the modulation and gradation in matters as they pertain to indi-
vidual entities. In this sense, monism does not entail a hard determinism.
Consistent with the Shiʿi school of Ibn ʿArabī on the famous issue of the seal
of saints, he follows the tradition of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī and Sayyid Ḥaydar
Āmulī on insisting that it is ʿAlī who constitutes the absolute seal, citing the fa-
mous saying in which he claimed to be the ‘dot under the bāʾ’, not least because
that dot is the totality of the cosmos and the ‘secret’ of God (sirr Allāh).185 The
Imam is the simple manifestation that expresses the totality of the divine. On
the question of the seal of sainthood in the Islamic dispensation, he follows
again the Shiʿi school that identifies it with the Mahdī (al-ḥaḍra al-mahdawi-
yya al-fāṭimiyya), criticising what seems to be Ibn ʿArabī’s position, but also
with a nod to those later in the tradition who saw him as crypto-Shiʿi, he says
that he saw an ‘old’ copy of a text in which Ibn ʿArabī identifies the seal with
the Mahdī and not himself.186 Another aspect of this polemic on walāya is to
criticise as Ismaili (malāḥidat al-bāṭiniyya) the position that seal is superior to
the Prophet in whose dispensation his function arises.187
The Imam is the perfect human, the eternal Adam, the calamus, and the
intellect, the first level of manifestation from the One.188 The Imam’s Adamic
nature is the comprehensive reality and presence of the divine (ḥaqīqa jāmiʿa)
as well as the comprehensive divine name because of Adam being the ‘total-
ity of the names’ (jawāmiʿ al-kalim), and citing a narration of Imam al-Ḥasan

184  Ibid., pp. 13–14, 288. Cf. Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, pp. 142–143.
185  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 107; Mullā Ṣadrā, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, 703; Majlisī, Biḥār, vol. 40,
p. 165; for a series of references and discussions from an earlier period, see Sayyid Ḥaydar
Āmulī, Tafsīr al-muḥīṭ al-aʿẓam wa-l-baḥr al-khiḍam, ed. Sayyid Muḥsin Mūsawī Tabrīzī
(Qom: Muʾassasa-yi Farhangī-i Nūrun ʿAlā Nūr, 1380 Sh./2001), vol. 1, pp. 210–211.
186  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 200; see Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ḥusaynī Ṭihrānī, Rūḥ-i
mujarrad (Mashhad: Intishārāt-i ʿAllāma-yi Ṭabāṭabāʾī, 1421/2000), pp. 313–371.
187  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 203.
188  Ibid., p. 24.
164 Rizvi

al-ʿAskarī, because it is the Imams alone who truly manifest God and through
whom His secret is revealed.189 It is because of this that Adam was created in
God’s image so that he might reveal God as the breath of the merciful, and
then as the microcosm reverting to God.190 In this sense, the Imam is an on-
tological mediation between God and the cosmos as well as being the face of
God turned to the cosmos and the reciprocating face of the cosmos turned
to God. This status, which is ultimately that of walāya, is the trust (amāna)
of Qurʾān 72:33, the vicegerency of God, through which human beings revert
to God and transfer their annihilation (fanāʾ) into an everlasting subsistence
(baqāʾ) with the divine.191 The Imams are the symbols of the divine and hence
they speak the language of symbols to facilitate through their concrete exam-
ples what God wishes to convey and manifest; Nūrī draws upon the famous
metaphor of the Imam as the sun hidden in the clouds the effulgence of whose
existence sustains the cosmos as an expression of how the light of God ema-
nates and sustains the cosmos.192
Knowledge of the realities of things is difficult because one cannot access
them without someone who can reveal their realities and knows them through
divine inspiration.193 It is the persons of the Prophet and the Imams as both the
veil of God and the everlasting face of God (wajh Allāh al-bāqī) who can guide
people. For this to happen human beings must first recognise the luminous
nature of the Imam (maʿrifa bi-l-nūrāniyya).194 Proper training leads people to
recognise themselves as followers of the Imams who can then see the realities
of things.195 But that is not easy since bearing the walāya of the Imams is dif-
ficult and arduous (ṣaʿb mustaṣaʿb) in the words of the narrations.196 The one
who is initiated and recognises himself and his Imam begins to see his own
exigency and realises God, and through seeing his ephemerality, understands
that God is everlasting.197 This is true piety (taqwā)—to refrain from ascribing
existence to what is utterly indigent and contingent.198 Once he understands
the basic monist truth, he realises that everything in extra-mental reality is
actually the product of imagination and is what the universal imagination and

189  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 25, 206–207; vol. 2, pp. 600–601.
190  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 74, 89, 242; vol. 2, pp. 736–737.
191  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 117.
192  Nūrī, al-Raqīma al-nūriyya, p. 46.
193  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 190.
194  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 258.
195  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 272.
196  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 125.
197  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 323.
198  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 153.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 165

our imagination projects; since imagination and this world is graded in inten-
sity, imagination emanates from the universal imagination (associated with
the Imams al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn as we shall see shortly) to the imagination
in the imaginal realm and down to imagination in this cosmos.199 The next
step is then the path back to God, and drawing upon the Kubrawī schema of
subtleties (laṭāʾif), Nūrī says that this involves seven stages: raw nature, then
soul (nafs) that has passions, then the moonlike heart (al-qalb al-qamarī) that
is manipulated by the imagination, then the theoretical intellect (al-ʿaql al-
naẓarī) that inquires into reality, then the rūḥ which is the intellect assisted by
God that acquires certainty, then the secret (al-sirr) through which one sees
the subtle lights and acquires the rank of the saints and the ability to doff the
body and experience the higher ecstasy of the beatific vision, and then the hid-
den (al-khafī) being in the world of reality and the abode of prophets.200
An aspect of his use of the Shiʿi school of Ibn ʿArabī is indicated by his com-
mentary on sūrat al-dahr and the light verse that is linked to lettrism, and
shows how the two passages that were commonly associated with mystical
Shiʿi exegesis are woven into a singular interpretation. In this passage he dem-
onstrates the correspondences and homologies between God and His attri-
butes that are the family of the Prophet and between numbers associated with
God and with the values of the names of the Prophetic household:

Ḥā-mīm is the most comprehensive of the beautiful names that are nine-
ty-nine; whoever enumerates them enters paradise. The Ḥā refers to the
nine and the mīm to the ninety, and the total is the Muḥammadan real-
ity (al-ḥaqīqa al-muḥammadiyya), which is the essence of the realities
of all things. Lām is the imams of the names, and he taught Adam all
the names, and the clear book, that clear book is the highest nature of
ʿAlī (al-ʿalawiyya al-ʿulyā), who is the Adam of writing (Ādam al-kitābī),
just as the Muḥammadan whiteness (al-Muḥammadiyya al-bayḍāʾ) is the
universal intellect (al-ʿaql al-kull) which is the Adam of speech (Ādam
al-kalāmī). The highest nature of ʿAlī is the universal soul (nafs al-kull)
that is the highest essence of God, the khalīfa of the universal intellect,
who is the Adam of writing, extracted from the Muḥammadan white-
ness just as Eve follows Adam and the tablet follows the highest pen. So
the book is the expansive nine, just like Adam, and it is the primordial
first Adamic state of writing and the first Eve, just as the Muḥammadan
whiteness is the primordial Adamic state of speech. Writing is the khalīfa

199  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 305, 360.

200  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 279.
166 Rizvi

of speech just as distinguishing (furqān) is the khalīfa of the Qurʾān. ‘Veri-

ly we sent it down on a blessed night, that is, we sent down the clear book
which is the universal discriminator (al-fārūq al-kull) to the Fāṭimī na-
ture of al-Zahrāʾ, and al-Zahrāʾ is the spiritual Eve; God is the light of the
heavens and the earth, the similitude of his light is like a niche, that is the
Fāṭimī nature of al-Zahrāʾ in which is a lamp, that is the Muḥammadan
whiteness, and lamp is in a glass, that is the highest nature of ʿAlī, and
that nature of ʿAlī descended into the niche of the nature of Zahrāʾ, the
descent of the universal spirit into the universal body, through which
every wise thing distinguishes (between good and evil), that is Imam
after Imam until the day of resurrection. The referent of the light verse is
the Muḥammadan person in its lamp and its glass and its niche. Ḥā-mīm
and the clear book, which we sent down in its totality as the blessing of
walāya.201

There is a strong gnostic element to the interpretation in this passage associat-

ing the Neoplatonic triad of the universal intellect, the universal soul, and the
universal nature with the primordial and essential natures of the Prophet, ʿAlī
and Fāṭima. The ‘Muḥammadan whiteness’ indicates his understanding of a
famous narration about the divine throne and the lights associated with it.
In the gloss on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of Ibn Turka, he explains the sense
of the Muḥammadan reality as being both identical to the entirety of the di-
vine throne, since the divine throne is a cipher for the totality of the cosmos
or all save God, and also one of the four pillars of the throne.202 The throne of
God has four pillars of colour: a white pillar of Muḥammad that symbolises
the totality of the Muḥammadan reality as the primary emanation of the One,
a yellow pillar of ʿAlī that is the universal soul, the Umm al-kitāb and the ‘pre-
served tablet’ in which all is contained (as another gloss has it on the notion
of the imām mubīn), a green pillar of al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn associated with
the universal imagination through which the cosmos unfolds, and a red pillar
of al-Fāṭima which is identical to the universal nature whence all generation
in the cosmos proceeds. What is clear is that Nūrī’s approach to ʿirfān recalls
the work of Rajab Bursī (d. 813/1411) in his blending of the Shiʿi school of Ibn
ʿArabī with a commitment to an esoteric Shiʿi mysticism that arises from the

201  Mullā Ṣadrā, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, p. 797; cf. Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 287–288.
202  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 16. On the ḥadīth from Amīr al-Muʾminīn of the throne of God being cre-
ated with four lights, see al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, (Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, bāb al-ʿarsh wa-l-kursī),
vol. 1, pp. 129–130; in his glosses on this narration in Mullā Ṣadrā, Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Kāfī, vol. 3,
pp. 332–352, Nūrī has barely anything to say. Cf. Henry Corbin, Temple and Contemplation,
tr. L. Sherrard (London: KPI, 1986), pp. 27–37.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 167

meditation upon the nature of the Imam and upon the narrations alongside
the imamophilic lettrism of Ibn Turka.
His commitment to lettrism follows from this mélange of Ibn ʿArabī and
esoteric Shiʿism. As in his glosses on al-Mafāḥiṣ, he argues that letter symbol-
ism constitutes the key to understanding reality, and to opening up the heart
to grasp that reality.203 Similarly, numbers and their significance also lie at
the heart of uncoding reality, understanding proportions and the relationship
between various types of units, odds and evens and so forth.204 While Mullā
Ṣadrā refers to the importance of letters in his Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, Nūrī glosses
that they are essential because they represent the emanation from the abode
of meaning into the abode of forms, where meanings are essences of the high-
er world that descend.205 The heart, as the true throne of God, can, therefore,
make sense of that code, not least when it is the heart of the perfect human
being who in his reality manifests the totality of the Divine.206 The descent of
letters is glossed through the meaning of the mysterious letters alif-lām-mīm of
the Qurʾān as well as the notion of the expansion of being from the one (basṭ)
and the significance of its letters (focusing on the bāʾ).207 The alif stands alone
and never fully descends—it is only when one gets to lām that the expansion
of being occurs and descends into time, while the mīm indicates the reversion
back to the One and the afterlife. In other words, the alif is the time before that
was in pre-eternity, the lām represents the now in this world, and the mīm the
return to God tomorrow.
Lettrism, once applied to the totality of the cosmos and space and time, also
explains the relationship of God and humanity through meditation upon the
nature of Adam, and his relationship to the divine throne and to God.208 The
human being (insān) is the mediating reality between God and the cosmos
but also between different human beings because the word is made up of two
‘I’s (anā) mediated by a sīn: the human being mediates between the two egos.
Apart from this, there are plenty of other examples of lettrist and numerologi-
cal analyses as interpretation. For example, in his commentary on the nature
of Jesus and the relationship with Mary, he calculates that the numerical value
of Maryam (290) added to the value of alif-dāl-alif equals 296 which is also the
value of the verbal root ṣād-waw-rā so that the coming of Mary together with

203  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, p. 101.

204  Ibid., vol. 1, p. 179.
205  Mullā Ṣadrā, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, p. 700.
206  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 1, pp. 248, 270.
207  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 44–45.
208  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 28, 76–79.
168 Rizvi

the spirit of the divine formed Jesus in the womb; in this sense Jesus comes
from Mary, as recognised through this calculation.209
Another calculation relates to the name Muḥammad.210 The first mīm indi-
cates his origins and the origins of the cosmos and the final mīm the return to
the One; the ḥāʾ is medial, relating to this world and the origination of Adam,
while the dāl indicates Muḥammad’s role as the ultimate indicator (dalīl) of
God. Because the mīm is doubled, the name comprises two ḥāʾ-mīm the first
indicates his prophecy and the second his walāya, both of course having the
same numerical value of 99. These calculations are spiritually e­ fficacious—
as he says, ‘Whoever calculates them enters paradise,’ The real name of
Muḥammad is, therefore, Ḥā-mīm, and the remaining letters mīm-dāl indicate
the extension (madd) of his light and being so as to cover the totality of the
elements of the cosmos. This is lettrism and occult calculation as a means to
extend the notion of the perfect human being as the comprehensive name and
reality of the cosmos.
One final example brings us back to the earlier discussion of the relation-
ship of the divine intention (mashiʾa) and the divine will (irāda) through an
examination of the fiat ‘kun’ and the form of the letters.211 The kāf is the letter
of intention that relates to being and existence, while the nūn represents the
thing and its essence. The kāf is the Lord of the relationship—and thinking
back to His metaphysics, no doubt, because existence is actuality and presence
and essence is potentiality and absence—and the nūn is like the deep ocean
of contingency which presents two facets: one that looks towards its Lord and
the other that looks to itself. The fiat brings together the ocean of light that
is a necessity with that of fire that is contingency and their confluence is the
confluence of the two seas indicated in the Qurʾān 55:19. The human soul lies
at this confluence because it is a blend of the ‘yellow’ spirituality of existence
with the ‘green’ temporality of non-existence. What we can see in these ex-
amples is a holistic approach in which lettrism is combined as a hermeneutics
to make sense of the philosophical, theological and mystical meanings of the
text and of reality.
Nūrī was the pivotal figure, who established the thought of Mullā Ṣadrā in
the seminaries through his works, his glosses, and his networks of students. It
was not just the particular study of philosophy and the curriculum focused on
the Sadrian texts that he engineered; he also played a major role in the dissemi-
nation of the curriculum of ʿirfān. His interest in the occult similarly became

209  Ibid., vol. 2, p. 587.

210  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 2, p. 935; Mullā Ṣadrā, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, p. 697.
211  Ibn Turka, Sharḥ, vol. 2, p. 978.
Mullā ʿ Alī Nūrī 169

a key aspect of the mystical underground in Qom and Tehran from the Qajar
period onwards. His deep commitment to esotericism as a philosophical way
of life took him beyond the practice of Mullā Ṣadrā. Nūrī may not have been
the greatest thinker of the Qajar period, nor even the greatest commentator
and glossator on the work of Mullā Ṣadrā, but he was a key figure who brought
together a set of interests—even in the neglected thought of Mīr Dāmād—and
who influenced a generation of students that engaged with the emergent new
thought in the European institutions of learning in Iran and beyond. In that
sense, the identification of Mullā Ṣadrā and his approach to philosophy and
mysticism as the key intellectual defence against modern philosophy in mod-
ern Iran owes much to the legacy of Nūrī.

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 chapter 4

Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī

Fatemeh Fana1

1 Life

Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī was born in 1212/1797 in Sabzevar as the son of Mahdī
Sabzawārī.2 He was therefore born in the same year in which Āqā Muḥammad

1  Translated from Persian and Arabic by Joep Lameer.

2  If it was only a matter of his brief autobiography, Sabzawārī’s life would be easily told. How-
ever, things are complicated by the fact that available accounts by his students and his rela-
tives are sometimes rather different. This situation occasioned a number of scholars to some-
times try and fill some of the gaps in the autobiography by having recourse to a mixture
of material drawn from these inconsistent and unsupported records. This dependence on
uncorroborated third-hand material produced a number of assertions that are in plain con-
tradiction with Sabzawārī’s own account of events. Nevertheless, the autobiography being
exceptionally concise, it will sometimes be necessary to have recourse to these reports, but
then in a way that is compatible with Mullā Hādī’s own declarations, as well as with com-
monly accepted, historical facts. In writing this article, I have made every effort to follow
this principle. Sabzawārī’s autobiography was transmitted in an identical form in a number
of sources. In this article, my references will be based on Qāsim Ghanī’s edition of the au-
tograph in his “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” Yādgār 1 3 (1323 Sh./1944):
45–47 (bibliographical details on all the works mentioned in this article can be found in the
Bibliography). An English translation of the autobiography can be found in the introduc-
tion of T. Izutsu & M. Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī (Tehran: McGill Institute of
Islamic Studies [Tehran Branch] 1348 Sh./1983), pp. 11–13. This introduction also contains an
English translation of a biography of Sabzawārī written by his son-in-law Āqā Mīrzā Sayyid
Ḥasan, for which see pp. 13–16. Āqā Mīrzā’s account of Sabzawārī’s life was written at the
request of Muḥammad Taqī Sipihr (d. 1297/1879–80), author of a major historical refer-
ence work of the 19th century, the Nāsikh al-tawārīkh. The report by Āqā Mīrzā differs from
Sabzawārī’s autobiography, which is why I only used it in case of necessity. It was inserted at
the end of Hīdajī’s (d. 1349/1930) Ḥāshiya bar sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi Sabzawārī (lith. ed., Teh-
ran, 1346/1927), pp. 421–425 (= typeset edition, Taʿlīqāt al-Hīdajī ʿalā l-Manẓūma wa-sharḥi-
hā (Tehran: Manshūrt al-Aʿlām, 1363 Sh./1984–85), pp. 4–7. Izutsu’s English translation of
this biography contains some errors that will be dealt with in due course. There is another
account of Sabzawārī’s life by one of his great-grandchildren, Walī Allāh Asrārī Sabzawārī,
titled “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawāri (Asrār),” in Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,
Dīwān-i Asrār: Kulliyyāt-i ashʿār-i fārsī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī-i Sabzawārī, ed. Sayyid Ḥasan Amīn
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Īrānshināsī, 1380 Sh./2001–2002), pp. 199–281. It
was published again as an annexe to Aḥmad Karamī’s edition of Sabzawārī’s Dīwān, titled
Dīwān-i Asrār, ed. Sayyid Ḥasan Amīn (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Īrānshināsī,
1380 Sh./2001), pp. 199–281. This detailed report is more or less consistent with Sabzawārī’s

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_006

180 Fana

Khān, the founder of the Qajar dynasty, was assassinated. Sabzawārī’s father
and forefathers belonged to the wealthy traders and landowners of Sabzevar
and were charitable and pious people. His mother, Zīnat al-Ḥājjiya, stemmed
likewise from a wealthy and God-fearing home. At the age of seven, Sabzawārī
embarked on his studies of Arabic grammar. When he was eight, his father
died in Shiraz on his way home from Mecca.3 Mullā Hādī stayed in Sabzevar
until he was ten years old. He then left for Mashhad to further continue his
studies, escorted by his paternal cousin4 Ḥājj Mullā Ḥusayn Sabzawārī, who
had studied and lived there for years. For a period of ten years, Sabzawārī stud-
ied with Ḥājj Mullā Ḥusayn in Mashhad. These were his undergraduate studies
and included Arabic literary disciplines, law, theology, philosophy, logic, and
related subjects. Once these studies were brought to a close, Mullā Hādī re-
turned to his hometown of Sabzevar and married sometime around the year
1232/1817. After about two years, Sabzawārī started to make preparations for
his pilgrimage to Mecca (ca 1234/1819). Having heard about the fame of the
seminaries of Isfahan and of the blossoming of philosophical learning in them,
he had a strong desire to go there and study Ishrāqī philosophy, as he puts it in
his autobiography. He thus decided to leave somewhat earlier in order to travel
by way of Isfahan. In this manner, he could first do some research on the semi-
naries, and more particularly on the way in which philosophical studies were
organized there. During his investigations, he also went for some days to the

own account. There is also an account of the life and the household of Sabzawārī that was
given by two of his sons and his wife, this at the request of Ṣanīʿ al-Dawla Muḥammad Ḥasan
Khān Iʿtimād al-Salṭana (d. 1313/1896), Minister for the Press and Head of the Royal Transla-
tion College during the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh Qājār. The minutes of this account, given
in the presence of Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, were printed literally in his Maṭlaʿ al-Shams, vol. 3,
Tehran: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-Humāyūnī, 1301–1303; repr. 1355 Sh./1976), pp. 194–203. A partial
English translation of this biography is given in Izutsu and Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of
Sabzavārī, pp. 17–23.
3  According to Sajjad Rizvi, Modarrisī Chahārdehī maintains that Sabzawārī’s father died in
Mecca. See Sajjad Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran, Locating the Life and Work of Mulla
Hadi Sabzawari (d. 1289/1873),” Iranian Studies 44 (2011): 473–496 (477 note 14). This is not
correct. Basing himself on Riḍā Qulī Khān Hidāyat, Modarrisī reports that Sabzawārī’s father
died in Shiraz. Cf.; Mudarrisī Chahārdihī, Zindagī u falsafa-yi Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Teh-
ran: Khitābkhāna-yi Ṭahūrī, 1334 Sh./1965), pp. 13, 16.
4  Rizvi (ibid.) says that Mīrzā Ḥusayn was Sabzawārī’s cousin from father’s and from mother’s
side. But in his autobiography, Sabzawārī says in his description of him: wa-ibn ʿammatī,
i.e., “and the son of my paternal aunt”. Cf. Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā
Hādī Sabzawārī,” p. 46. See also W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī
Sabzawārī (Asrār),” p. 2050, where we read: “Ḥājj Mullā Ḥusayn was his Excellency’s cousin
from mother’s and from father’s side”, where the expression “maternal cousin” (khāla-zāda)
must be a mistake or a misprint.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 181

lectures of Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahāni (d. 1239/1823–24), also known
as Wāḥid al-ʿAyn (“One-Eye”).5 Sabzawārī became infatuated by the beauty of
his language and the civilized way in which he spoke to his students, so much
so that he decided that it was his religious duty to continue his philosophical
studies there and then and to postpone his pilgrimage until some later occa-
sion. He spent the money meant for his pilgrimage on books and a place to stay
and set up quarters in Isfahan.
For a period of five years, Sabzawārī studied philosophy, and especially
Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy, with Mullā Ismāʿīl. Mullā Ismāʿīl himself was a stu-
dent of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1831), in those days the most prominent com-
mentator and promoter of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy. Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i
Kūshkī’s classes were probably held in the local Darb-i Kūshk Mosque since he
also lived in that district. Mullā Ismāʿīl wrote glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār6
and Kitāb al-Mashāʿir, a commentary on his al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya,7 as well as
glosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s (d. 1072/1661) Shawāriq al-ilhām. Sabzawārī
relates that after Mullā Ismāʿīl died—going by circumstantial evidence from
his autobiography this must have been around 1239/1823–248—he continued

5  Because Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī was blind in one eye, he was known by this nickname.
However, alluding to Mullā Ismāʿīl’s cleverness and insight, Sabzawārī called him “The Ma-
ny-Eyed One” (Dhū l-ʿuyūn). See Sulṭān Ḥusayn Tābanda, Nābigha-yi ʿilm u ʿirfān dar qarn-i
chahārdahum. Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Sulṭān Muḥammad Gunābādī: Sulṭān ʿAlī-
Shāh (Tehran: Tābān, 1350 Sh./1971), p. 25.
6  “Asfār” being shorthand for Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa.
7  In his commentary on al-Ḥikma al-ʿarshiyya, he answers Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī’s (d.
1241/1826) criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā, rejecting most of them as arising from misunderstand-
ings. Of this commentary many manuscript copies are extant. One of them is described in
ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Ḥāʾirī, Fihrist-i Kitābkhāna-yi Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Millī, vol. 5 (Tehran: Chāp-
Khāna-yi Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1345 Sh./1966), p. 326 (no. 1858). Mullā Ismāʿīl’s glosses on
the Asfār are included in the footnotes of the printed editions of that work. For his glosses
on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Kitāb al Mashāʿir see Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī’s edition of Muḥammad
Jaʿfar Lāhījī’s Sharḥ risālat al-Mashāʿir (Mashhad: Intishārāt-i Zuwwār, 1343 Sh./1964).
8  There is some disagreement about the year of death of Mullā Ismāʿīl, which cannot be
fixed with precision. Going by Sabzawārī’s statements in his autobiography, Mullā Ismāʿīl
must have died in 1239/1823–24 or 1240/1824–25. But if we base ourselves on the report by
Sabzawārī’s son-in-law who states that his father-in-law remained in Isfahan until 1242/1826
and that after Mullā Ismāʿīl left for Tehran, he went to Mashhad, Mullā Ismāʿīl must have died
after 1242/1826–27, although the exact date remains unknown. In the Introduction to his edi-
tion of Rasāʾil ḥakīm Sabzawārī, vol. 1, pp. 117–118, Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī maintains that
he has definite proof that Mullā Ismāʿīl was alive in 1267/1850–51. Unfortunately, Āshtiyānī
does not cite his source. Sajjad Rizvi mentions the year 1268/1851–52 but furnishes no proof
for this either. Cf. Sajjad Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran,” 478.
182 Fana

his philosophical studies for another three years with Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī9 in the
Madrasa-yi Kāsagarān, also known as the Madrasa-yi Shamsiyya.10
Sabzawārī tells us that during the first two years of his stay in Isfahan, he
spent an hour every day at the lectures on law given by Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī
Najafī (d. 1245/1829–30). Āqā Muḥammad was a descendant of Āqā Muḥammad
Bāqir Hazār-Jarībī (d. 1170/1756–57), a prominent scholar and jurisconsult of
the twelfth/eighteenth century.11 Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī was born in 1188/1774–75
in Najaf, which is why he came to be known as “Najafī” (i.e., “from Najaf”).
He was a student of Mīrzā-yi Qummī (d. 1231/1815–16), but once he had com-
pleted his studies in Qom, he left for Isfahan. He had full command of both
the traditional and the rational sciences. In Isfahan, he took up teaching law
(fiqh) and legal theory, and theology (uṣūl), eventually receiving the predicate
of faqīh muṭlaq (“supreme jurisconsult”, the highest distinction for a Shī‘ī legal
scholar).12 Sabzawārī’s son-in-law further reports that on the recommendation

9  Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” p. 46; T. Izutsu and M.
Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 12. See also W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i
zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” pp. 205–206. Sabzawārī’s son-in-law, how-
ever, tells a slightly different story about the former’s studies with Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. Ac-
cording to him, when Sabzawārī was a student of Mullā Ismāʿīl, after he had finished his
lectures he and his teacher would go to listen to the courses given by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. Then,
when Mullā Ismāʿīl left for Tehran at the end of 1242, Sabzawārī himself went to Mashhad.
Cf. Izutsu and Mohaghegh, op. cit., p. 14. However, going by Sabzawārī’s own statements
and some contemporary testimonies, this report by his son in law can hardly be correct.
Cf. Q. Ghanī, op. cit., p. 46; Izutsu and Mohaghegh, op.cit., p. 12.
10  E.g., Ghulām-Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī: Zindagī, āthār, falsafa (Te­
hran: Sanā’ī, 1371 Sh./1992–93), pp. 50–51. The name Shamsiyya derives from Shams al-Dīn
Muḥammad Yazdī, who first built this madrasa. But since it had fallen into disrepair it was
reconstructed by Amīr Mahdī Ḥakīm al-Mulk Ardistānī, a reconstruction that was com-
pleted in the final year of the reign of Safavid Shāh Sulaymān (r. 1077–1105/1666–1694).
From then on it was called the Madrasa-yi Ḥakīmiyya. But since the madrasa is located in
the Kāsagarān neighbourhood, it became commonly known as the Madrasa-yi Kāsagarān.
See also Maryam Moazzen, Shi’ite Higher Learning and the Role of the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānī
in Late Safavid Iran, pp. 47–48.
11  Āqā Muḥammad Bāqir was the teacher of Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d.
1212/1797–98), also known as Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (The Ocean of Learning), Shaykh Jaʿfar Najafī
Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1227/1812–13), and Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Gīlānī known as Mīrzā-yi
Qummī (d. 1231/1815–16).
12  Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī”, p. 46; T. Izutsu and M. Moha-
ghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 12; Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqer Mūsawī Khwānsārī,
al-Rawḍāt al-jannāt fī aḥwāl al-ʿulamāʾ wa-l-sādāt (Qom: Maktaba Ismāʿīliyān, 1390–
92/1972–73), vol. 7, pp. 153–157. Sabzawārī’s son in law says that when Mullā Hādī first
arrived in Isfahan with the intention of staying just one month, he attended the classes of
Ḥājj Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Kalbāsī/Karbāsī (d. 1261/1845, author of the Ishārāt al-uṣūl), and
of Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī Iṣfahānī (d. 1248/1832–33, author of Hidāyat al-mustarshidīn).
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 183

of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Sabzawārī attended the classes of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī
(d. 1241/1826) for a period of fifty-three days.13
Taking account of his eight-year stay in Isfahan as a student of these au-
thorities on Ṣadrian philosophy, Mullā Hādī must have completed his studies
when he was around thirty years old. It is worthy of note that his studies and
the formation of his personality as a scholar were not limited to the absorption
of the official canon of learning (i.e., the traditional (naqlī) and the intellectual
(ʿaqlī) learned disciplines), but that he was also formed by a spiritual way of
conduct and the study of mysticism. It is however, not clear in whose pres-
ence Sabzawārī developed these aspects of his personality. His autobiography
and statements by his family only allow for the conclusion that while he was
staying with his cousin Ḥājj Mullā Ḥusayn Sabzawārī in Mashhad, he not only
studied the basics of the official disciplines mentioned earlier, but on top of
this the two of them also engaged in exercises and acts of devotion that were
aimed at the purification of their souls and the acquisition of a pious mode of
conduct, directed at spiritual growth. Later, during his studies in Isfahan, he
displayed a similar interest in combining exercises in spiritual conduct with
formal education. In his own words:

I stayed there [i.e., in Isfahan] for eight years gaining, with God’s aid, an
ascetic temperament, free of excessive passions, as well as success in my
studies of the learned disciplines and the sharīʿa.14

Even though Sabzawārī’s spiritual conduct reflected the practices of the pious
mystics, we do not have any testimony that would confirm that this motivated
him to become a member of any specific mystical order or the disciple of any
of the shaykhs of these orders. If we look at his awareness and understanding

Cf. T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh, op.cit., p. 13. In his autobiography, Sabzawārī himself
does not refer to any studies under these two scholars. This would seem to imply that
he went only very briefly to their lectures, the whole matter being too insignificant to
deserve separate mention. According to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Sabzawārī went for
a considerable period of time to the lectures of Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī (fl. 1255/1839–40), the
son of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, and also to those of Mīrzā Ḥasan Chīnī (d. 1264/1847–48). He also
maintains that Sabzawārī attended Sayyid Riḍā Lārījānī’s classes on Islamic mysticism
for a brief period of time. Unfortunately, Āshtiyānī does not supply any reference in sup-
port of his claims. See Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Fī l-manāhij al-sulūkiyya. Bā ḥawāshī-i Ḥājj
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (2nd ed., Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i
Dānishgāhī, 1360 Sh./1981), p. 115.
13  T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 14.
14  Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” p. 46; T. Izutsu and M. Mo-
haghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 12.
184 Fana

of the important sources of theoretical mysticism such as the works of Muḥyī

l-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and some of his commentators, it is not clear
whose student he may have been in this discipline. Perhaps he had mastered
these works through independent study. But it is also possible that at the time
of Sabzawārī’s studies in Isfahan, and in view of the link between Ibn ʿArabī’s
theoretical mysticism and Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy and the impact of the for-
mer on the latter, the study of seminal Gnostic texts like Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-
ḥikam and some of its commentaries were part of the curriculum of the philo-
sophical seminaries. Surprisingly, this possibility was rejected by Sayyid Jalāl
al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (d. 1384 Sh./2005), who argued that Sabzawārī’s acquaintance
with mystical discussion had been merely based on Mullā Ṣadrā works:

Sabzawārī did not attend any seminar on theoretical mysticism or any

readings from works on mysticism (Shams al-Dīn Fanārī’s (d. 834/1431)
Miṣbāḥ al-uns,15 Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka’s (d. 835/1432) Tamhīd al-qawāʿid,
Dāwūd Qayṣarī’s (d. 751/1350) commentary on Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam). His
knowledge in the field of mysticism and Sufism limits itself to the ac-
tual mystical themes that are found in the works of Mullā Ṣadrā. But he
had a very keen sense of taste and was extremely perceptive in matters
concerning the mystical “savouring” (dhawq) of reality. In practical mysti-
cism and in his caution with regard to the performance of acts of worship
and his total immersion in these, he was unrivalled and looked upon as a
Master of spiritual unveilings and miracles.16

Having completed his studies, Sabzawārī left Isfahan in 1242/1826 to go and

teach in Mashhad. For five years he taught philosophy and a bit of law and
Qurʾān interpretation in the school of Ḥājj Ḥasan.17 Then, in the year 1247/1831,

15  The Miṣbāḥ al-uns is Muḥammad b. Ḥamza Fanārī’s (d. 834/1431) commentary on Ṣadr
al-Dīn Qūnawī’s (d. 673/1274) Miftāḥ ghayb al-jamʿ wa-l-wujūd.
16  Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī,
2 vols. in one binding (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Uswa, 1376 Sh./1997), vol. 1, p. 121. It is note-
worthy that many years before this work was published, Āshtiyānī had another view on
Sabziwāri’s competence in the field of Islamic mysticism, believing that his works do not
reveal any depth or rootedness in Islamic mysticism or in the ways and principles of the
Sufis. See his introduction to his edition of Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya,
p. 115.
17  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 118; Basing himself on Edward Browne
and Ghulām-Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Sajjad Rizvi reports that Sabzawārī returned to
Mashad to complete his studies in jurisprudence. This is however, not consistent with the
account in Sabzawārī’s autobiography. Cf. Sajjad Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran,”
479; Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” pp. 46–47.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 185

he returned to his native city of Sabzevar. After a year or two, around 1248/1832,
Ḥājj Mullā Hādī and his wife went on the pilgrimage. Tragically, his wife died
on the journey.18 As his return from the pilgrimage coincided with the death of
Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh Qajar (r. 1212–1250/1797–1834) and since the roads were far from
safe, Sabzawārī was forced to make a halt in Kerman, taking up residence in
the Madrasa-yi Maʿṣūmiyya there, where he stayed for the better part of a year.
Under the circumstances, he preferred to remain incognito, without anyone
being aware of his social station or scholarly rank. It seems that he wanted to
seize this opportunity to work on his character, to combat unwanted inclina-
tions of his soul, and to engage in pious exercises. This is why he took it upon
himself to assist the janitor of the madrasa, Mullā Muḥammad, also known
as ʿĀrif, in his tasks as a servant and cleaner, in payment for putting him up in
his own quarters.19 However, one day his learned answer to a question by one
of the students caused his rank and scholarly background to become finally
known to the professors and the students, and they all paid tribute to him and
bowed to him in respect. During this very same forced stopover in Kerman and
having lost his first wife, Sabzawārī decided to remarry, pledging his faith to
the daughter of Mullā Muḥammad, the janitor of the Madrasa. In 1251/1835–36
or early 1252/1836, the roads had become safe again, and Mullā Hādī returned
to Sabzevar, accompanied by his second wife. After a brief stay in Sabzevar, he
went again to Mashhad, where he taught for about ten months.20 Then he went
back to Sabzevar where he remained until his death, teaching in the Madrasa

18  The available sources do not contain any precise information as to where and when
Sabzawārī’s first wife passed away. Going by Izutzu’s translation of the biography written
by Sabzawārī’s son-in-law, she died during their stay in Kerman (T. Izutsu and M. Mohag­
hegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 14). But the original wording of this biography does
not allow for this: “He remained there (Kerman) for the better part of a year. His first wife
and the mother of the late Mullā Muḥammad, his eldest son, having died, he married a
second wife in Kerman.” Cf. M. Hīdajī, Taʿlīqat al-Hīdajī ʿalā l-Manẓūma wa-sharḥi-hā, p. 5.
19  Referring to Ghulām-Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn and a personal interview with Ghulām-
Ḥusayn Ibrāhīmī Dīnānī, Rizvi claims that Mullā Muḥammad ʿĀrif the janitor was
Sabzawārī´s spiritual master during his stay in Kerman. Cf. S. Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in
Qajar Iran,” 480. However, his reference to Riḍānizhād’s Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, page 82 does
not prove his point. Sabzawārī himself has not made any statement to this effect either,
and nor is anything found in other written sources of that period.
20  According to the account of his life given by his son-in-law, after the pilgrimage,
Sabzawārī stayed ten years in Mashhad. Cf. T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics
of Sabzavārī, p. 14. But this seems to be a mistake because Sabzawārī says nothing about
this in his autobiography and ten years is not a brief period to be passed over without any
mention. Cf. also G. Ḥ. Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm Sabzawārī, pp. 85–89.
186 Fana

of Ḥājj ʿAbd al-Ṣāniʿ Faṣīḥī, also known as the Madrasa-yi Faṣīḥiyya.21 Later
this same madrasa came to be known as the Madrasa-yi Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī.
In spite of the existence of great philosophical seminaries in Tehran and Isfa-
han during that period, Sabzawārī’s fame soon led to an influx of students of
Ṣadrian philosophy and mysticism from all over Iran. Some also came from
neighbouring countries. The seminary of Sabzevar was now the place where
the learned would come together.22 Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī died on the
28th of Dhū l-Ḥijja of the year 1289 (February 26, 1873),23 aged 77.
Throughout his life, Mullā Hādi Sabzawārī used only the inheritance from
his father to ensure a livelihood for himself and his family. At the same time,
he led a life of extreme simplicity and contentment. He avoided all luxury, his
lifestyle being rather that of an ascetic. All his efforts were concentrated on
learning and the purification of his soul, along with his teaching and the moral
education of his students. He never worked for a salary, and he never received
a penny for his teaching. On the contrary, he always spent a portion of the in-
come from his father’s inheritance on his students and on feeding the poor. In
the words of Comte de Gobineau:

He belongs to a modest family, though not without financial resources.

He has always lived in the most humble manner on the revenues of his
father’s inheritance, without ever seeking to boost his income, be it by

21  Q. Ghanī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i marḥūm Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī,” p. 47, T. Izutsu and M. Mohag­
hegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, pp. 14–15, W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i
Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” pp. 208–209, 212. It seems that T. Izutsu and M. Mo-
haghegh (op. cit., p. 14) understood the expression “dār al-muʾminīn” in the phrase “wa
ḥāl bīst-u hasht sāl ast ki dar dār al-muʾminīn-i Sabzawār bi tadrīs-i ḥikmat mashghūlam”
as the name of a madrasa, while in fact, it is the epitheton ornans of Sabzevar. Cities and
towns that have holy places in them are called thus, such as Dār al-muʾminīn-i Qom and
similar examples.
22  Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Les réligions et les philosophies dans l’Asie cen-
trale (Paris: Leroux, 1900), p. 99; Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī
Sabzawārī (Asrār),” p. 211.
23  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Maṭlaʿ al-shams, p. 200. Since Sabzawārī died just a few days be-
fore the new year, some also mention the year 1290. Cf. G. Ḥ Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i
Sabzawārī, pp. 35–39. According to Rizvi, Sabzawārī’s son-in-law gives the year as 1290,
while in fact, he says 1289. Cf. S. Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran,” 481; T. Izutsu
and M. Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 16. Edward Browne wrongly gives
1295/1877–78, for which see his A Year amongst the Persians, 3rd ed., with a memoir by
E. D. Ross and a foreword by E. H. Minns (London: A. and C. Black, 1950), p. 145. Finally,
S. Rizvi (ibid.) mistakenly gives the 2nd of Dhū l-Ḥijja 1289 as the date of his death, while
in fact, Sabzawārī died on the 28th.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 187

hunting for some employment or by engaging in trade. He completely

immersed himself in his studies. At the beginning of every year, he cus-
tomarily receives his Legal part of the revenues of his lands in cash or
goods, handed over to him by his tenants. He then sets aside a certain
sum of money for his own upkeep, taking care to be as modest as possible
in his calculations. The rest, he distributes immediately among the poor.24

And basing himself on information provided by his private teacher, Mīrzā Asad
Allāh Sabzawārī, Edward Browne said:

The simplicity and indeed austerity of his life was far from being his chief
or only merit. Being possessed of private means greatly in excess of what
his simple requirements demanded, he used to take pains to discover
which of the students stood most in need of pecuniary help, and would
then secretly place sums of money varying from one to five or even ten
tumans (six shillings to three pounds) in their rooms during their ab-
sence, without leaving any clue which could lead to the identification of
the donor … He was always ready to help the widow, the orphan, and the
stranger.25

Even though Sabzawārī was held in esteem by the king and the political estab-
lishment, who all had special feelings of friendship and devotion for him, he
never used these contacts to seek any rank or political office, which he in fact
abhorred. Thus when Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1264–1313/1848–1896) came to visit
him in Sabzevar while on his way to Mashhad in 1284, Sabzawārī received the
king in the same way in which he used to receive anyone else. During the visit,
the king asked him to compose a work in Persian on the “principles of religion”
(uṣūl al-dīn)26 or on “Origin and Return” (al-mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād).27 Sabzawārī
responded to this request by writing his Asrār al-ḥikam.

24  J. A. Comte de Gobineau, Les réligions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, p. 99. Cf. also,
W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” pp. 199–202,
233.
25  E. G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, pp. 144–45.
26  See the biography by Sabzawārī’s son in law Mīrzā Sayyid Ḥasan in T. Izutsu and M. Mo-
haghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 15.
27  Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, Asrār al-ḥikam: Bā muqaddima u ḥawāshī-i Mīrzā Abū
l-Ḥasan Shaʿrānī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1362 Sh./1983), p. 2.
188 Fana

2 Students

In the foregoing, it was explained that after his studies, Sabzawārī spent the
rest of his life teaching in Mashhad and Sabzevar. It was under his direction
that the madrasa of Sabzevar acquired its fame. In his teaching of philosophy
and mysticism and in the moral education of his students Sabzawārī followed
his own arrangements. This is clear from the following account by Edward
Browne, who had it from his teacher Mullā Asad Allāh Sabzawārī, a former
student of Mullā Hādī:

During the day he used to give two lectures, each of two hours’ dura-
tion … The complete course of instruction in philosophy which he gave
lasted seven years, at the end of which period those students who had
followed it diligently were replaced by others.28

Among his students, one can find people who had previously studied the tradi-
tional Islamic disciplines of learning as well as those who had first read philos-
ophy under other professors. From among Mullā Hādī’s prominent students,
the following persons may be mentioned:
1) Mullā Muḥammad, Sabzawārī’s oldest son and one of the outstanding
students of his father’s seminary. Mullā Muḥammad had participated in
his father’s classes for quite a number of years, and because of this, he
had accumulated so much learning and experience, that his father en-
trusted the undergraduate courses to him. There is some disagreement
on his time of death. According to some he died before his father, accord-
ing to others he died in 1292/1875–76.29
2) Shaykh ʿAlī Fāḍil-i Tabbatī, who was among Sabzawārī’s students in Mash-
had. About his life, nothing is known. He conducted a correspondence
with Sabzawārī in the form of questions and answers. In one of his an-
swers, Sabzawārī is full of praise for him, calling him his “spiritual son”.
Apparently, Fāḍil-i Tabbatī suspended his studies of the rational sciences
for a while in favour of the traditional ones, much to the displeasure of
Sabzawārī, who for some time left Tabattī’s letters unanswered.30
3) Mīrzā ʿAbbās Dārābī Shīrāzī (d. 1300/1882–83), author of the Tuḥfat al-
murād, a commentary on a philosophical poem (al-Qaṣīda al-yāʾiyya) by

28  E. G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, pp. 144–145.

29  G. Ḥ. Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, pp. 104–105.
30  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, pp. 122–123 and vol. 2, p. 521. The corre-
spondence will be discussed below in the section dealing with Sabzawārī’s writings.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 189

Mīr Findiriskī (d. 1050/1640–41). He studied Ṣadrian philosophy with

Sabzawārī for a long time, after which he went to teach this subject in
Shiraz. Among his students were Furṣat Shīrāzī (d. 1339/1920–21) and
Mīrzā Sayyid ʿAlī Kāzirūnī (d. 1343/1924–25).
4) Mīrzā Ḥusayn Sabzawārī (d. 1337/1914–15), another one of Sabzawārī’s
leading students, who after his graduation went to Tehran to teach the
rational and the traditional Islamic sciences in the Madrasa-yi ʿAbd Allāh
Khān, situated in the bāzār of the drapers. Mīrzā Ḥusayn’s speciality was
mathematics, in which he surpassed all of his contemporaries. He also
had full command of medicine. In religious learning, he was a student of
Mīrzā Ḥasan Shīrāzī (d. 1312/1894–95). His students included Mīrzā
Ibrāhīm Zanjānī (d. 1351/1932–33), Ḥakīm Muḥammad Hīdajī
(d. 1349/1930), and also Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Ḥikmī Yazdī (d. 1322/1904).31
5) Nūr Allāh Mīrzā, also known as Shāhzāda Janāb (d. 1293/1876–77). He was
likewise among Sabzawārī’s talented students. For many years he lec-
tured on Sabzawārī’s Sharḥ al-Manẓūma and other introductory works
on philosophy to undergraduate students, in a classroom facing
Sabzawārī’s own.32
6) Mirzā ʿAbd al-Karīm Khabūshānī, who studied with Sabzawārī in Mash-
had and Sabzevar. He wrote glosses on al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama, the logi-
cal part of Sabzawārī’s Manẓūma.33 According to Asrārī Sabzawārī, these
glosses have been published. But I have found no indication of this. There
is a copy of them in Khabūshānī’s own hand in the Majlis Library, com-
pleted in the Madrasa-yi Ṣadr in Tehran in 1292/1875.34
7) Mirzā Asad Allāh Sabzawārī, with whom Edward Browne studied philos-
ophy in Tehran. Browne names him as his source on Sabzawārī. The

31  W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” p. 248;
Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, Introduction, p. 128; Sayyid Ḥusayn Naṣr,
“Ḥawza-yi falsafī u ʿirfānī-i Tihrān,” in Dānishnāma-yī jahān-i Islām, ed. Ghulām-ʿAlī
Ḥaddād ʿĀdil, vol. 8 (Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1383 Sh./2004), pp. 749–
753 (752).
32  W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” p. 249;
Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002), p. 182.
33  W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindigānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” p. 258;
H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 122.
34  M S Tehran, Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 15329. See Sayyid Ṣāḍiq Ḥusaynī Ashkiwarī, Fihrist-i
Nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, vol. 43 (Tehran: Kitābkhāna,
Mūzi u Markaz-i Asnād-i Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1389 Sh./2010–11), p. 24.
190 Fana

information provided consisting of Mīrzā Asad Allāh’s personal recollec-

tions of his teacher and of conversations with his children.35
8) Mullā Muḥammad Kāẓim Khurāsānī (d. 1329/1911–12) is also said to have
been among Sabzawārī’s students. Mullā Muḥammad was a jurisconsult
and legal scholar of high repute. Author of the Kifāyat al-uṣūl, he was a
recognized authority in matters concerning the Shīʿī faith and the Head
of the Seminary of Najaf. According to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī,
Mullā Muḥammad was on his way to the Holy Shrines of Najaf and
Karbala when he interrupted his journey to follow Sabzawārī’s classes for
a period of about one year.36
9) Sulṭān Muḥammad b. Ḥaydar Muḥammad (d. 1327/1909–10) better known
as Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāh Gunābādī. He was a famous representative of the
Niʿmatullāhī Sufi order, and a disciple of Ḥājj Muḥammad Kāẓim Iṣfahānī
(d. 1293/1876–77), also known as Saʿādat ʿAlī-Shāh. When Saʿādat ʿAlī-
Shāh broke away from the Niʿmatullāhī order, Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāh took his
place. After Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāh’s death, this branch of the Niʿmatullāhī order
came to be known as the Gunābādī or Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāhī line. Sulṭān ʿAlī-
Shāh wrote a famous commentary on the Qurʾān with the title Bayān al-
saʿāda fī maqāmāt al-ʿibāda, as well as some valuable works on the sub-
ject of Islamic gnosis. Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāh was one of Sabzawārī’s celebrated
students in the rational sciences and Ṣadrian philosophy at the seminary
of Sabzevar.37
10) Sayyid Aḥmad Riḍawī (d. 1349/1930–31), nicknamed Adīb Pīshāwarī, a
poet and learned Sufi who went in 1287/1870 to Sabzevar, attending the

35  E. G. Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, p. 146.

36  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 125. Some say that Ākhūnd-i Khurāsānī
did not stay that long. According to ʿAbd al-Riḍā Kafāʾī, Ākhūnd-i Khurāsānī only attend-
ed a single lecture during a one-day stopover of his caravan in Sabzawār, on his way to the
Holy Shrines of Iraq. Cf. ʿAbd al-Riḍā Kafāʾī, “Muṣāḥaba bā Ḥujjat al-Islām wa-l-muslimīn
ʿAbd al-Riḍā Kafāʾī,” in Muḥsin Daryābaygī (ed.), Ḥayāt-i siyāsī u farhangī u ijtimāʿī-i
Ākhūnd-i Khurāsānī (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Taḥqīqāt u Tawsaʿa-yi ʿUlūm-i Insānī, 1386
Sh./2007–2008), p. 118. On Khurāsānī, cf. also Muḥammad Ra‌ʾīszāda. “Khurāsānī, Ākhūnd
Mullā Muḥammad Kāẓim,” in Dānishnāma-yi Jahān-i Islām, ed. Ghulām-ʿAlī Ḥaddād ʿĀdil
(Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1390 Sh./2011), vol. 15, pp. 317–334.
37  M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, p. 182; Shahrām
Pāzūkī, “Taṣawwuf dar Īrān baʿd az qarn-i shishum,” in Dānishnāma-yī jahān-i Islām, ed.
Ghulām-ʿAlī Ḥaddād ʿĀdil (Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1382 Sh./2003),
vol. 7, pp. 387–398 (393).
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 191

lessons of Mullā Hādī during the last two years of his life. He also studied
under Sabzawārī’s son, Mullā Muḥammad.38
11) Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥakīm Ilāhī, who belonged to the first generation of
Mullā Hādī’s students in Sabzevar. After his studies, he returned to Teh-
ran to teach. Adīb Pīshāwarī also attended his classes for some time.39
12) Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif Bujnūrdī was one of Sabzawārī’s most talented stu-
dents who carried on a correspondence with him.40
13) Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Mūsā ʿIrāqī Buzshalūʾī Kumījānī
(d.  1313/1895), was a student of Sabzawārī whose thought was strongly
marked by Suhrawardī’s philosophy. He is known to have written two
works, one being a commentary on the Duʿā-yi iftitāḥ, and the other work
on Ishrāqī philosophical tradition, called Nūr al-fuʾād.41 Both of these
works are in Persian.
14) Ḥusayn Qulī Khān Shāwandī Dargazīnī (d. 1311/1893–94) also known as
Hamadānī. Apart from philosophical education which he had with
Sabzawārī, he studied mysticism with Sayyid ʿAlī Shūstarī (d. 1283/1866–
67), and law and theology with Shaykh Murtaḍā Anṣārī (d. 1281/1864). Fa-
mous mystics were educated in Ḥusayn Qulī’s school, such as Mīrzā
Jawād Malikī Tabrīzī (d. 1343/1924–25), Shaykh Muḥammad Bahārī
Hamadānī (d. 1325/1907–1908), and Sayyid Aḥmad Karbalāʾī (d. 1332/1913–
14). Another well-known student of his, in Ṣadrian philosophy this time,
was Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī (d. 1314/1896–97).42
15) Mullā Aḥmad Yazdī, also known as Fāḍil-i Yazdī, author of a response to
difficulties raised by Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī against the Risāla-yi ʿilm of
Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1091/1680),43 which incited his own teacher Sabzawārī to

38  See W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, Sharḥ-i zindigānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār), p. 252;
Aḥmad b. Shihāb al-Dīn Adīb Pīshāwarī, Dīwān-i qaṣāʾid u ghazaliyyāt-i Fārsī u ʿArabī-i
Adīb-i Pīshāwarī. Collected, annotated and commented by ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Rasūlī (Tehran:
Silsila-yi Nashriyyāt-i Mā, 1362 Sh./1983–84), pp. 3–4.
39  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 132.
40  The correspondence will be discussed below in the section dealing with Sabzawārī’s
writings.
41  See Shihāb al-Dīn Kumījānī. Inner Light [Nūr al-Fuʾād]. A 19th Century Persian Text in
Illuminationist Philosophy, ed. Hossein Ziai and Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl (Costa
Mesa: Mazda, 2012); Hossein Ziai, “Nūr al-Fuʾād. A Nineteenth-Century Persian Text in
Illuminationist Philosophy by Shihāb al-Dīn Kumījānī,” in. L. Hahn, et al. (ed.), The Phi-
losophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chicago IL, 2001), pp. 763–774.
42  Muḥammad Muḥsin Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī. Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa: Al-Qism al-thānī min al-
Juzʾ al-awwal wa-huwa Nuqabāʾ al-bashar fī l-qarn al-rābiʿ ʿashar, 2 vols. (Mashhad: Chāp-i
Saʿīd, 1404/1983), vol. 2, pp. 674–677.
43  In the bibliography of Fayḍ-i Kāshānī there is no such treatise. But if we look at Sabzawārī’s
rebuttal of Aḥsāʾī’s objections, it seems that the work, meant is Kāshānī’s al-Lubāb fī
192 Fana

write a reply to Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī as well. Sabzawārī also wrote a

response to the original work, titled al-Muḥākamāt wa-l-muqāwamāt ʿalā
Risālat al-ʿilm li-l-shaykh Aḥmad al-Baḥraynī.44

In addition to the persons listed above, Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī counted
many more academics among his students, but for reasons of brevity, they can-
not be mentioned here.45

3 Works

Of Sabzawārī’s writings, some fifty have come down to posterity. They cover a
variety of subjects and disciplines, ranging from philosophy, logic and mysti-
cism to law, legal theory, the traditions, as well as literary pieces. Written in
Arabic and Persian, they take the form of books, short tracts, mostly in an-
swer to questions addressed to him, and also of glosses and notes. Because of
Sabzawārī´s renown in the rational sciences, his philosophical writings have
always enjoyed special attention.46 In this brief overview, I shall restrict myself
to a general presentation of Sabzawārī´s major works in Ṣadrian philosophy

ʿilm Allāh. This work has been edited by Mahdī Ḥājjiyān and published in Majmūʿa-yi
rasāʾil-i Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ-i Kāshānī, ed. Bihzād Jaʿfarī (Tehran: Madrasa-yi ʿĀlī-i Shahīd
Muṭahharī, 1387 Sh./2008), vol. 3, pp. 317–329.
44  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 127.
45  Cf. Q. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),”
pp. 248–259; M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir,
pp. 179–195; H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, pp. 122–132. According to
Murtaḍā Mudarrisī Chahārdihī (d. 1376 Sh./1977), Shaykh Murtaḍā Anṣārī studied ʿAbd al-
Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām and various philosophical subjects for two years under
Sabzawārī in the Ḥājj Ḥasan Madrasa in Mashhad. He also relates that Sabzawārī held
Shaykh Murtaḍā Anṣārī in great esteem. Cf. M. Mudarrisī Chahārdahī, Zindagī u falsa-
fa-yi Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, p. 34. Referring to Mudarrisī Chahārdahī, Rizvi reports
that Shaykh Murtaḍā Anṣārī studied philosophy and theology under Sabzawārī before
going to Najaf in 1252/1836–37. Cf. Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran,” 487. All this is,
however, doubtful. Firstly, because although he may have used an oral source, Mudarrisī
Chahārdahī gives no reference for his assertions, and there is no mention of these in the
available sources; secondly, because Rizvi provides a date where Mudarrisī does not,
while going by the testimony of Sabzawārī’s autobiography and his family, he spent the
period 1248–1250/1832–1834 on preparations for the pilgrimage, on the pilgrimage itself,
and on the return journey. It seems to be a confusion in Rizvi’s account between Shaykh
Anṣārī and Ākhūnd Mullā Muḥammad Kāẓim Khurāsānī.
46  For an inventory of his writings, see M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u
ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 172–173.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 193

(al-ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya) and the rational sciences and also introduce two
other works, one on Islamic mysticism, while the other concerns his poetry.
1) Ghurar al-farāʾid (The Blazes of the Pearls), also called al-Urjūza fī
l-ḥikma, but most commonly known as the Manẓūma (fī l-ḥikma). This is
an important versified work in Arabic on general principles (umūr
ʿāmma) of philosophy, metaphysical theology (ilāhiyyāt bi-l-maʿnā
l-akhaṣṣ) and several issues in physics and psychology. It also provides an
outline of matters of practical wisdom and ethics. It is noteable that in
the past, the writing of didactic poems was an art form designed to facili-
tate the acquisition and memorisation of complex subjects of learning.
Obviously, the conciseness of these poems led to obscurity and problems
of understanding, which is why people usually wrote explanatory com-
mentaries on them.
2) Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid or also Sharḥ al-Manẓūma fī l-ḥikma. In the colo-
phon of this commentary, Sabzawārī states that he had started writing
Ghurar al-farāʾid itself in 1240, i.e., when he was still in Isfahan and that
he completed the commentary on it in 1261/1845. In later years, he also
wrote glosses on this latter work.47
3) al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama (The Strung Pearls), also known as al-Manẓūma
fī l-manṭiq and al-Urjūza fī l-manṭiq. Like his Ghurar al-farāʾid, this work
is composed in Arabic verse. In his Ghurar al-farāʾid48 and in the Sharḥ
al-asmāʾ,49 Sabzawārī refers to verses from al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama,50 say-
ing that he intends to complete this work and that he looks forward to

47  A separate copy of these glosses is located in the Central Library of the University of
Tehran (MS Tehran, University of Tehran 342, fols. 1b–99b, copied in 1281/1864–65 by
ʿAlī Fīrūzkūhī. See Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh. Fihrist-i kitābkhāna-yi ihdāʾī-i Sayyid
Muḥammad Mishkāt bi kitābkhāna-yi Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, vol. III. 1 (Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1332 Sh./1953), p. 239. Another copy of this work is preserved in MS
Majlis-i Shūrāyi Islāmī, Sinā 1774 (old no. 50906), with a colophon that says that the gloss-
es were completed in 1281. See ʿA. Ḥ. Ḥāʾirī, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i Kitābkhāna-yi
Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Millī, vol. 5, p. 158. The copy located in the Library of the University of
Tehran has a prologue that is missing in the copy of the Majlis Library.
48  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma (lithograph edition, Tehran, 1298/1880), p. 87.
49  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-asmāʾ aw Sharḥ duʿāʾ al-jawshan al-kabīr, ed. Najaf-Qulī Ḥabībī
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1375 Sh./1996), pp. 453–454.
50  In his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, ḥikma section, lithograph, p. 87, Sabzawārī refers to the three
basic philosophical questions of mā (what?), hal (whether), and lima (why?), discussed
in al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama and contained in Sharḥ al-manẓūma. Cf. H. Sabzawārī. Sharḥ
al-manẓūma: al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓima wa-Ghurar al-farāʾid, edited and glossed by Ḥasan
Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, 5 vols. (Tehran: Nashr-i Nāb, 1369–1374 Sh./1990–1995), vol. 1, p. 183.
In his Sharḥ al-asmāʾ, he refers to the verses on the sophistic reasoning of the La‌ʾāliʾ
muntaẓama, for which see Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-manẓūma, logic section, vol. 1, pp. 319–320.
194 Fana

appending it to Ghurar al-farāʾid. This allows one to conclude that he was

writing al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama, the commentary on Ghurar al-farāʾid,
and the Sharḥ al-asmāʾ all in parallel, and that he completed al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-
muntaẓama only after he had finished the others.
4) A Commentary on al-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama; unlike Ghurar al-farāʾid, he
wrote no glosses on this commentary.
The Manẓūma complex described above is the most celebrated part
of Sabzawārī’s works. Asrārī Sabzawārī, one of his great-grandchildren,
claims that Sabzawārī had taught the whole commentary only once,
whereupon he entrusted the teaching of it to his son Mullā Muḥammad
and to Shāhzāda Janāb in those cases where students needed an intro-
ductory course in philosophy.51 According to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī,
the commentary was not only taught in the seminary of Sabzevar; in-
deed, during the author’s lifetime, it had already become a philosophical
textbook in Tehran.52 Little by little, the fame of this work increased until
the point that, in the first half of the twentieth century, virtually all the
academies in Iran where philosophy and mysticism was part of the cur-
riculum, offered a course on the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma as an introduction to
the study of the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā. Today, the Bidāyat al-ḥikma
and the Nihāyat al-ḥikma by ʿAllāma Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn
Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1360 Sh./1981) are more commonly used as introductory
works on Ṣadrian and regular Islamic philosophy. Nevertheless, during
private courses, some scholars still read the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma with their
students.
The Manẓūma complex was published in its entirety in a lithograph
edition in Tehran in 1298/1881.53 There are many commentaries and

51  W. Asrārī Sabzawārī, “Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Asrār),” pp. 236–237.
52  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 107.
53  Since then, this edition has seen many photomechanical reprints. The works were also
published in movable type in separate volumes, under the following titles: 1) Sharḥ Ghurar
al-farāʾid yā Sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi ḥikmat, comprising the sections on general principles of
philosophy and on substance and accident of the Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid, accompanied
by Hīdajī’s glosses and Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī’s (d. 1391/1972) superglosses, pub-
lished in Tehran in 1348 Sh./1969 by Mehdi Mohaghegh and Toshihiko Izutsu, Institute of
Islamic Studies of McGill University [Tehran branch]; 2) Fī l-ilāhiyyāt bi-l-maʿnā l-akhaṣṣ
min Kitāb Sharḥ Ghurar al-farāʾid yā Sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi ḥikmat, comprising the part on
metaphysical theology of the Ghurar al-farāʾid and the commentary (sharḥ), published
by Mehdi Mohaghegh in 1368 Sh./1989 and 1378 Sh./1999, together with glosses by Hīdajī,
Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī, and Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan Rafīʿī Qazwīnī (d. 1395/1975);
3) The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, being an English translation of the parts of the Sharḥ
Ghurar al-farāʾid that deal with general principles of metaphysics and with substance
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 195

glosses on the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, of which the following deserve special

mention:
1. The glosses by Ākhūnd-i Hīdajī who, in Tehran, was a student of
Mīrzā Ḥusayn Sabzawārī, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, and Mīrzā Abū
l-Ḥasan Jilwa. Ākhūnd-i Hīdajī taught for many years in the Madra-
sa-yi Sayyid Naṣr al-Dīn in Tehran.54 His glosses were published in a
lithograph edition in Tehran in 1346/1967, and in a typeset edition,
likewise in Tehran, in 1363 Sh./1984.
2. Durar al-fawāʾid, being the glosses on Sabzawārī’s Sharḥ al-
Manẓūma by Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī, a celebrated teach-
er and authority on philosophy who had studied under Ākhūnd-i
Hīdajī, Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī (d. 1336/1917–18) and Mīrzā
Hāshim Rashtī (d. 1332/1914).55 The Durar al-fawāʾid was published
in 1377 in Tehran when the author was still alive.
3. The glosses by Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris Āshtiyānī (d. 1372/1952–53).
According to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Mahdī Āshtiyānī’s
glosses on the Sharḥ al-manẓūma are the best ever written, while
his presentation of the foundations of mysticism and the complexi-
ties of Sufism is to be preferred over Sabzawārī’s own, his command
of the sources being without equal in recent times.56 An edition of
these glosses was published by ʿAbd al-Jawād Falāṭūrī and Mahdī
Muḥaqqiq, together with an English introduction by Toshihiko Izut-
su, in Tehran in 1352 Sh./1973 (reprinted in 1367 Sh./1988).
4. The Taʿlīqa rashīqa, being the glosses on the logical part of the
Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, also by Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris Āshtiyānī, first
published in Tehran in 1371/1951–52, and then in Qom in 1404/1983.57

and accident. Preceded by an Introduction to Sabzawārī’s life by T. Izutsu, published in

New York in 1356 Sh./1977, reprinted in Tehran in 1362 Sh./1983; 4) Sharḥ al-Manẓūma.
This edition comprises the logic (Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, al-Juzʾ al-awwal, Qism al-manṭiq al-
musammā bi-l-La‌ʾāliʾ al-muntaẓama wa-sharḥu-hā) and the part on natural philosophy
and metaphysics (Qism al-ḥikma, Ghurar al-farāʾid wa-sharḥu-hā) and was published in 5
volumes by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, together with his own notes and an introduction by
Masʿūd Ṭālibī (Tehran, 1369–1379 Sh./1990–2000). As compared to other editions, it is the
most scholarly one available.
54  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, 106, note 2.
55  Ibid, 107, note 3. For his biography, see Yaḥyā ʿĀbidī, Zindagīnāma-yi marḥūm Āyat Allāh
Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār u Mafākhir-i Farhangī, 1380
Sh./2001).
56  Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, Introduction, p. 107, note 1.
57  For an inventory of commentaries and glosses on the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, cf. M. Ṣadūqī
Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 173–179.
196 Fana

5. Finally, there is a commentary in Arabic on the metaphysical part

of the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma by Muḥammad ʿAṣṣār (d. 1356/1937–38),
titled al-Ishrāqāt al-raḍawiyya. The author’s handwritten copy was
completed in 1345 Sh./1966 and bequeathed to the Āstān-i Quds-
i Riḍawī Library in Mashhad in 1346/1977 (MS Mashhad, Āstān-i
Quds-i Riḍawī 324 M.).58
5) Sharḥ al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, also known as Sharḥ duʿāʾ Jawshan al-Kabīr. Ac-
cording to Sabzawārī, the Duʿāʾ Jawshan al-Kabīr, which discusses one
thousand names for God, was transmitted from the Prophet by the fourth
Imam of the Shīʿa, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn. Sabzawārī’s commentary on this
prayer has a philosophical and Gnostic hue. Together with the Sharḥ
Duʿāʾ al-Ṣabāḥ (see the following lemma) this work was published in Teh-
ran in 1283/1866–67.59
6) Sharḥ Duʿā al-Ṣabāḥ; this prayer, which is gnostic in content, is attributed
to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, may peace be upon him. Sabzawārī’s commentary on
this prayer is also philosophical and gnostic in character.60
7) Glosses on al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa (also known
as Asfār al-arbaʿa), Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī’s opus major. According to Sayyid
Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Sabzawārī wrote his glosses on the four “Journeys”
(asfār, sg. safar) of the Asfār in a regular, uniform style from beginning to
end, with the exception of the section on substance and accidents. The
first, lithograph, edition of the Asfār that included Sabzawārī’s glosses was
published in his own lifetime, in Tehran in 1282/1865–66.61 Sabzawārī’s
glosses are likewise included in the typeset editions of the Asfār.
8) Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manāhij al-
sulūkiyya. In the opinion of Āshtiyānī, these glosses are more solid and

58  See ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Ūktāyī, Fihrist-i kitābkhāna-yi mubāraka-yi āstān-i quds-i Riḍawī, vol. 4
(Mashhad: Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī, 1325 Sh./1946), p. 22 (no 364). According to S. Rizvi,
Ākhūnd Mullā Kāẓim Khurāsānī also wrote a gloss on the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, for which
cf. S. Rizvi, “Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran,” 491. However, according to Mullā Kāẓim
Khurāsānī’s grandson, ʿAbd al-Riḍā Kafāʾī, even though Ākhūnd-i Khurāsānī did teach
Sabzawārī’s Manẓūma in his younger years in Najaf, any such gloss has so far not been
found. See ʿAbd al-Riḍā Kafāʾī, “Bayān u sharḥī mukhtaṣar az ḥayāt u shakhṣiyyat-i Ākhūnd
Mullā Kāẓim Khurāsānī.” Nashriyya-yi dānishkāda-yi ilāhiyyāt-i dānishgāh-i Firdawsī-i
Mashhad 34–35 (1376 Sh./2007), 11–44 (42).
59  In 1372 Sh./1993, Najaf-Qulī Ḥabībī published an edition of this text. See Ḥājj Mullā Hādī
Sabzawārī, Sharḥ duʿāʾ al-ṣabāḥ, ed. Najaf-Qulī Ḥabībī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i
Tihrān, 1372 Sh./1993). This edition was reprinted in 1375 Sh./1996.
60  A new edition of this text was published in Tehran in 1372 Sh./1993. See Ḥājj Mullā
Hādī Sharḥ al-asmāʾ aw Sharḥ duʿāʾ al-jawshan al-kabīr, ed. Najaf-Qulī Ḥabībī (Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1375 Sh./1996).
61  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, Introduction, p. 107.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 197

academic than his glosses on the Asfār. The first, lithograph edition of
Mullā Ṣadrā’s Shawāhid which included Sabzawārī’s glosses was also pub-
lished in his lifetime, in Tehran in 1286/1869–70.62
9) Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād. These glosses are concise
and to the point. According to Āshtiyānī, this is because al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-
maʿād repeats the subject matter of the Asfār, indeed, it is sometimes
even a summary of it, so that Sabzawārī would have had to rewrite his
glosses on the Asfār and the Shawāhid had he wanted to write a compre-
hensive set of glosses on al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād. A lithograph edition of
these glosses was published in Tehran in 1314/1896–97.63
10) Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mafātīḥ al-ghayb. Sabzawārī used to teach this
work by Mullā Ṣadrā, and in the course of his lessons, he would write
glosses and notes on it. An edition of the Mafātīḥ al-ghayb that included
his glosses was published in Sabzawārī’s own lifetime in 1282/1866.64
11) Asrār al-ḥikam fī l-muftatiḥ wa-l-mukhtatim (The Secrets of Wisdom on
the Beginning and End); In two volumes. The first volume on rational
wisdom is on the Origin and the Return (al-mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād), while
the second volume is about practical wisdom. In his presentation of the
book’s chapters and their ordering in the Introduction, Sabzawārī de-
clares the following:
Islamic gnosis consists of three parts. First: knowledge of God, which di-
vides into knowledge of the Origin and the Return; second, knowledge of
the Self; and third, knowledge of God’s commandments, which further
divides into two parts, one being the knowledge of the commandments
of His law, the other of the commandments of His path. In this book, we
shall, with the help of God, the Exalted and Most High, compile some ele-
ments taken from a number of branches of Transcendent philosophy and
gnosis. We shall start our account first from the beginning while after-
wards, it will start from the end. Knowledge of the Self playing an auxil-
iary role in respect of knowledge of the Origin, which itself is the pro-
logue to the Return, we shall consider psychology as coming prior to

62  Ibid., p. 108. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī published a new edition of the Shawāhid with
Sabzawārī’s gloss, together with an introduction containing Sabzawārī’s biography. See
Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manāhij al-sulūkiyya. Bā ḥawāshī-i Ḥājj
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Dānishgāh-i Mashhad,
1346 Sh./1967, 2nd ed., Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1360 Sh./1981).
63  A new edition of al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād containing Sabzawārī’s gloss and with a foreword
by Seyyed Hossein Nasr was brought out by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-
maʿād, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān,
1354 Sh./1975).
64  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 1, p. 111.
198 Fana

eschatology. And because knowledge of the commandments of the law

and the path is dependent upon our knowledge of the Prophet and the
infallible Imams of Guidance, may peace be upon them … we shall give
matters of prophetology and imamology precedence over practical wis-
dom if God so desires and with His support. We organized this book in a
number of chapters etc.65
As said earlier, Sabzawārī wrote this book at the request of Nāṣir al-
Dīn Shāh. It was completed in 1286/1869, and through the good efforts of
Mīrzā Yūsuf Mustawfī al-Mamālik, it was published in 1303/1885–86 in
Tehran in a lithograph edition.66
12) Hidāyat al-ṭālibīn fī maʿrifat al-anbiya‌ʾ al-maʿṣūmīn wa-l-aʿimma al-hādīn
(The Guidance of the Students on Knowledge of the Infallible Prophets
and the Rightly Guiding Imams); A treatise on matters concerning divin-
ity, with some discussions on the mundus imaginalis (ʿālam al-mithāl),
and on the examination of prophethood and imamism from a Twelver
Shīʿī point of view. Sabzawārī wrote this treatise at the request of Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh, and it was completed before the Asrār al-ḥikam.67
13) Reply to Questions by Āqā Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Riḍawī, son of the celebrat-
ed high-ranking clergyman and jurisconsult of the Qajar era Āqā Sayyid
Muḥammad Qaṣīr. These are seven questions concerning religious doc-
trine and philosophy and mysticism.68
14) Reply to Questions by Shaykh Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Wāʿiẓ Ṭihrānī
(d. 1353/1934), who requested an answer to ten questions, mostly about
religious doctrine and theology.69
15) Reply to Questions by Sayyid Ṣādiq Simnānī. These are thirteen questions
on philosophical matters.70

65  H. Sabzawārī, Asrār al-ḥikam, p. 4.

66  Ibid.; Umīd Qanbarī (ed.), Zindagīnāma u khadamāt-i ʿilmī u farhangī-i marḥūm Ḥājj
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Āthār u Mafākhir-i Farhangī, 1383 Sh./2004),
p. 134. According to Riḍānizhād, Mīrzā Yūsuf Mustawfī al-Mamālik published his first
edition of this work in 1286/1869–70. See Ghulām-Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn, Ḥakīm-i
Sabzawārī: Zindagī, āthār, falsafa (Tehran: Sanā’ī, 1371 Sh./1992–93), p. 173.
67  The title of this treatise was chosen by Sabzawārī himself. Cf. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i
Sabzawārī, vol. 1, pp. 211–212. Texts 12 to 29 in the above list of Sabzawārī’s works were
published in Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, as will be indicated below. The Hidāyat al-ṭālibīn
is found in vol. 1, pp. 207–296.
68  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 297–316.
69  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 317–349.
70  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 351–372.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 199

16) Reply to Questions by a Scholar from Qom, which are six questions on
religious doctrine and theology.71
17) Reply to Versified Questions by Mīrzā Bābā Gurgānī, questions concern-
ing the death of the individual (mawt dhātī), the death of the will (mawt
ikhtiyārī), and natural (inevitable) death (mawt iḍṭirārī), with the request
for a versified reply from Sabzawārī as well.72
18) Reply to a Question by Mullā Aḥmad Dāmghānī. It is about the immuta-
ble archetypes, the extent to which they differ in respect of their origina-
tion, and about the manner in which they will cease to be.73
The previous six letters and the Hidāyat al-ṭālibīn are all in Persian.
19) Reply to Questions by Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif, who is the Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif
Bujnūrdī mentioned above. This tract deals with eighteen questions on
religious doctrine and theology, while there are some that pertain to
mysticism.74
20) Reply to Questions by Mullā Ismāʿīl Bujnūrdī, also known as ʿĀrif. This
treatise contains ten questions on matters of religious doctrine and the-
ology, such as the miraculous way in which the Prophet split the moon
asunder, the question of the Return (rajʿat), bodily resurrection (maʿād
jismānī), the manner in which the congregation of the bodies (ḥashr al-
ajsād) will take place, and the location of Heaven and Hell. Edited by
Āshtiyānī,75 a copy of this treatise dated 1270/1853–54 and bearing the
call number 10339 is held in the Marʿashī Library in Qom under the title
al-Ajwiba al-Asrāriyya ʿalā l-asʾila al-ʿirfāniyya.76
21) Reply to Questions by Mullā Aḥmad Fāḍil Yazdī or Asʾila Aḥmadiyya wa-
Asrāriyya. on the unity of being and motion in substance (ḥaraka
jawhariyya).77
22) Reply to Questions by Fāḍil-i Tabbatī, about the imaginal world (ʿālam
al-mithāl) by way of the arc of ascent (ṣuʿūdī) and the arc of descent
(nuzūlī), the demonstration of the existence of the suspended images

71  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 373–381.

72  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 383–388.
73  Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 389–394.
74  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 401–469.
75  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 471–492.
76  Sayyid Aḥmad Ḥusaynī. Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi ʿumūmī-i ḥaḍrat-i Āyat
Allāh al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī, vol. 26 (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi ʿUmūmī-i Ḥaḍrat-i Āyat Allāh
al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī, 1375 Sh./1996), p. 282.
77  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 2, pp. 493–518.
200 Fana

(ashbāḥ muʿallaqa, i.e., archetypes), and about the separate existence of

the forms of the imagination (ṣuwar mutakhayyala).78
23) Reply to Questions by Ākhūnd Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif Bujnūrdī or Istiha‌ʾāt
Ismāʿīliyya wa-hadāyā Asrāriyya. On matters pertaining to knowledge of
Shīʿism and its doctrines, together with some questions on philosophy
and mysticism.79
24) Al-Muḥākamāt wa-l-muqāwamāt ʿalā sharḥ Risālat al-ʿilm li-l-Shaykh
Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī. Aḥsāʾī had written the Sharḥ risālat al-ʿilm80 in explana-
tion of Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ-i Kāshānī’s Risālat al-ʿilm, and also had criti-
cized him in it. Sabzawārī wrote al-Muḥākamāt on Mullā Aḥmad Fāḍil-i
Yazdī’s request that he answer and overturn Aḥsāʾī’s criticisms.81
25) Risāla dar ishtirāk-i maʿnawī-i ṣifāt-i kamāliyya-yi wujūd bayn-i Ḥaqq u
khalq.82
26) Risālat mushārakat al-ḥadd wa-l-burhān.83 Sabzawārī wrote this treatise
in response to a request made by some of his friends.
27) Reply to Questions by Sayyid Samīʿ Khalkhālī or Asʾila Samīʿiyya wa-ajwi-
ba Asrāriyya. On various subjects, such as the modes of correct and elo-
quent speech by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the unity of being, the creation of the
universe, and a number of issues regarding Mullā Ṣadrā’s Risālat al-
ḥudūth and Kitāb al-mashāʿir.84
28) Reply to Questions by Mullā Ismāʿīl Miyānābādī Isfarāʾinī. This treatise
does not contain the original questions.85
29) A Commentary on a Saying Attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib: “To know
me as Light is to know God” (maʿrifatī bi-l-nūrāniyya maʿrifat Allāh), and
the correspondence of a number of scholars with Sabzawārī, including
the latter’s answers to questions presented to him.86
Items 19 to 29 are all in Arabic.
30) A Commentary on Rūmī’s Mathnawī. The commentary on Jalāl al-Dīn
Rūmī’s (d. 672/1273) Mathnawī is one of Sabzawārī’s principal works and
shows the extent of his reading in and grasp of the works of the masters of
mystical thought, be it in poetry or in prose, and his remarkable fluency in

78  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 519–534.

79  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 535–578.
80  See above, note 43.
81  H. Sabzawārī, Rasāʾil-i ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī, vol. 2, pp. 580–601.
82  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 603–609.
83  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 613–615.
84  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 617–645.
85  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 647–674.
86  Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 675–763.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 201

these texts. With his poetical acumen and command of the Islamic sourc-
es, he cites from the Qurʾān, the Traditions, or from mystical poetry, which-
ever the context may require. Thus we find quotations from the mystical
works of people like ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār
(d. ca. 618/1221), Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1088), ʿAbd al-Razzāq
Kāshānī (d. 736/1335–36), Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Saʿdī (d. ca 690/1291) and others
alongside excerpts from the philosophical works of Shihāb al-Dīn
Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) and Mullā Ṣadrā. It is worthy of note that in his
commentary on the Mathnawī, Sabzawārī did not have any recourse to
previous commentaries on this work.87 From the introductory passages, it
is clear that Sabzawārī found the Mathnawī a work of the utmost impor-
tance. In the eyes of Sabzawārī, the Mathnawī is an encrypted and oblique
versified commentary on the Qurʾān.88 He wrote this commentary on the
Mathnawī at the request of Sulṭān Murād Mīrzā Ḥusām al-Salṭana
(d. 1300/1882–83), the governor of Khurāsān at the time. It was completed
in 1283/1866–67 and published in Tehran in 1285/1868–69.89
31) Dīwān-i Asrār. These are Sabzawārī’s collected poems in Persian, in which
he renders themes of philosophy and mysticism with poetical acumen
into unaffected, tender verse. Mediocre as a literary product, his poetry is
nevertheless enjoyable, exhilarating, and expressive. Most of his ghazals
have the flavour of Ḥāfiẓ of Shiraz (d. 792/1390), while their themes, too,
were inspired by him. Sabzawārī’s nom-de-plume was “Asrār”. His Dīwān
was published in a lithographic edition in 1285/1868–69.90

4 Philosophical Thought

Sabzawārī is without question one of the most important advocates of and

commentators on Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy. In fact, the assumptions under-
lying his philosophy are identical to those underlying Mullā Ṣadrā’s philoso-
phy. If we look at the names of his professors in philosophy and at the works

87  Ibid., vol. 1, Introduction, p. 111.

88  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ-i asrār-i mathnawī, p. 2. A new edition of this text was brought out
by Muṣṭafā Burūjirdī (Tehran: Sāzmān-i Chāp u Intishārāt-i Wizārat-i Farhang u Irshād-i
Islāmī, 1384 Sh./2005–2006).
89  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ-i asrār-i mathnawī (lithograph, Tehran, 1285/1868–69), colophon on
page 511.
90  Two new editions of this work have been published by Aḥmad Karamī and ʿAlī Falsafī
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mā, 1370 Sh./1991.), and by Sayyid Ḥasan Amīn (Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Uswa, 1376 Sh./1997).
202 Fana

that he left behind Sabzawārī’s philosophical lineage is clearly evident. Two of

his teachers, Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī and Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, were prominent
commentators on and promoters of Sadrian philosophy, and it is in the intel-
lectual tradition represented by these that Sabzawārī cultivated his thought.
Apart from Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, Sabzawārī’s writings were mainly inspired
by Mīr Dāmād’s Qabasāt, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary on Suhrawardī’s
Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s commentary on Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt, and
ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām.91 Having assimilated all these works
and with years of experience in teaching the writings of Mullā Ṣadrā, Sabzawārī
was eminently qualified to question Ṣadrā’s views on certain specific points,
which appear to be concerned mainly with matters of epistemology and natu-
ral philosophy. Thus one could say that he was a loyal follower of Ṣadrā’s on-
tology who would only allow himself to raise questions when the discussion
moved away from that topic. In the following, some of these questions will be
analyzed and assessed at a level of detail that is commensurate with the scope
of this article.

4.1 Matter and Form and Their Type of Composition

Among Muslim philosophers, the discussions on the major theoretical assump-
tions underlying the composition of concrete, perceptible body out of matter
and form took their inspiration from the philosophy of Aristotle.92 In Islamic
philosophical texts, this issue is treated as a prime topic and ranks among the
general principles of philosophy (umūr ʿāmma) or as a theme in metaphysics
(ilāhiyyāt bi-l-maʿnā l-aʿamm). Examining the parts that constitute the essence
of corporeal things, Sabzawārī speaks in his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma of matter and

91  Seyed Hossein Nasr, “Renaissance in Iran (continued): Ḥājī Mullā Hādī Sabzewārī,” in
M. M. Sharif (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963–
66), vol. 1, pp. 1543–56 (1545–46).
92  On the nature of body and its composition out of matter and form, see, e.g., Ibn Sīnā,
Kitāb al-Shifāʾ: al-Ilāhiyyāt, ed. S. Zāyid et al. (repr. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Nāṣir-i Khus-
raw, 1363 Sh./1984–85), vol. 1, pp. 61–79; idem, Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt maʿa sharḥ
al-Muḥaqqiq Naṣir al-Dīn … al-Ṭūsī wa-sharḥ al-sharḥ li-l-ʿallāma Quṭb al-Dīn … al-Rāzī
(Qom: Nashr al-Balāgha, 1375 Sh./1996), vol. 2, pp. 9–59. In these two large fragments, Ibn
Sīnā first examines and criticizes rival views, rejecting these, and then continues by prov-
ing the soundness of the position that he adopts as his own. In the course of subsequent
discussions in later times, philosophers in the Muslim world would usually side with Ibn
Sīnā. Suhrawardī, on the other hand, criticized and rejected the Aristotelian conception
of body and its composition out of matter and form. Denying the actual and independent
existence of matter, he believed that body was incomposite, calling it an “autonomous
quantity”. See Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī, Majmūʿat muṣannafāt Shaykh al-Ishrāq, vol. 2,
Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 74–88.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 203

form and their mode of composition in natural body, concerning which he de-
scribes two different views, viz. 1) the one in favour of composition by associa-
tion (tarkīb inḍimāmī), and 2) the one in support of composition by unification
(tarkīb ittiḥādī).
Composition by association consists in that a certain thing is joined togeth-
er with some other thing, their association and composition resulting in the
emergence of something else. In this kind of composition, each component
part has an existence of its own, independent of the other. Sometimes, com-
position by association is “natural” (ṭabīʿī), such as the composition of and as-
sociation between, parts of water and air, producing vapour, while at other
times, the association is “artificial” (ṣināʿī), such as the composition of building
materials and their being placed one on top of the other that we see in a house.
Those who speak of matter and form and their composition by association
always have the natural type in mind. Composition by association presuppos-
es the adoption of the doctrine of generation and corruption with regard to
the sublunary world. This means that in the process of composition of matter
and form, a form is “slipped off” (khalʿ, like a garment), after which matter is
“dressed” (lubs) by another form. This process was called “stripping and dress-
ing” (khalʿ wa-lubs). According to Sabzawārī, all major Peripatetic philosophers
before the time of Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1498) believed that matter and
form were composed by association.93
Composition by unification consists of one and the same thing becoming
something else. Mullā Ṣadrā adhered to this doctrine, which he vindicated
by positing the existence, in the sublunary world, of motion and change in
substance, taking place by degrees and progressing towards perfection. Based
upon the doctrine of composition by unification, one can, for instance, envis-
age a process during which semen turns into a clot, the clot into an embryo,
and the embryo into a human being. As stated just now, the doctrine of compo-
sition by unification requires the adoption of the idea of motion in substance
(ḥaraka jawhariyya), which consists of a transmutation of forms called “dress-
ing after dressing” (lubs baʿda lubs). This means that a thing, in the process
of motion and change, adopts one form after another, the previous form and
the matter with which it was united jointly becoming “matter”, predisposed
(mustaʿidd) to receiving yet another form. Thus in the previous example, the
semen, while itself composed of “ready” matter and semen’s form, these now
having been united in existence, serves as “matter”, ready for the reception of
the form of a clot, and once this form has taken possession of that matter, and
the clot having obtained actuality, it will in turn become “matter”, ready for the

93  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, vol. 2, pp. 371–372.

204 Fana

reception of a subsequent form, and so forth, until the form of a human being
(i.e., a rational soul) is united with “ready” matter (i.e., the body) arising out of
this process of change in substance, and an actual human being comes to be.
Basing himself on Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām,94 Sabzawārī reports that Ṣadr
al-Dīn Dashtakī adhered to the doctrine of composition by unification and
that Mullā Ṣadrā had adopted this doctrine as well.95 Criticizing this theory in
an oblique manner, Sabzawārī ends up by endorsing the Peripatetic doctrine
of composition by association as being commensurate with his own teachings.
Sabzawārī begins his argument by saying that according to Dashtakī and
Mullā Ṣadrā who followed him in this, the composition of the parts of any con-
crete thing in the extra-mental world (i.e., matter and form) is a composition
by unification. But if this statement, as it would seem, implies a plurality of
things, this in the sense that matter is regarded as a locus (maḥall) in which a
form inheres (ḥāll) and body as their physical composite, then how does one
justify this view, when the whole idea is compatible with the doctrine of com-
position by association? Also, if we separate the form from its matter, we see
that the form, without a locus, still has an existence of its own in the mundus
imaginalis (ʿālam al-mithāl), while prior to an occurrence of transmutation,
secondary matter, too, exists separately from the form with which it will later
be united. For instance, when the form of a drop of semen is composed with
matter ready for its reception and semen comes to be, this self-same semen
is secondary matter, that is to say, potentiality with regard to the subsequent
form of a clot, which has not yet acquired actuality. In that case, there exists
matter without a form. In view of these two points, viz. the separate existence
of the form in the mundus imaginalis (ʿālam al-mithāl) and of secondary mat-
ter in respect of the pending form (ṣūra lāḥiqa), the conclusion must be that
their composition is by association rather than by unification—which was also
the position of the major Peripatetic philosophers before Dashtakī—and that
this is the doctrine which is commensurate with his own teachings.96

94  ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī, Shawāriq al-ilhām fī sharḥ Tajrīd al-kalām, ed. Akbar Asadzāda,
pref. Jaʿfar Subḥānī, 5 vols. (Tehran: Muʾassasa al-Imām al-Ṣādiq, 1383–1389 Sh./2004–
2010), vol. 2, pp. 141–142.
95  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2,
p. 371. For a detailed account of Mullā Ṣadrā’s view and his analysis of the matter, cf. Ṣadr
al-Dīn Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār
Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981), vol. 5, pp. 282–309.
96  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, lithograph edition, p. 100, gloss on “And this is com-
mensurate with our teachings” (wa-huwa l-munāsib li-maqām al-taʿlīm wa-l-taʿallum) of
the commentary: “Allusion to our endorsement of composition by association” (ishāra ilā
anna l-tarkīb al-inḍimāmī huwa l-murḍī).
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 205

In his annotations to this section of the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, Mīrzā Mahdī

Āshtiyānī calls Sabzawārī’s criticisms apposite, though surely only with refer-
ence to the subject as taught, which is a setting in which one reasons and voic-
es opinions, and not in relation to (mystical) intuition (mushāhada) or inner
revelation (kashf). For when the intellect is illuminated by the light of inner
revelation and overcome by Oneness, potentiality and matter do not exist for
it anymore, since it denies all plurality, this as opposed to the intellect in a
state of “restraint” (al-ʿaql al-muqayyad), in which case it is veiled from Reality
by everything to do with ratiocination. The possibility that Āshtiyānī’s refer-
ence to the veiling of the intellect by ratiocination was a polite way for him
to discredit and disparage Sabzawārī should not be excluded. Later on in his
annotations, he criticizes Sabzawārī more openly by saying that his statements
are in contradiction to his assertions on mental existence (wujūd dhihnī). This
is because, in that context, Sabzawārī maintains that the only way in which the
knower can be united with the known is when matter and form are composed
by a process of unification.97 Sayyid Riḍā Shīrāzī, too, wonders how it is pos-
sible that on the one hand, Sabzawārī discusses motion in substance, while on
the other, he accepts the concept of composition by association which, found-
ed as it is on the notion of generation and corruption, is, in fact, incompatible
with the idea of motion in substance.98

4.2 Mental Existence

Among Sabzawārī’s criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā, one is to do with the latter’s
reply to one of the difficulties raised regarding the concept of mental existence
(wujūd dhihnī). Before going into the nature of this criticism, we must first have
a general look at mental existence and at the particular difficulty raised in its
regard.
For Avicenna and his followers, the division “mental” (dhihnī) vs. “extra-
mental” (khārijī) is one of the basic divisions of existence. Extra-mental ex-
istence, also referred to as individual, corporeal existence, is the kind of exis-
tence that is the source of the effects that a corporeal thing may be expected
to have. By contrast, a thing’s mental existence, in so far as it is identical with
the thing’s essence occurring in the mind, does not have the specific effects

97  Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris Āshtiyānī, Taʿlīqa bar sharḥ-i manẓūma-yi ḥikmat-i Sabzawārī, ed.
ʿAbd al-Jawād Falāṭūrī and Mahdī Muḥaqqiq, English Introduction by Toshihiko Izutsu
(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1367 Sh./1988–89), p. 397.
98  Sayyid Riḍā Shīrāzī, Darshā-yi Sharḥ-i manẓūma-yi ḥakīm Sabzawārī, ed. Fāṭima Fanā
­(Tehran: Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1383 Sh./2004), vol. 1, p. 666.
206 Fana

associated with the extra-mental existence of that thing. By way of example, in

its extra-mental existence, fire has a number of effects, such as scorching, heat,
and luminosity. In comparison with these concrete, extra-mental effects, fire
in its mental existence (i.e., its mental form) will never scorch, nor give heat
or light. At the same time, mental existence as such may have its own special
effects, among which the removal of ignorance from the soul of the observer
is certainly one. Or when someone praises you, for instance, with kind words,
making you feel good and content, this feeling is the effect of the mental ex-
istence of these very things that you have just heard. At the same time, the
mind is an area of the soul, which is and has an objective reality. This being
the case, and in as much as the existence of mental forms is a consequence
of the existence of the soul, the area of the mind therein, and then, of percep-
tion, these forms are something objectively and actually existent. And if they
are called “mental”, this is in comparison with things outside of the soul and
the mind, in the same way in which the expression “extra-mental” is used in
contrast with the soul and the mind. This having been said, the forms that re-
sult from perception (taṣawwur), intellection or imagination have an existence
in the mental area of the soul that is characterized by special properties and
conditions that are unlike the properties and conditions of a thing’s objective,
extra-mental existence with its own, specific effects. Over and above the extra-
mental things which sense perception, followed by conception, cause to be
present in the mind, there are some things which, though lacking extra-mental
existence because they happen to be non-existent at a certain point in time or
because it is impossible for them to exist at any time, can nevertheless be as-
sumed and imagined to exist, and thus to have mental existence. An example of
the first kind would be a sea of quicksilver, and of the second kind a triangular
square.99
Going by Sabzawārī’s statements on the problematics of mental existence in
his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, extra-mental things do not just have individual, extra-
mental existence, but also an existence in the mind. Extra-mental and mental
existence concur at the level of essence, this in the sense that whenever we
perceive and bring a concrete thing before our minds, it is the essence of that
physically extant thing that is present to the mind, and not the physical exis-
tence of it, since otherwise the mental would be confounded with the physi-
cal, which is impossible. Thus every possible existent has an essence that may
have any of two modes of existence: mental or extra-mental, the former being
devoid of the effects associated with the latter. The expressions “mental” and

99  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2,
pp. 121–124; Sayyid Riḍā Shīrāzī, Darshā-yi Sharḥ-i Manẓūma, vol. 1, pp. 156–158.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 207

“extra-mental” should not be taken to mean that the mind or the outside world
are receptacles by which all things are embraced; rather, the outside world is
none other than the individual reality of a thing, while the mind is none other
than the mental reality of its form.
To use our earlier example: the essence of fire has two different modes of
existence, viz. mental or extra-mental. The distinction between these two
modes of existence can be observed in the distinction between their effects.
While the essence of fire is the same in either case, its effects are not. For where
physical fire scorches, heats and illuminates, mental fire has none of these ef-
fects. It will thus be clear that one of the basic issues, discussed ahead of any
treatment of mental existence, is the matter of the principality of existence
(aṣālat al-wujūd) and the being mentally posited (iʿtibārī) of essence. This is
because the effects of each and every thing originate from the being of that
thing rather than from its essence. Indeed, it is in accordance with the mode of
its being that essence has any effects, remaining the selfsame essence which-
ever mode of being it may have.
The doctrine of mental existence has been met with criticism, although it is
not quite clear who these critics were. In their writings, the supporters of this
doctrine just recorded the criticisms, without mentioning any names. Fakhr
al-Dīn Rāzi (d. 606/1209) did quite some research on the subject, providing
detailed discussions of the claims on either side.100 These discussions return
in some form or another in all the accounts from later times—by philosophers
and theologians. But there, too, the names of the critics remain unmentioned.
In his Asfār, Mullā Ṣadrā analyses the arguments against mental existence,
overthrowing them one by one. The most important one from among these
arguments, Sabzawārī presents as follows:

How can “substance” and “accident” be conjoined?

Indeed, how could both come under “quality”?

Fa-jawharun maʿa ʿaraḍin kayfa ijtamaʿa?

am kayfa taḥta l-kayfi kullun qad waqaʿa?101

100  Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya fī ʿilm al-ilāhiyyāt wa-l-ṭabīʿiyyāt, ed.
Muḥammad al-Muʿtaṣim bi-llāh al-Baghdādī (Qom: Bīdār, 1428/2007–2008), vol. 1,
pp. 130–132 (on Being), 439–443 and 458–459 (on Knowledge).
101  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī,
vol. 2, p. 121.
208 Fana

When we have a conception (taṣawwur) of a particular substance, its es-

sence with all its properties (dhātiyyāt) will be present to the mind. For in-
stance, when we have a conception of “man”, and man being an essence in the
category of substance, it will be as a substance that his essence will be pres-
ent to the mind. On the other hand, while signifying substance, as a piece of
knowledge this essence is a state (ḥāl) of, or in, the soul. But even though the
soul is the locus and underlying subject (mawḍūʿ) of this piece of knowledge, it
does not stand in need of it, which means that “man” seen in this way is also an
accident (ʿaraḍ), in this case in the category of quality. Substance and accident
being opposites, our conception of “man” therefore leads to a conjunction of
opposites in as much as one and the same thing is both substance and accident
at one and the same time.102
In his Asfār, Mullā Ṣadrā tried to find an answer to the above difficulty by
having a closer look at the matter of predication, explaining that the predica-
tion of a thing of some other thing, which is equivalent to the union (ittiḥāḍ)
between a subject and a predicate in and by an act of predication, takes place
in one of two ways:103
1) The kind of predication in which subject and predicate, though concep-
tually distinct, are nevertheless united in being. This sort of predication is
called “customary” (mutaʿāraf) predication, or also predication that is
“common with respect to the arts” (shāʾiʿ ṣināʿī), which is the kind of pred-
ication that is common in a general understanding and used in the sci-
ences and the arts.
2) The kind of predication in which subject and predicate are united at the
level of concepts. This kind of predication is called “primary” (awwalī), “es-
sential” (dhātī) predication. This sort of predication is only used to ex-
press essential relationships, such as the predication of the genus and the
differentia of the species. This is also why it is called “essential”, this in
contradistinction with predication that is “common with respect to the
arts”, which is totally accidental. In this latter kind of predication, the
predicate may or may not apply essentialiter. If the former, the predica-
tion is called “common essential predication” (al-ḥaml al-shāʾiʿ bi-l-dhāt);
if the latter, then it is called “common accidental predication” (al-ḥaml
al-shāʾiʿ bi-l-ʿaraḍ). But in spite of this distinction, common predication
is, and we have said this already, as such totally accidental.

102  Ibid., pp. 126–128.

103  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, pp. 263–326; H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma,
edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2, p. 138.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 209

After this preliminary introduction, Mullā Ṣadrā says that, when we have a
conception of, for instance, the essence of “man”, “substance” is contained
in it because substance is its genus. When we define “man”, we say: “Man is a
three-dimensional, living, rational substance that moves by volition.” Accord-
ing to this mental concept, and in terms of “primary, essential predication”,
man belongs to the category of substance. However, in as much as the thing
that we have just conceived, viz. the mental form of “man”, is an attribute (ṣifa)
that qualifies the soul, it also belongs, in terms of “common predication with
respect to the arts”, to the category of quality (kayf ). This is because mental
forms have a derivative existence (wujūd ẓillī), their presence in and to the soul
following from knowledge’s presence in and to it, and not from independent,
objective existence. Thus it is it by reason of the fact that their existence de-
pends on the existence of knowledge in the soul, that mental forms are a qual-
ity accidentally.
This being so, it is by reason of different kinds of predication that “man”
is both a substance and, accidentally, a quality, there being thus no inconsis-
tency. In other words, we can say that the mental form of man both is and
is not a substance, without involving us in any contradiction. This is because
the unity of predication, which is one of the prerequisites for there being a
contradiction, is in this case not maintained. In other words, Mullā Ṣadrā is
saying that mental substance is not the same as individual substance, meaning
that the former is not substance in a discourse involving common predication,
the concept of substance only being true of it by way of essential predication,
mental substance also having none of the effects produced by the extra-mental
existence of substance. For, in order for there to be a case of predication that
is “common with respect to the arts”, two conditions must be met: first, the no-
tion representing the category of the predicate must be part of the definition
of the subject; second, any effects that the predicate might have must derive
from the subject. In the example aforementioned, “substance” is part of the
definition of the concept of “man” (first condition fulfilled); the effects of the
specific, extra-mental existence of substance, however, are not grounded in
“man” as a concept (second condition not fulfilled). Thus the two conditions
aforementioned are not met at the same time, implying that mental man is
not a substance at the level of common predication, i.e., mental man is not an
individual man.
Mullā Ṣadrā further declares that, respecting their aptitude to being intel-
ligised as universals, universal intellective natures are not predicable of any-
thing whatsoever, while in so far as these universal natures have a presence in
the soul as one of its states, the soul being the source or locus of appearance
210 Fana

of these universal forms as vehicles of knowledge, they come under the cat-
egory of quality. In other words, in so far as they have a presence in the in-
tellect, these natures are universal and predicable of a plurality of things,
while in their extra-mental existence, they are particular and not predicable
of anything whatsoever. The referent of whatever we conceive and arises in
our minds is not predicable of anything in the way of common predication;
rather, it is the notion of it as predicated that has this property, inasmuch as
mental forms of things predicated are disconnected from the external effects
of their referents—which is why they are predicable at all—while the soul is
the source or locus of appearance of these mental forms.104
Sabzawārī raises an objection to Mullā Ṣadrā’s explanations by asking
whether a thing like the form of “man” as present in the knowing part of the
soul—which according to Mullā Ṣadrā is a substance in terms of essential
predication and a quality in terms of common predication—is an individual
instance of a quality by essence, or merely a quality in the way of an accident?
Now if it should be an individual instance of a quality by essence, then this as-
pect must be included in our account of the nature of that individual, meaning
that it is a quality by essential predication. But it was stated previously that in
terms of essential predication, it was a substance, one and the same thing thus
being both a substance and a quality under one and the same consideration,
which is impossible. And if it should be stated that it is a quality in the way of
an accident, everything that is by accident reverting to something that is by es-
sence, then what is that thing that is a quality by essence?
Sabzawārī solves this difficulty by explaining that Ṣadrā’s phrase of his Asfār,
“in so far as they exist in the soul”,105 does not refer to the existence of essences
or universal natures in the intellect, but rather to a special kind of existence
that has its own particular essence. In other words: a special kind of existence
from which the essence of “knowledge”, which by its very nature comes under
the category of quality, can be derived. These particular existents are nothing
but so many individual appearances to the soul of the essence of knowledge,
appearances that can be regarded as a kind of second perfection or fulfilment
of the existence of these forms, which had another kind of existence in the
extra-mental world. So, knowledge is a quality by essence, while the forms of
individual knowns in the mind are all qualities by accident.106

104  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, pp. 292–296; ʿAbd Allāh Jawādī Āmulī, Raḥīq-i
makhtūm, vol.1, fasc. 4. (Qom: Markaz-i Nashr-i Asrāʾ, 1417/1996), pp. 134–136; H. Sabzawārī,
Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2, pp. 138–139.
105  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, pp. 294–295.
106  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2,
pp. 144–145; see also his comments on the text of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya
(Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 1, p. 298, note. 1,).
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 211

Continuing his account, Sabzawārī then declares that his interpretation of

Mullā Ṣadrā’s explanations, a reading in which knowledge is viewed as a qual-
ity by essence, does not represent his personal point of view and that Mullā
Ṣadrā’s repeated affirmations notwithstanding, he himself does not believe
that knowledge is, in fact, a quality. In his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma and also in his
Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, Sabzawārī’s reasoning is as follows:
For forms as vehicles of knowledge (ṣuwar ʿilmiyya), to exist in themselves
(wujūd fī nafsihi) or to belong to the soul (wujūd li-l-nafs) is one and the exact
same thing. To all things whose actuality depends upon an underlying sub-
ject (mawḍūʿ), viz. for all accidents, to exist in itself is the exact same thing as
to belong to something other. But accidents are of two kinds: either they are
predicated of a subject in so far as they add something to that subject, or they
are not predicated of anything. All of the nine Aristotelian categories other
than substance are predicated of a subject in so far as they add something to
that subject. “White”, for instance, is predicated of “body” in so far as it adds
something to it; after all, in order for a body to be white, it will be necessary
that whiteness be added to it since whiteness is not part of its essence. White-
ness itself, however, is not white by virtue of something else. Now if mental
existence would be a quality, it would have to be predicated of the soul in so
far as it adds something to it. This would mean that something would need to
be added to the forms in the soul in order for these forms to appear to the soul
at all. However, to appear is, for these forms, the exact same thing as to exist.
Mental beings, that is to say, forms as vehicles of knowledge present in the soul,
have both a being and an essence the latter of which, by way of essential predi-
cation, for instance, is a substance. But their being is beyond any category, be
it substance or any of the other nine categories, which means that we are deal-
ing with the existence of essences and not with existence added to essences.
The existence of an essence in the soul and in itself cannot be seen as distinct
from its appearance to the soul. Thus our conception of the essence of “man”
has a mental existence in our soul, and this mental existence is identical to the
existence of this essence, both in itself and to the soul; these are two aspects
of one and the same act of existence, and not two distinct acts. On a different
note, the intelligible forms that appear to the soul represent an “unfolding of
existence” (iḍāfa ishrāqiyya) in and through the soul. To put it more precisely,
these forms exist as a resplendence, a radiance of the soul; in fact, the soul is
nothing but this radiance and resplendence, there being only the soul and its
resplendence (ishrāq). So, mental being is a kind of derivative existence (wujūd
tabʿī), and in the same manner in which the Immutable Archetypes (al-aʿyān
al-thābita) exist through the derived existence—in the realm of the Divine—
of the knowledge, the names and the attributes, of the Truly Existent, likewise
the forms as vehicles of knowledge exist in us in relation to the soul:
212 Fana

The truth of the matter is that it is only by way of comparison that knowl-
edge is a quality and that the forms as known in themselves are qualities.
Just as the “Holy Emanation” of God, I mean, the “unfolded existence”
(al-wujūd al-munbasiṭ), is neither a substance nor an accident and yet
pervades all the quiddities of the substances and all the accidents, and
just as the “Most Holy Emanation” through the unity of which all indi-
viduation appears as unity is not a quality and neither the individuation
(taʿayyun), so also the illumination of the soul which pervades all the
quiddities that are the objects of its knowledge is neither a substance
nor an accident. So it is not a quality while being knowledge. Nor are
the quiddities that are pervaded by the illumination of the soul qualities
while being objects of knowledge.107

4.3 The Unity of the Knower and the Known

One of the other issues concerning which Sabzawārī criticized Mullā Ṣadrā
concerns the latter’s proof of the union between the knower and the known
when the knowing subject knows something other than itself. Mullā Ṣadrā says
that whenever we have an intellection of say, a horse, there are three things
involved: 1) the knowing subject, viz. our soul which intelligizes, 2) that which
is an object of intellection per se, viz. the horse’s intelligible form which (now)
exists in our soul, and 3) that which accidentally is an object of intellection,
viz. the particular, physical horse. In the present context “the known” clearly
stands for the intelligible form, the idea being that in the process of our intel-
lection of a horse, our being becomes united with the being of the intelligible
form of the horse or more precisely, the being of our faculty of intellection as-
sumes the very being of the intelligible form of the horse.
The above doctrine was much debated among Muslim thinkers. In as much
as intellection is always either of the self or of something outside the self, there
was no difference of opinion on self-knowledge as a union between the know-
er and the known. It was only when our knowledge of the other was at stake
that this doctrine became the object of dispute.
In his Shifāʾ and Ishārāt, Avicenna criticizes this doctrine as unfounded,
comparing whatever its protagonists had to say about it to “putrid dates”

107  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, edited and glossed by Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 2,
pp. 146–147; T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh, The Metaphysics of Sabzavārī, p. 65.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 213

(ḥashaf).108 But in his al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, he accepts it and even validates it

on the basis of rational proof.109
Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, too, is among those who reject it and in the manner cus-
tomary to him, he discusses the various points of view. In the course of his
discussion of the subject in his al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya, he draws attention
to the fact that Avicenna rejects this doctrine throughout his works, save for his
al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād.110
In his commentary on the Ishārāt, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, who was a supporter
of the doctrine, explains Avicenna’s rejection of this theory, adding that his
apparent endorsement of it in his al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād is an explanation of
the views of the Peripatetics rather than his own. This may also be inferred
from the opening lines of this work111 where Avicenna promises to set forth the
views of the Peripatetics in three separate tracts.112 In any case, his rejection of
the doctrine is better documented than his acceptance of it.
Mullā Ṣadrā was an advocate of the doctrine of the union of the knower
and the known. He had a special concern with the subject, so much so that,
over and above his detailed discussions in his Asfār, he even wrote a special
treatise on this topic which also contains a multitude of arguments in support
of it.113 Among Mullā Ṣadrā’s proofs, there is the one “from correlation” (burhān
al-taḍāyuf). In his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma and in his notes on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār,
Sabzawārī raises objections against this proof. In his Kitāb al-Mashāʿir, Mullā
Ṣadra explains the proof from correlation as follows:

The existence of every form perceived (ṣūra idrākiyya), be it by the intel-

lect or by the senses, coincides with the existence of the perceiving sub-
ject, for which God inspired me with the following proof: of every form
perceived, let’s say by the intellect, (a) the bare existence, (b) its exis-
tence as an object of intellection (maʿqūliyya), and (c) its existence to the

108  Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Shifāʾ: al-Nafs, ed. Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī (Qom: Maktab al-Iʿlām al-
Islāmī, 1375 Sh./1996), pp. 327–329; idem, Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, vol. 3, pp. 292–296.
109  Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: McGill University [Tehran
Branch], 1363 Sh./1984), pp. 6–10. In his discussion of the particular perfection of the ratio-
nal soul in the Ilāhiyyāt of the Shifāʾ (vol. 2, pp. 425–426), Avicenna also says clearly that
intellection, the intellect, and the thing intellected are one, or very close to being one.
110  Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, al-Mabāḥith al-Mashriqiyya, vol. 1, p. 448.
111  Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 1.
112  See Ṭūsī’s commentary on Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, vol. 3, p. 293.
113  On Mullā Ṣadrā’s discussion on this subject see Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic
Philosophy: Mullā Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010). Kalin’s study includes an English translation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Risāla fī ittiḥād
al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl (pp. 256–291).
214 Fana

intellecting subject (ʿāqil) are all one and the same without distinction,
this in the sense that it is not possible to imagine another way of exis-
tence for a form associated with intellection (ṣūra ʿaqliyya) according to
which it would not be an object of intellection to the intellecting subject.
For otherwise, it would not be what it is.
This being so, we declare: the existence of this form cannot be differ-
ent from the existence of the intellecting subject (ʿāqil), to the extent that
it would have an existence and the intellecting subject another existence,
the relation of “object of intellection” (maʿqūliyya) vs. “intellecting sub-
ject” (ʿāqiliyya) only befalling them by way of an accidental property at a
later point in time, as in the case of the father and the son and the king
and the city, and all the other things that stand in some relation to some-
thing else and upon which the relation befalls as an accidental property
after these things themselves have come to exist. Otherwise, its existence
would not be its actual existence as an object of intellection. But the as-
sumption was that it was, so their being distinct is impossible.
It, therefore, follows that the form that is associated with intellection,
if we take it in isolation from everything that transcends it, is intellect-ed
and, at the same time, intellect-ing because to exist as an object of intel-
lection is not conceivable without there being an intellecting subject, as
is the case for all correlates. And as soon as we take this form in isolation
from everything that transcends it, it must by itself be an object of intel-
lection to itself.
Now, we started from the axiom that there is an entity that intellects its
objects of intellection; from our argument, it followed that the objects of
intellection are united [in existence] with the intellecting subject. And
this is precisely what we had assumed.114

Sabzawārī finds this proof from correlation (taḍāyuf) for the union between
the knower and the known insufficient, and it would seem to be for this reason
also that he called it not a proof, but an “approach” (maslak). In the course of
his discussion of God’s self-knowledge in his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, he raises the
following difficulty against Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof:

114  Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Kitāb al-Mashāʿir. Bā tarjuma-yi Fārsī-i Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā ʿImād al-
Dawla, edition and French translation by Henry Corbin (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Ṭahūrī,
1363 Sh./1984), pp. 50–51; idem, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 3, pp. 312–316, and vol. 6,
pp. 165–169.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 215

Ṣadr al-Muta‌ʾallihīn, may God hallow his secret, did indeed avail him-
self—in the Mashāʿir and elsewhere—also of the argument from the
mutual correspondence of correlates (takāfuʾ al-mutaḍāʾifayn) to prove
the union between the intellecting subject and the thing intellected in
relation to one’s knowledge of something other than the self. But I do not
think that he proved his point in this way. This is because the “being on
an equal footing” (al-takāfuʾ fī l-martaba) which is one of the distinctive
features of correlation (taḍāyuf), does not require anything more than
the coming true of one of the correlates—simultaneously that is, and not
prior nor posterior to it—with the other, and no amalgamation (ittiḥād).
How could it be otherwise, the cause being the correlate (muḍāʾif) of the
thing caused and the mover the correlate of the thing moved? Mutual
correspondence only requires the effective simultaneity of states on ei-
ther side and not the amalgamation of their respective stations or of their
being. If this were not so, this would violate the law of contradiction.
And what he says about the assumption of a blocking-out of all other-
ness when we come to speak of a thing’s existence as an object of intel-
lection, is not possible when he uses a proof from correlation. This is be-
cause the object of intellection (maʿqūl) is, as a notion, only intelligible if
we keep the subject that has the intellection (ʿāqil) well within view. How
could this be otherwise, one part of a relation only being intelligible in
comparison with the other part?
All this means that in the same way in which two correlate notions do
not require that they be multiple as to their station and their being, just
because as notions, they are different, their mutual correspondence, too,
does not require their multiplicity nor their amalgamation; even though
it does not resist amalgamation either, but then for some outside reason.
Think about this…. The thing whose very and only mode of existence is
identical with its being an object of intellection is the intellect in a state
of intellection and being intellected.115

The last part of Sabzawārī’s account has been understood by some of the glos-
sators of the Sharḥ al-manẓūma as an admission of the weakness of his own
objections to Mullā Ṣadrā’s point of view. By way of example, one could refer
to the Notes on the Sharḥ al-Manẓūma by Mīrzā Mahdī Āshtiyānī who, after
his rebuttal of Sabzawārī’s objections, makes the observation that it is strange

115  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, ed. Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 3, pp. 565–567.
216 Fana

that Sabzawārī sharply criticizes Mullā Ṣadrā in one place, but then admits the
weakness of this criticism in another.116
But over and above all this, in his Notes to Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, and after hav-
ing voiced his objections to Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof from correlation, Sabzawārī
stands up in explanation and support of Mullā Ṣadrā’s view, stating:

Indeed, if he should hold fast to [this idea of] “relation”, and if he should
then mean by it an “unfolding of existence” (iḍāfa ishrāqiyya wujūdiyya)
and that whatever is an object of intellection per se has a derivative [kind
of] existence (wujūd rābiṭ) which requires some sort of amalgamation
(ittiḥād) and unitedness (ittiṣāl) wherever it manifests itself, such with-
out having any negative impact on the elevation of this station [i.e., of
intellection], then this would make sense … And in all fairness it must be
stated that his—may God hallow his secret—intention is not to hold fast
to mere correlation; rather, the foundation of his argument is that [the
notion] “perceiving subject” (mudrik) has no being and no sense other
than “being in a state of perception” (idrākiyya) because this being is
cognitive (ʿilmī) and luminary (nūrī), and it has already been established
that luminary existence is both knowledge and the known, in the sense
that if we should assume there to be nothing other than the subject itself,
its existence would be luminary and perceptive. If perceiving, its state is
thus, while that which it perceives is its very Self (dhāt), the assumption
being that nothing else exists as in the case of that which is separate by
and in itself [and not by some separating agent] and which has no other
existence than being in a state of perception, in which the Self perceives
itself.117

As stated before, Sabzawārī after initial objections ends up by endorsing and

explaining Mullā Ṣadrā’s view. In his defence it might be said that this is an
aspect of Sabzawārī’s general way of examining things, where he sometimes
starts out from an objection, only to end up sanctioning the view in question
by proposing some solution in reply, mostly in an effort to render things where
possible consistent with his own position. We find the same kind of approach
in Mullā Ṣadrā, both in his Asfār and in some of his other works, so that we
can say that Sabzawārī is his follower in his doctrines as well as in his methods.

116  See M. Mudarris Āshtiyānī, Taʿlīqa bar Sharḥ-i Manẓūma, pp. 532–534; M. Hīdajī, Ḥāshiya-
yi Hīdajī bar sharḥ-i Manẓūma-yi Sabzawārī, pp. 356–357; Muḥammad Taqī Āmulī, Durar
al-fawāʾid (Tehran: Markaz Nashr al-Kitāb, 1377/1957–6), pp. 483–484.
117  See Sabzawārī’s gloss in Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 6, pp. 169–170.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 217

4.4 The Estimative Faculty

Another difficulty raised by Sabzawārī against Mullā Ṣadrā concerns the mat-
ter of the estimative faculty (al-quwwa al-wāhima). Statements by Muslim phi-
losophers about this faculty are ambiguous and suffer from inconsistencies. In
their view, the matter comes down to this: man and other animals sometimes
have a sense of what particular things betoken (maʿānin juzʾiyya): for instance,
a cub senses its mother’s love or, seeing a wolf, a sheep senses the wolf’s hos-
tile attitude and immediately runs away. Clearly, these connotations (maʿānin)
cannot be picked up by the external senses, the sensus communis, the faculty
of imagination or the intellect. There must, therefore, be another faculty by
which one senses what particular things portend. This is the estimative fac-
ulty. In connection with this faculty all kinds of issues have been raised, such
as whether or not it opines, and if it does, whether its judgements are true or
false, and whether it is independent of, or tributary to the intellect. Since this is
not the place to go into each and every one of these issues, I shall limit myself
to a discussion of Mullā Ṣadrā’s exposition of his view concerning the idea that
the estimative faculty is tributary to the intellect, and then follow this up with
an account of Sabzawārī’s objections.
Having set forth the customary views of the philosophers in the matter of
the estimative faculty, Mullā Ṣadrā embarks upon the clarification of his own,
reasoned position, stating:

Even though the estimative faculty is other than the faculties that we just
have mentioned, it has in our opinion no selfhood (dhāt) in separation
from the intellect. Rather, it stands for a relation between the intellec-
tive part of the soul and a particular individual, for its being connected
with, and its acting upon, it. Thus the association between the faculties
of intellection and imagination is what makes up the estimative faculty.
Likewise, its objects of perception are universal notions in their relation
to the forms of individuals as present in the faculty of imagination. In all
creatures, the estimative faculty coincides with the intellect, in the same
manner in which natural universals and essences have no reality outside
extra-mental or mental existence respectively.118
Summing up, the existence, in particular individuals, of intelligibles of
a universal nature is either such that the mind extracts the latter from the
former, as in the case of causality or consecutiveness and all the other
notions that bear out a relationship, like father-hood, son-hood, and the

118  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 8, pp. 215–217.

218 Fana

like; or in as much as they have a (corresponding) form in those individu-

als, such as blackness, odor, and taste. The first part of the division is ei-
ther perceived solely by the intellect, which happens in the case in which
the perception takes place without further regard to the corresponding
individuals; or by the estimative faculty in case the perception is associ-
ated with one or more specific individuals. Perception of the second part
of the division occurs by means of one of the outer senses or the imagina-
tion. Animosity, for instance, belongs to the first part of the division. Uni-
versals that concern special, implied characteristics are associated with
these without having subsistence in individual bodies. They are perceived
by the estimative faculty and not by the senses. Thus the estimative fac-
ulty perceives universals as qualified by particulars.119

As can be seen from Mullā Ṣadrā’s account, he did not regard the estimative
faculty as a faculty independent from the faculty of intellection, but rather
as united with it in being. The perceptions of the estimative faculty are the
very perceptions of the intellect but tied to particular forms and things. The
perceptions of the intellect are universal, while those associated with the es-
timative faculty are particular, and commonly referred to as specific “conno-
tations” (maʿānin juzʾiyya), such as the hostility of John or the friendliness of
Jack, which are specific and individual notions and connotations. According
to Mullā Ṣadrā the estimative faculty is in fact none other than the faculty of
intellection in its qualified understanding of universal objects of perception;
while the intellect has a perception of such universal notions as animosity or
friendliness, the estimative faculty grasps these universal things in as much as
they are betokened by this or that individual.
So the estimative faculty has no reality in separation from the intellect. In
order to clarify his view, Mullā Ṣadrā then compares the relationship between
the intellect and the estimative faculty to the one between the natural uni-
versal and mental or extra-mental being. The difference between the natural
universal or an essence per se in respect of its mental or extra-mental actuality
is not a true difference in respect of its being; rather, essences, be they men-
tal or extra-mental, obtain actuality in and through their individual instances,
the difference between these being a mere mental consideration (iʿtibār). By
way of example, the being of the essence of man is not different for mental
or extra-mental individuals; rather, the reality of this essence lies in the sum
total of its existing individuals. Likewise, there is no true difference between

119  Ibid., pp. 217–218. For similar discussions see also op.cit, vol. 8, pp. 239–240, and vol. 3,
p. 360.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 219

the perceptions of the intellect and those of the estimative faculty; rather, the
latter is nothing but the individual embodiment (tashakhkhuṣ) of the former.
Thus one can say that the perception of universal notions is one of two
things: either these notions are perceived in their universality and as abstrac-
tions, that is to say as universal notions that have a plurality of concrete actu-
alizations but which the intellect perceives in abstraction from their attach-
ment to, and association with, particular individuals. Examples of these are
causality, consecutiveness and all the other relational concepts (iḍāfāt). In the
other case, they are perceived as notions that have taken shape in individu-
als, such as the animosity of John. In the first case, the object of perception
is the universal notion itself, which means that the perceiving agent is none
other than the intellect, while in the second case, the perceiving agent is the
estimative faculty which perceives the notion of animosity in its attachment
to, and association with, the particular individual John. In other words, in the
above example, it is the estimative faculty that has a perception of the univer-
sal notion of animosity in its association with something specific, and which
has thus become individual and determined, i.e., the universal in its individual
determination (al-kullī al-muqayyad bi-qayd juzʾī).
For Mullā Ṣadrā the perceiving agent is in fact none other than the faculty of
the intellect, but because the intellect perceives universals, we cannot make a
(direct) connection between something like the perception of John’s animos-
ity—which is individual and particular—and the intellect. From Ṣadrā’s ac-
count we can infer that he regards the individual-related being of particular
notions such as the animosity of John as relational (iḍāfī) in character in as
much as these (universal) notions become particular in their association with
an individual, and not as (universal) notions that have an actual individual ex-
istence as particular instances of them. As will be set forth below, Sabzawārī’s
objections against Mullā Ṣadrā turn precisely around this point.
According to Sabzawārī, Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof that the estimative faculty
stands for the faculty of intellection as qualified by particulars (al-ʿaql al-
muqayyad) is not conclusive, a view that he explains as follows:

If that would be correct, then it would also be correct to say that the es-
timative faculty stands for the faculty of intellection [as] qualified [by
particulars]. But since the former is not true, neither is the latter. This is
because an affection (maḥabba), which is something perceived by the es-
timative faculty, neither belongs to the [universal] things that are extract-
ed [from individuals] without having individual subsistence, nor to those
universals whose [lowest] species are tied to an individual. Indeed, if the
latter would be the case, then [the correctness of the aforementioned
220 Fana

description of] the estimative faculty would be established. Rather, af-

fection belongs to those universals that unfold over several individu-
als (muntashirat al-afrād), such as the affection of this man and of this
sheep for its offspring, of that donkey and the like, and of this man for
his child, for his wife and for everything he loves. And in a single day,
he may be overcome a thousand times by a sense of affection, or even
more. There is no doubt that these inclinations, passions, and affections
or whatever you would like to call them, say “connotative particulars”
(juzʾiyyāt maʿnawiyya), subsist in a thing called the soul where they are
subject to generation and corruption. Such connotative particulars stand
in need of a perceiving subject, due to the correlation between perceiver
and the thing perceived. Now, none of the outer senses, the sensus com-
munis (al-ḥiss al-mushtarak), or the imagination (khiyāl) is capable of
grasping these connotative particulars of the emotions because they are
assigned to grasp and retain forms, while these [things] are connotations
(maʿānin). And neither can it be the faculty of intellection, because that
faculty is concerned with the grasping of universals while these are par-
ticulars, though their being particular is not solely grounded in a relation-
ship. So there must be a faculty other than the senses, the imagination or
the intellect, and this is what they mean by [the faculty of] estimation.
The intellect does not distinguish between whiteness and affection as un-
folding over several individuals. Only, individual instances of whiteness
are forms and objects of sense perception, while individual instances of
affection are connotative emotions (maʿānin wijdāniyya).120

According to Sabzawārī the individuality of notions such as the affection of Jack

is not grounded in its being associated with a single individual. Rather, they are
universals that unfold over several individuals, such as someone’s love for his
child, and may be called “connotative particulars”. As perceptions they reside in
the soul, but they cannot be perceived by the senses since connotative emotions
are not physical or otherwise open to perception by the outer senses. And neither
can they be perceived by the sensus communis or the imagination, since these two
are concerned with the perception and retention of forms conveyed by the senses.
Finally, they cannot be perceived by the intellect either, because connotative par-
ticulars are particulars while the intellect is designed to perceive universals. Thus
there must be another power involved, a power that is called the estimative fac-
ulty, and it is this faculty that perceives particular, connotative emotions.

120  See Sabzawārī’s gloss in Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 8, p. 216.

Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 221

In his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, Sabzawārī devotes a brief discussion to the

estimative faculty in which he describes it as a faculty by which we grasp
individual notions in their relationship to forms conveyed by the senses. It
would seem that this comes closer to Mullā Ṣadrā’s understanding of the
matter than the critical position taken by him in his Glosses on the Asfār.
Only, he does not say a word here about the independence or lack of in-
dependence of the estimative faculty in its relationship to the faculty of
intellection.121

4.5 The Identity of the Truly Existent and His Attributes of Perfection
Another of Sabzawārī’s objections to Mullā Ṣadrā concerns one of the latter’s
proofs regarding the identity between God’s undivided nature and His attri-
butes of perfection. Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof runs as follows:

If these attributes of perfection such as Knowledge, Power and the like

would be superadded to His self (dhāt) in actu, then His self would have
existence without itself bearing testimony to the truth of these attributes
of perfection. Consequently, His self would by itself be void of these qual-
ities, He, by His self, thus having [for example] no knowledge of things,
nor the power over anything willed by Him, which is all false. This is be-
cause His self is the principle of anything that is good and perfect. So
how could He possibly be lacking in any way, deriving perfection from
what is other than He, this “other” affecting Him and He being affected
by this “other”? But it is He who affects others, while [the co-existence of]
the aspects of affecting and being-affected leads to multiplicity, which
is impossible, and so is the premise from which all these impossibilities
flow forth.
As far as the inseparable properties (lawāzim) of any essence (māhiyya)
are concerned, these do not complete it in the sense that by reason of
their being inseparable from it, this essence should derive some perfec-
tion from them—implying [in this case the simultaneous existence of] a
giving and a taking, which would bring about the existence of multiplic-
ity in the One itself [which is impossible]. Rather, these things are men-
tally p
­ osited (umūr iʿtibāriyya) and follow from essence.122

121  H. Sabzawārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, ed. Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, vol. 5, pp. 63–64.
122  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 6, pp. 133–134.
222 Fana

The above proof is the first in a series of proofs adduced by Mullā Ṣadrā
in support of his own position. The proof is cast in the form of a conditional
syllogism to the effect that, if the attributes of perfection such as knowledge
and power would be superadded to His self in actu, then His self would exist
without itself bearing testimony to the truth of these attributes. The conse-
quent leads to the assertion that God derives His perfection from elsewhere,
which is impossible because if this were to be the case, he would be in a state
of need and being affected, while in fact, it is He who affects everything else.
Thus affection and being-affected would co-exist in multiplicity in Him, which
is impossible. The consequent being thus proven false, the antecedent must be
false as well.
Sabzawārī believes that this proof is a case of begging the question but then
explains it in such a way as to be acceptable and proving the author’s point. In
his glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, he directs his arrows at two separate issues
raised by Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof. In the first gloss, relating to the first part of the
proof, Sabzawārī states the following:

I say: This is a case of begging the question, because the statement that
[God’s] self (dhāt) in actu does not bear testimony to the fact that His at-
tributes of perfection are part of His self, and the assertion that His self
is eo ipso void of these and similar contentions, are [all] the very same
thing that the adversary wants to prove. For the latter says: these do not
belong to His self as such, even though they are never negated of it either
because they are essential properties that flow forth from it. Those who
talk about something being superadded are just waiting to admit to the
conclusion [drawn by Mullā Ṣadrā]. Indeed, this conclusion is the very
same as the premise on which it is based, as is obvious. What he (Ṣadrā)
is really saying is that the thing that we have to steer clear of—which
is the conclusion that he, may God hallow his secret, is actually driving
at—is left unstated, namely that these various suppositions imply that
[God’s] self is an essence, which is disproven by the facts. The explana-
tion of the [faulty] implication [that God’s self is an essence] lies in the
fact that the self that is “void of” these perfections and their opposites is
of necessity an essence. This is because “thing-ness” (shayʾiyya) [implied
by the self as dhāt] either refers to essence or to being. But [God’s] being
is not void of these perfections; indeed, it is identical with them as was
[also] established by the author. And thus it would remain that His self is
an essence (māhiyya), the inference [to this effect] being demonstrative
in character.123

123  Ibid., p. 133, Sabzawārī’s comment in the footnote.

Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 223

As stated before, Sabzawārī is of the opinion that Mullā Ṣadrā is begging

the question here because he says that if the attributes of perfection are su-
peradded to God’s self in actu, then His self will exist without itself bearing
testimony to the truth of these attributes of perfection, and thus God Himself
will, by virtue of His self, be void of these attributes. As may be inferred from
the above quotation, Sabzawārī’s objection concerns the fact that the conclu-
sion of Mullā Ṣadrā’s implication is identical with the claim made by his ad-
versaries. This is so because these say that these attributes are not included in
God’s self but superadded to it, and even if they are never denied of it either,
this is only so because they are inseparable properties of God, but not His very
essence. Surely those who adhere to the doctrine of God’s attributes as some-
thing superadded will have no qualms about admitting Ṣadra’s conclusion that
(on their assumption) God’s self will be void of these attributes. Indeed, one
could say that the former statement is identical to the latter.
Sabzawārī follows this up with an explanatory analysis of Ṣadrā’s account,
saying that one must be careful to remember that the supposition that God’s
attributes are superadded to His self bears with it the implication—and this is
what Ṣadrā really meant to say—that God’s self (dhāt) should be an essence
(māhiyya), which is false. This is so because if God’s self is void of these at-
tributes of perfection—as well as of their opposites124—this self is necessarily
an essence. For the thing-ness (shayʾiyya) that self implies, is either being or
essence. But His being is not void of these perfections; indeed, it is identical
to these. On the adversary’s supposition, it will, therefore, be God’s essence
that is void of perfection. However, as has been proved elsewhere, God is pure,
absolute being and has no essence.
The second issue raised by Sabzawārī concerns the part of Ṣadrā’s proof in
which he says:

This is because His self (dhāt) is the principle of anything good and per-
fect. So how could He possibly be lacking in any way, deriving perfection
from what is other than He?

Commenting on the above, Sabzawārī says the following:

124  This is so because if the opposites of the attributes of perfection would not be intrinsical-
ly negated of Him, He could never have any of the attributes of perfection, not even in the
form of superadded accidental properties. The question here is not whether or not God
possesses attributes of perfection, but whether or not these attributes are superadded to
His self.
224 Fana

I say: The proof can be completed without this if one [just] considers the
point that we added to it [previously]. The inclusion of this [consideration
by Ṣadrā] introduces a weakness because deriving perfection from [out-
side] attributes and being affected by these would only follow in the case
that these [attributes] were not essential properties (lawāzim, sg. lāzim).
But if they are—and we know that they owe their existence to that which
they are inseparable from (malzūm), which is their source and principle—
then God does not derive any perfection from them because they necessar-
ily belong to Him at all times by virtue of His nature, He not deriving these
perfections from some other. It would, however, be better to say125 that if
they would be superadded to His self, then the latter would in itself be void
of them, and obviously it would also be void of their opposites because oth-
erwise, His self would be identical with the negation of these perfections
[which is impossible]. Now if this “being-void-of” (khuluww) is predicated
of a so-called “essence” (māhiyya taʿammuliyya), then [the potentiality that
this void necessarily creates] would represent an “essential possibility”
(imkān dhātī). But the Necessary Being, may He be exalted, has no essence.
Thus the subject of this being-void-of would be pure being, perfect reality,
and pure individuality. A being-void-of and [the implied] potentiality in a
subject with objective existence represent a potentiality that is a disposi-
tion whose bearer is matter. And matter is inevitably connected to a form,
while their composite is body. [But God] is elevated far beyond that.126

According to Sabzawārī, God would only derive perfections from elsewhere

and be affected by them in the case that such perfections are not necessary at-
tributes of His nature. But if they are, He derives no perfection from elsewhere,
these perfections belonging to Him by necessity and at all times. Sabzawārī
points out that the proof can be completed without emphasizing that perfec-
tion would be derived from elsewhere and that his own, earlier addition to it
is sufficient for the proof to be complete and yes, even more apposite. In the
above quotation, Sabzawārī’s account boils down to the following: if the at-
tributes of perfection would be superadded to God’s self, and if His self would
be void of these, then His self would also be void of their opposites, for if this
were not the case, then God’s self would be the very negation of knowledge,
power, will and so forth, which is impossible. Thus God’s self would be void

125  In his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, vol. 3, pp. 549–550, Sabzawārī gives two proofs for the identity
of the attributes of perfection and God’s self, the first of which is almost the same as the
one given here.
126  See Sabzawārī’s gloss in Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 6, pp. 133–134.
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 225

of the perfections and their opposites, while at the same time it is potentially
qualified by any of these. This potentiality is either essential or by way of dis-
position. If the underlying subject of this potentiality is an essence that was
abstracted by the intellect, then this potentiality would be essential. But the
Necessary Existent is pure being and has no essence, so the potentiality cannot
be essential. But if dispositional, the bearer of this potentiality would be pure
being and reality itself, while the bearer of dispositional potentiality is matter,
which is inevitably connected to a form. This would imply that God’s self is
composed of matter and form, and thus a body, but God Almighty is far beyond
being a body. Thus God’s selfhood is not void of these attributes which belong
to Him by virtue of Himself.

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 chapter 5

Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī

Mohsen Kadivar1

1 Life

Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī was born in Isfahan in Dhū l-Qaʿda 1234/August or
September 1819. The prefix Āqā was attached to his name at some point, as it
was also attached to the names of some other philosophers and jurists of the
Safavid and Qajar periods. In some of his works, he calls himself by this name.2
He came from a pious family of scholars and philosophers. His father, Mullā
ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris Zunūzī Tabrīzī (d. 1257/1841), nicknamed Bābākhān, a na-
tive of Zunūz (a small town 25 kilometres north of Marand), was one of the
most distinguished scholars of his age. Out of all the fields of learning, Zunūzī
was particularly interested in philosophy. He is considered one of the most
important students of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. His most significant works were two
treatises in Persian, the Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya dar maʿārif-i rubūbiyya (The Divine
Flashes Concerning the Knowledge of Lordship)3 and Muntakhab al-khāqānī

1  Translated from Persian by Janis Esots.

2  Thus, at the beginning of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, he says: “[Prince … ʿImād al-Dawla Badīʿ
al-Mulk … sent some questions concerning matters about Divine Wisdom …] to this un-
worthy one, known as Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, the son of the forgiven pardoned Mullā
ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris Zunūzī Tabrīzī …’ At the end of the Badāyiʿ, he writes: “[In praise of
God and through His favour, the book Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam was completed on 5 Jumādā I 1307/
12 December 1889] by the pen of this writer, known to the common people as Āqā ʿAlī Mu-
darris Ṭihrānī”. At the beginning of the treatise Sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād, he says:
“After that, the destitute unworthy servant, known in brief and in the abridged form as ʿAlī
Ṭihrānī and famous as Mudarris Ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Zunūzī al-Tabrīzī al-Mudarris, etc.” In the
Risāla-yi sargudhasht, he calls himself “This destitute one ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, the son of
Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī”. See Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, ed. Muḥammad
Jawād Sārawī and Rasūl Fatḥī Majd (Tabrīz: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tabrīz, 1380 Sh./2001),
p. 7; idem, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, ed. Muḥsin Kadīwar, 3 vols (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Iṭṭilāʿāt,
1378 Sh./1999), vol. 2, p. 87; Ibid., vol. 3, p. 147.
3  The Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya dar maʿārif-i rubūbiyya, also known as the Sharīfīyya khāqāniyya,
completed on 6 Rabīʿ I 1240/24 October 1824, was composed at the request of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh
Qājār. It establishes the principle of existence and its attributes of perfection, explains the
manner in which multiplicity appears from the true one, and deals with the issues pertaining
to God’s knowledge and other problems related to Lordship. The book consists of twenty
chapters, each of which is called a “divine flash” (lumʿa ilāhiyya). This work was edited by

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_007

232 Kadivar

fī kashf ḥaqāʾiq ʿirfānī (The Khāqān’s Selection Concerning the Disclosure of

Mystical Truths),4 which deals with metaphysics in the narrower sense. In
addition, he also wrote glosses on several works of Mullā Ṣadrā, including al-
Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya,
and al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, and to ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s commentary on Naṣīr
al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād (Shawāriq al-ilhām),5 and composed supergloss-
es on Lāhījī’s glosses on Qūshjī’s commentary on the aforementioned Ṭūsī’s
work.6
In 1237/1822, when Āqā ʿAlī was three years old, his father, together with the
family, moved from Isfahan to Tehran. Āqā ʿAlī studied the introductory scienc-
es, Arabic literature, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s (d. 879/1474) Sharḥ al-Tajrīd in ration-
al theology and Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn ʿĀmilī’s (d. 1011/1602) Maʿālim al-uṣūl in
legal theory in a madrasa in Tehran. He then read with his father some books
in transmitted sciences (e.g., Rawḍat al-bahiyya fī sharḥ al-Lumʿa al-dimashqi-
yya by Zayn al-Dīn Jubāʾī ʿĀmilī (d. 966/1559) known as al-Shahīd al-Thānī and
Qawānīn al-uṣūl by Abū l-Qāsim Gīlānī (d. 1231/1815–1816) known as Mīrzā-yi
Qummī) and the rational sciences (e.g., Shawāriq al-ilhām by ʿAbd al-Razzāq
Lāhījī, Sharḥ al-Ishārāt by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād by Mullā
Ṣadrā). When Āqā ʿAlī was twenty-three, his father died. After this event, he
went to ʿAtabāt. Initially, he intended to continue his religious studies there.
However, a short while later he went to Isfahan, where he continued studying
the rational sciences for about five years.7 During this period, he read Mullā
Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya and Mafātīḥ al-ghayb and Avicenna’s Shifāʾ with
Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī (d. after 1267/1850), the son of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī.8
The latter wrote glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya as well as his

Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān
[1355 Sh.]/1976).
4  Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh Qājār asked Mullā ʿAbd Allāh to prepare an abridged version of the Lamaʿāt. In
response, Zunūzī wrote this book, which is shorter than the Lamaʿāt. Hence, it can be treated
as an abridgement of the latter. In this short treatise, which was completed on 2 Jumādā I
1240/23 December 1824, Mullā ʿAbd Allāh discusses the opinions of certain Shīʿī thinkers, the
views of several mystics, and the beliefs of the Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs. The book is arranged
in twenty chapters and a conclusion, and deals with the levels and way-stations of the knowl-
edge of God. It was edited by Najīb Māyil Hirawī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1361 Sh./1982).
5  This gloss was published in the margins of the lithograph edition of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s
Shawāriq al-ilhām, printed in Tehran in 1311/1893.
6  The manuscript of this work is preserved in the Library of the Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī in Teh-
ran (MS Majlis 1734). Āqā ʿAlī wrote some additional glosses to those of his father. See below,
p. 245.
7  “Risāla-yi sargudhasht,” in Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 145, 146.
8  Joseph Arthur Comte de Goubineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris:
Ernst Leroux, 1865, 3rd ed., 1900), p. 104.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 233

commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma.9 In some of his writ-

ings, Āqā ʿAlī refers to Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī as “my venerated teach-
er” (ustādhī al-muʿaẓẓam) and relates some of his opinions.10 Apart from Mīrzā
Ḥasan, Āqā ʿAlī also studied with such students of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī and Mullā
Ismāʿīl as Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī Langarūdī (d. after 1251/1835), Sayyid
Raḍī Lārījānī (d. 1270/1853) and Ḥājj Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Naqshafirūsh.11 Dur-
ing these years, Āqā ʿAlī also spent some time in Qazvin, where he attended the
classes of Mullā Āqā Qazwīnī (d. 1282/1865–1866).12 Eventually, in 1270/1853,
after the completion of his studies, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris returned to Tehran and
began to teach.
Āqā ʿAlī taught Ṣadrian Philosophy, in particular, the Asfār, in Tehran for
more than thirty years—first (for around seven years) in the Qāsim Khān Ma-
drasa (known later as Madrasa-yi Mādar-i Shāh), then in the Old Sipahsālār
Madrasa (situated in the ʿUdlājān quarter).13 He taught both rational and
transmitted sciences. However, he owes his fame to his expertise in philoso-
phy. Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān Iʿtimād al-Salṭana (d. 1331/1912) in his al-Ma‌ʾāthir
wa-l-āthār writes:

[Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris] teaches in the madrasa of the late Mīrzā Muḥammad
Khān Sipahsālār Qājār, situated in the capital city Tehran. He is one of the
few teachers, outstanding in the teaching of [both] rational and trans-
mitted sciences. He teaches both Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikma al-
mutaʿāliya) and argumentative (istidlālī) legal theory.14

9  These glosses appeared on the margins of the lithographical edition of Mullā Ṣadrā’s
Sharḥ hidāyat al-ḥikma, printed in Tehran in 1313/1895–96.
10  Eg. Āqā ʿAlī’s glosses on al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya.
11  “Risāla-yi tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ,” in Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3,
pp. 125, 142.
12  Regarding his competence in rational sciences, Āqā ʿAlī describes Mullā Āqā Qazwīnī
as “an infinite turbulent sea”. See “Risāla-yi sargudhasht,” in Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī,
Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, p. 148.
13  J. A. Goubineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, p. 104. Sayyid Aḥmad
Dīwān-Baygī in his memorandum Ḥadīqat al-shuʿarāʾ remarks that Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris
shunned the company of formal religious scholars: “Āqā ʿAlī was more inclined towards
philosophy, perfecting that noble science. For this reason, he gave up the place of his
father, who belonged to the elite of the formal religious scholars, preoccupying him-
self in his blessed abode with the teaching of the divine philosophy.” See Sayyid Aḥmad
Dīwān-Baygī. Ḥadīqat al-shuʿarāʾ, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Nawā’ī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zarrīn,
1364 Sh./1985–1986), pp. 482–483.
14  Muḥammad Ḥasan Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Kitāb al-ma‌ʾāthir wa-l-āthār, ed. Īraj Afshār (Teh-
ran: Asāṭir, 1363 Sh./1984), vol. 1, p. 211.
234 Kadivar

According to Mudarris Tabrīzī, Āqā ʿAlī was nicknamed ‘Mudarris’ be-

cause he taught both rational and transmitted sciences employing an analyt-
ical and argumentative approach.15 Of all philosophical works, Āqā ʿAlī paid
particular attention to the teaching of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya
fī asfār al-arbaʿa al-ʿaqliyya, known as the Asfār. In his age, his classes on
this book are said to have been the ones most attended. He taught the Asfār
in its entirety several times, and these classes continued until 1306/1888.
Apart from the Asfār, he taught Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād,16
Sharḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma and al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, the Metaphysics of
Avicenna’s Shifāʾ and Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary on Suhrawardī’s
Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.17
Āqā ʿAlī had numerous public disputes with Ḥājj Muḥammad Karīm Khān
Kirmānī (d. 1288/1871), the third leader of the Shaykhiyya and an account of
one of these disputes has come down to us.18 According to this account, the
dispute demonstrated Karīm Khān’s inability to answer most of the questions
in a convincing manner, and those present acknowledged Āqā ʿAlī’s greater
learning.
Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris died in Tehran on 17 Dhū l-Qaʿda 1307/27 July 188819 and
was buried in Rayy. As can be seen in his last work, which remained incom-
plete due to his sudden death, at the end of his life, Āqā ʿAlī suffered from
intense pain. Thus, he writes: ‘When I raise my head from the knees, I beat the
wall [due to the intense pain and inability to bear it].’20
His spouse Sayyida Baygum, the endowments she established demonstrate
that she was a virtuous woman.21 Āqā ʿAlī had one son and two daughters. His

15  Muḥammad ʿAlī Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab: dar sharḥ-i aḥwāl u āthār-i ʿulamāʾ,
ʿurafāʾ, fuqahāʾ, falāsifa, shuʿarāʾ u khaṭṭāṭīn-i buzurg (Tehran: Khayyām, 1374 Sh./1995),
vol. 2, p. 391.
16  The notes of one of his classes on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, made by one of
Āqā ʿAlī’s students, have been preserved. See below p. 247.
17  Āqā ʿAlī might have taught these three last books along with his additions to them which
survive.
18  “Munāẓara,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 509–518.
On this dispute see below pp. 245–246.
19  His friend Muḥammad Ḥasan Iʿtimād al-Salṭana writes: “On Saturday, 17 [Dhū l-Qaʿda] the
soul of the philosopher, Āqā ʿAlī, was entrusted to God’s mercy. I am unable to fathom the
depth of my grief.” See Muḥammad Ḥasan Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Rūznāma-yi khāṭirāt, ed. Īraj
Afshār (Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1345 Sh./1966), p. 705.
20  “Muqaddima-yi sharḥ-i Asrār al-āyāt Mullā Ṣadrā,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 3, p. 160.
21  The books endowed by Sayyida Baygum are now held at the Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī
Library.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 235

son Sharaf al-Mulk Āqā Ḥasan Ḥakīmzāda (d. 1320 Sh./1941) participated in the
Constitutional Revolution, and later held senior judicial positions in Tehran
and Yazd.22 Āqā ʿAlī’s sons-in-law were both philosophers, Mīrzā Ibrāhīm Ibti-
hāj al-Ḥukamāʾ (d. 1332/1913), one of his former students, and Mīrzā Naṣr Allāh
Khān Mustawfī Sawādkūhī (d. 1380/1960).
Āqā ʿAlī appears to have been a humble person. This can be inferred from
the manner he describes himself in his writings:

I have a weak perception, feeble intellect, inconstant vigour and am ex-

tremely thick-headed. I have studied with my father, Mullā Āqā Qazwīnī,
Ḥājjī Muḥammad Ibrāhīm, Āqā Sayyid Raḍī and Mīrzā Muḥammad
Ḥasan Nūrī, but this made little sense, because, in order to profit from
effusion, the matter must be able to receive it, in the first place.23

Nāʾib al-Ṣadr Shīrāzī, who was one of Āqā ʿAlī’s students, claimed that he
“secretly became the murīd of Munawwar ʿAlī-Shāh [Muḥammad Mujtahid
Shīrāzī, one of the shaykhs of the Niʿmatullahī order]”,24 but this claim is not
confirmed by any other source. According to the words of Mīrzā Muḥammad
ʿAlī Mudarris, “[Āqā ʿAlī], in his essence, possessed the attributes of a darwīsh;
he loved the needy, was a mystic by his vocation and a Sufi by his character,
being carefree and not bound by any limitation (bi taʿayyun).”25 Āqā ʿAlī also
wrote poetry, including ghazals, as he indicates in his Risāla-yi sargudhasht.26
However, only some of his rubāʿīs have survived.27
Āqā ʿAlī is reported to have a good relationship with the Qajar court and Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1264–1313/1848–1896) in particular. He dedicated his Badāyiʿ al-
ḥikam to Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, highly praising the monarch in the introduction.
The introduction to the Kashf al-asrār, which was composed during the final
months of Āqā ʿAlī’s life, also contains fulsome praise of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh.
From the remarks that Āqā ʿAlī makes, it can be inferred that he attended the

22  Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 30.

23  “Risāla-yi tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3,
p. 141.
24  Muḥammad Maʿṣūm b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn Maʿṣūm ʿAlī-Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, ed.
Muḥammad Jaʿfar Maḥjūb (Tehran: Kitābkhāna-yi Sanāʾī, 1331 Sh./1952), vol. 3, p. 505.
25  M. A. Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, vol. 2, p. 391.
26  “Risāla-yi sargudhasht,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, p. 149.
27  Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 181–185.
236 Kadivar

public disputes that took place at the court and in the king’s presence.28 Nev-
ertheless, Āqā ʿAlī’s letters do not contain any indications that he was fixated
on the possessors of power, dignity and domination or any inclination towards
them. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, a companion, attendant and comrade of Nāṣir al-Dīn
Shāh, was Āqā ʿAlī’s friend and a frequent visitor to his home. Iʿtimād al-Salṭa-
na had studied in France. It was his close relationship with Āqā ʿAlī that was,
apparently, the cause of the latter’s rapprochement with the monarch and the
court, also accounting for Āqā ʿAlī’s intimate acquaintance with the modern
world.
The French scholar and diplomat Arthur de Gobineau (d. 1882), who spent
two periods in Tehran (1855–1858 and 1862–1863) and conducted research into
the history of Iranian thought, was on friendly terms with Āqā ʿAlī and urged
him to write a history of philosophy in Iran during the last few centuries, in-
dicating that there had been little investigation in this field. In compliance
with Gobineau’s request, Āqā ʿAlī wrote a treatise, which Gobineau then took
to France. The original copy of the treatise in Āqā ʿAlī’s hand is preserved in
the National University Library of Strasbourg. In his book, Les religions et les
philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, published in 1865, Gobineau presents the phi-
losophy of Iran according to the information provided by Āqā ʿAlī.29 Gobineau
writes about Āqā ʿAlī himself in the following way:

Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī, a professor at the madrasa of the Shāh’s mother in Teh-
ran, is a remarkable scholar. He is small, has a frail and thin body, dark
face and penetrating eyes, and he is extremely intelligent. He studied
with his father Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris, Mullā Āqā Qazwīnī, Ḥājj Mullā
Jaʿfar [Lāhījī] Lārījānī, Ḥājj Muḥammad Ibrāhīm [Naqshafirūsh], Sayyid
Raḍī [Lārījānī], and Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī. He remarked in writ-
ing on the views of [some] famous philosophers. He used to teach law,
legal theory and metaphysics but then he stopped. However, his students
did not let him go—they visit him at home, in order to profit from his
knowledge. In short, his retreat did not reduce his fame. He is now writ-
ing a book on the history of philosophy, from Mullā Ṣadrā to the present
day. He is the first scholar after Shahrastānī who has attempted to write
such a history.30

28  “Muqaddima-yi Kashf al-asrār fī sharḥ Asrār al-āyāt,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-
yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, p. 158.
29  J. A. Goubineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, pp. 80–104.
30  Ibid., p. 104.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 237

Āqā ʿAlī’s Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam was written in response to the questions of

the Qajar prince, Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā, known as Ḥishmat al-Salṭana (d. after
1324/1906). Badīʿ al-Mulk was a learned prince, who was deeply interested in
philosophy. He had studied philosophy with Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Ḥikmī Yazdī
(d. 1304/1886). He translated into Persian Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mashāʿir, to which he
gave the title ʿImād al-ḥikma, and wrote a commentary in Persian on ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān Jāmī’s al-Durra al-fākhira, with the title al-Ḥikma al-ʿImādiyya. He
knew some French and apparently, to some extent, was acquainted with the
works of modern European philosophers.31 After having approached Mīrzā
ʿAlī Akbar with his questions and not satisfied with the answers he received,32
Badīʿ al-Mulk presented then to Āqā ʿAlī. The very size of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam
and the definitions that Āqā ʿAlī gives in the introduction show that he treat-
ed these questions, and the questioner, as extremely important. In the sev-
enth question, Badīʿ al-Mulk mentions the names of several post-mediaeval
Western philosophers (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Bossuet, Kant, Fichte and
Hegel), attributing to them certain views, which shows that his knowledge of
these thinkers was rather limited.

2 Students

During his career which lasted almost forty years, Āqā ʿAlī taught many stu-
dents. Some of his distinguished students, including Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī
(d. 1336/1917–18), Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris Ḥikmī Yazdī, and Mīrzā Ghulām-
ʿAlī Ḥakīm Shīrāzī (d. after 1329/1911) also studied with Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā
Qumsha‌ʾī and/or Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and since they were attracted to the think-
ing of the latter philosopher(s), they are introduced elsewhere in this book.
Some other students of Āqā ʿAlī will be introduced here:

31  In a letter to a friend, Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā asks him to procure for him the book of the
French philosopher François Jean-Marie Evellin (d. 1910), Infini et quantité: étude sur le
concept de l’infini en philosophie et dans les sciences. See Karīm Mujtahidī, “Dhikr-i falāsi-
fa-yi gharb dar kitāb-i Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam,” Rāhnamā-yi kitāb, 18 10–12 (Day-Isfand 1354 Sh./
January-March 1975): 827–834; idem, “Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā ʿImād al-Dawla u Ivilin, fīlsūf-i
farānsawī,” Rāhnamā-yi kitāb, 19 11–12 (Bahman-Isfand 1355 Sh./February-March 1976):
807–815.
32  For the edition of Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Ḥikmī Yazdī’s response to the questions of Badīʿ al-
Mulk, see Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: Mīrzā ʿAlī
Akbar Mudarris Ḥikmī Yazdī,” Nāma-yi Farhangistān-i ʿulūm, 43 (1376 Sh./1997): 103–144
(134–144); reprinted in idem Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān (Tehran: 1378 Sh./1999),
pp. 155–164.
238 Kadivar

1) Ḥaydar Qulī Khān Qājār Nihāwandī, who became one of the two succes-
sors of Āqā ʿAlī at the Old Sipahsālār Madrasa. In his endorsement (taqrīẓ)
of the lithographic edition of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, published in
1314/1896–1897, he speaks of his studies with Āqā ʿAlī in clear and definite
terms.33
2) Shaykh ʿAlī Nūrī (d. ca. 1335/1916–1917), He was a prominent student of
Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris and Qumsha‌ʾī, and the intellectual leadership of the
Madrasa-yi Marwī reached its peak under him. Because of his frequent
teaching of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām, he was known as
“Shaykh-i Shawāriq”. He wrote glosses on Shawāriq al-ilhām and Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Asfār. He attended the last course on the Asfār that Āqā ʿAlī’s gave,
and in his gloss on the Asfār he refers to his teacher as al-ḥakīm al-muʾassis
(the philosopher-founder). He died in Tehran in 1335/1917 and was buried
in the mausoleum of Ibn Bābawayh.34
3) Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī Ṭāliqānī (d. 1306/1888). Having completed his initial
studies in Najaf, he went to Tehran, settling at the Marwī Madrasa, where
he first studied the rational disciplines, and later started to teach and
write. Among his works, the Kāshif al-asrār (on ethics and theology)35
and Risāla dar fanāʾ should be mentioned. He died in 1306/1888 and was
buried in Mashhad at the shrine of Imām Riḍā.

3 Works

In his Risāla-yi sargudhasht, written at the end of his life, Āqā ʿAlī mentions
only five of his works. In turn, Shaykh Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī in his Dharīʿa lists
six works of Āqā ʿAlī. In his Rayḥānat al-adab, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Mudarris
adds one more work to these six. To this list, Gobineau, in his Les religions et
les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, adds the Tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ. Thus the total
amount of Āqā ʿAlī’s works mentioned by himself and his contemporaries does
not exceed ten. However, Āqā ʿAlī definitely authored twenty-five works, to
which three more can probably be added. In what follows, I will discuss about
thirty-one works, arranging them in several groups.

33  See Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 36.

34  See Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ ʾī. Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā bi hamrāh-i
zindagīnāma-yi ʿārif-i ilāhī Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, ed. Khalīl Bahrāmī Qaṣrichamī
and Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1378 Sh./1999), pp. 137–138; ʿAbbās
Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm (Tehran: Rawzana, 1382 Sh./2003), p. 115.
35  This book was published by Mahdī Ṭayyib (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Rasā, 1373 Sh./1994).
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 239

3.1 Independent Works

1. Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam (Marvels of Wisdom): The most important work of Āqā
ʿAlī Mudarris and one of the most significant books dealing with Ṣadrian
philosophy. The book, which is written in Persian, consists of detailed
and persuasive answers to the seven questions of Prince Badīʿ al-Mulk
Mīrzā ʿImād al-Dawla, pertaining to metaphysics in its narrower sense.
The title of the book hints at the name of the questioner. His questions
were as follows:
1) How to predicate the attributions of God to Him, when we regard
His Essence to be the true existence?
2) How to conceive of the multiplicity of existents, given that God is
the unique true existence?
3) How to conceive the essence of God as being distinct from the
contingents?
4) Is God’s knowledge of the contingents summary or detailed, and
also with regard to particulars as well?
5) Does God’s knowledge incite actions or no?
6) What is the final cause of the emergence of the contingents?
7) In discussions with European scholars, what position should we
take concerning the issue of the identity of God’s attributes with
His essence?
The work arguably was not structured properly. It was perhaps because of
this structural weakness that the work did not receive any attention in
the philosophical curriculum despite its ontological discussions. It was
completed on 5 Jumādā I 1307/28 December 1889, and its first (litho-
graphic) edition was published in Tehran in 1314/1896.36 In 1377/1957, sev-
enty years after the completion of the Badāyiʿ, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Ḥāʾirī
Simnānī Māzandarānī, who was one of the opponents of Ṣadrian meta-
physics, wrote a treatise called Wadāyiʿ al-ḥikam fī kashf khadāyiʿ Badāyiʿ
al-ḥikam in which he attempted to refute the proofs for the primacy of

36  The first modern edition of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam by Aḥmad Wāʿizī, came out in 1376
Sh./1997 (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Zahrāʾ). This edition was based purely on the lithograph
edition without consulting the manuscripts, and it contains numerous omissions in the
text. In addition, the eulogy of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh at the beginning of the work was omit-
ted. In 1380 Sh./2001, Muḥammad Jawād Sārawī and Rasūl Fatḥī Majd published a critical
edition based on three extant manuscript copies. Two pieces of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam (his
discussion on the principality of existence and his brief remark on the ideas of Western
Philosophers) have been translated by Nicholas Boylson and the present author in Seyyed
Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi, An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia: Vol 5. From
the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century (London & New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers,
2015), pp. 476–488.
240 Kadivar

existence as presented by Āqā ʿAlī in this work. He argued that these

proofs were nothing but deceit.37
2. Sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād (The Right Way to Prove Resurrection):38
At the beginning of this treatise, Āqā ʿAlī remarks that this work should,
in fact, be treated as an addendum to the discussion on resurrection in
Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, which he extracted, giving it the form of an inde-
pendent treatise on corporeal resurrection (maʿād jismānī). Apparently,
the treatise was composed between 1289/1872 and 1302/1884. The first
chapter of the treatise represents a philosophical explanation of Āqā
ʿAlī’s specific approach to corporeal resurrection. The second chapter is a
critique of the Ashʿarī and Ṣadrian opinions on the issue. The third chap-
ter consists of a detailed presentation of the proofs that confirm Āqā ʿAlī’s
own opinion.
One of Āqā ʿAlī’s students, Muḥammad ʿAlī Kirmānshāhī, wrote ex-
planatory glosses on this treatise. It was also endorsed by Sayyid Abū
l-Ḥasan Rafīʿī Qazwīnī (d. 1395/1975), who compiled glosses, explaining
the difficult passages in it.
3. Risāla fī mabāḥith al-ḥaml (Treatise on the Discussions Pertaining to
Predication):39 The work was not completed. It lacks an introduction,
and the discussion remains incomplete. It consists of thirty-four chapters
of different length. The text begins with the discussion on the derived (bi-
l-ishtiqāq) and univocal (bi-l-muwāṭaʾa) predication. The univocal predi-
cation then is divided into primary essential predication (ḥaml awwalī
dhātī), and common technical predication (ḥaml shāyiʿ ṣināʿī). Āqā ʿAlī
discusses sixteen different issues that pertain to predication, and exam-
ines and criticizes the opinions of Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1498),
Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502), Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī (d. 1125/1713–1714).
4. Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭ (A Treatise on Existence as a Copula):40 The dis-
course of this treatise is completely based on Ṣadrā’s discussion on
­existence as a copula (wujūd-i rābiṭ) in the Asfār. In all likelihood, the
work initially represented as a lengthy gloss on this discussion of the Asfār,

37  Ḥāʾirī Māzandarānī’s Wadāyiʿ al-ḥikam was published as an appendix to the third volume
of his Ḥikmat-i Bū ʿAlī Sīnā. See Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Ḥāʾirī Simnānī Māzandarānī, Ḥikmat-i
Bū ʿAlī Sīnā, ed. Ḥasan Faḍāʾilī Shaydā and Ḥusayn ʿImādzāda (Tehran: Shirkat-i Sahāmī-i
Chāp 1335 Sh./1956; 2nd ed. Tehran: Ḥusayn ʿIlmī, 1362 Sh./1983).
38  “Risāla sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 85–142.
39  “Risāla fī mabāḥith al-ḥaml,” in Ibid., pp. 193–269.
40  “Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭ,” in Ibid., pp. 143–192.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 241

which then received the form of an independent treatise. While focusing

on the analysis of the opinion of Mullā Ṣadrā, Āqā ʿAlī also deals with the
positions of some other thinkers, including Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1209),
Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502), Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631–32), Mullā
Muṣṭafā Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1215/1800), Mullā Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī
(d. 1241/1825), Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1289/1873), and his own
teacher Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī Langarūdī.41
5. Risāla fī tawḥīd (A Treatise on God’s Unity):42 This treatise in Arabic was
written before 1294/1877. The text, which seems to have been written as a
gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, during the author’s lifetime, was made into
an independent treatise with an introduction written by one of Āqā ʿAlī’s
students. The treatise consists of thirteen sections, each of which deals
with one of the propositions of the issue of (God’s) unity. The treatise
begins with a demonstrative discussion and ends with a mystical insight.
During this spiritual journey, it is the Qurʾānic inspirations that serve as
the guiding lights. Journeying along three paths—the Qurʾān, Gnosis and
demonstration, the wayfarer reaches the same destination, which is
God’s unity, namely the attestation that “He is One; there is no god
but He”.
6. Risāla fī aḥkām al-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya (Treatise on Properties of Essence
and Existence):43 The unique extant manuscript of this work (MS
Marʿashī 5588), does not contain the first and the last pages of the work.
While the early part of the text is in Persian, the rest is in Arabic. It deals
extensively with the metaphysical discussion of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, as
well as with Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī’s glosses on this work. The relevant opinions
of Avicenna, Suhrawardī and Jurjānī are also discussed and evaluated.
7. Risāla-yi ḥaqīqat-i Muḥammadiyya (Treatise on the Muḥammadan
Reality):44 A treatise in Persian and Arabic, which explains the meaning
of the terms murshid (‘spiritual master’) and hādī (‘guide’) and establish-
es his existence in accordance with the tenets of Ṣadrian Philosophy. The
issue of the Muḥammadan Essence is dealt with in the context of the
discussion on the stations of the spiritual journey and the levels of
­existence. One notices that the discussion in the treatise rests on the

41  See Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 172, 175, 185–187.
42  “Risāla fī tawḥīd,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 67–84.
43  “Risāla fī aḥkām al-wujūd wa-l-māhiyya,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 55–106.
44  “Risāla-yi ḥaqīqat-i Muḥammadiyya,” in Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 107–124.
242 Kadivar

Qurʾān and Hadīth rather than on philosophical works. While, in this

treatise, Āqā ʿAlī discusses several ḥadīths, he never quotes a philosopher
or a mystic. He divides existents into four groups—imperfect, sufficient
(mustakfī), perfect and supra-perfect (fawqa l-tāmm). The Throne of the
[divine] He-ness (ʿarsh-i huwiyyat) rests on four pillars: 1) the white pillar,
or the [Universal] Intellect, or the Muḥammadan [Essence]; 2) the yellow
pillar, or the Universal Soul; 3) the green pillar, or the Universal Imagina-
tion (al-khayāl al-kull wa-l-mithāl al-kull); 4) the red pillar, or the Univer-
sal Nature. In conclusion, the author identifies the Intellect with the
Muḥammadan Essence and explains the meaning of the ḥadīth Kuntu
kanzan makhfiyyan (‘I was a hidden treasure’).
8. Risāla tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ (A History of the Philosophers): Written at the
request of Gobineau, this treatise consists of two chapters. The auto-
graph, split into two parts, is kept at the National University Library of
Strasburg. The first part consists of the biographies of eleven Iranian phi-
losophers (Mīr Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī and his son Shams al-Dīn Muḥam-
mad Jurjānī, Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī, Mīr Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī Shīrāzī, his son
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr Dashtakī, Shams al-Dīn Khafrī, Shāh Ṭāhir
Ḥusaynī (also known as Dakanī), Mīr Findiriskī, Mīr Dāmād, Shaykh
Bahāʾī and Mullā Ṣadrā.45 It is worthy of notice that Āqā ʿAlī places Shaykh
Bahāʾī along with other philosophers, although the latter did not produce
any philosophical works.46 The biography of Mullā Ṣadrā given in this
treatise repeats numerous passages from the endorsement of the Mafātīḥ
al-ghayb. The second part deals with the philosophers after Mullā Ṣadrā.
At the end of the second part, Āqā ʿAlī mentions himself.47
9. Risāla-yi sargudhasht (Treatise on [My] Biography):48 This short treatise,
written in Persian, consists of the biographies of Āqā ʿAlī and his father,
Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris Zunūzī. It was written between 5 Jumādā I
and 17 Dhū l-Qaʿda 1307/28 December 1889 and 5 July 1890, i.e., during the

45  The first part of the treatise was published first by Sayyid Muḥammad ʿAlī Jamālzāda
under the title “Mīrāth-i Gobineau (sanad-i chahārum u panjum),” Yaghmā 154 (Urdībi-
hisht 1340 Sh./April-May 1961): 63–68 (64–67). See also “Risāla-yi Tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ,” in Ā.
ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 125–142.
46  However, while dealing with Mullā Ṣadrā, Āqā ʿAlī quotes Mīr Findiriskī, who allegedly
said: “If you are looking for purely exoteric [knowledge], go to Shaykh Bahāʾī.” See “Risā-
la-yi Tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, p. 140.
47  Sayyid Ibrāhīm Ashkishīrīn has published the treatise in its complete form. See “Ṭabaqāt-i
ḥukamāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhirīn,” in Muḥammad Ra‌ʾīszāda, Fāṭima Mīānʾī, Sayyid Aḥmad
Hāshimī (ed.), Jashnnāma-yi Duktur Muḥsin Jahāngīrī (Tehran: Nashr-i Kitāb-i Hirmis,
1386 Sh./2007), pp. 35–58.
48  “Risāla-yi sargudhasht,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 143–151.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 243

last months of Āqā ʿAlī’s life. However, in the treatise, Āqā ʿAlī mentions
only some works by himself and his father, not providing a comprehen-
sive inventory.

3.2 Exegetical Works

10. An Introduction to an Intended yet Unwritten Commentary on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Asrār al-āyāt wa-anwār al-bayyināt:49 The latter is one of the philo-
sophical and mystical works of Mullā Ṣadrā. Late in his life, Āqā ʿAlī decided
to write a commentary on this work. Unfortunately, his death prevented him
from completing it—he managed to write only the introduction in Dhū
l-Qaʿda 1307/June-July 1890. The title of this intended commentary was
Kashf al-asrār fī sharḥ Asrār al-āyāt. This introduction is the last piece of
writing by Āqā ʿAlī. Like the introduction to the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, it is written
in mannered prose. While compiling this short piece, Āqā ʿAlī felt distressed
for two reasons, so much so that he even ‘forgot the child of his brain’—first,
‘because of the onslaught of the illnesses and afflictions, and the severe pain,
anguish and agony’ (which we mentioned in the section devoted to his
death), and, second, ‘because of the abundance of misfortunes and adversi-
ties’, the details of which, unfortunately, we do not know. The final lines of
the introduction speak of the inspiration the author has received, his sens-
ing the aroma of success and his reliance on God’s favour.
11. Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikmat al-mutaʿāliya fi Asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-
arbaʿa: The first volume of Āqā ʿAlī’s collected works contains 1720 glosses
on the four parts of the Asfār. These glosses, taken as a whole, form the
largest work by Āqā ʿAlī. Most of these glosses pertain to the third jour-
ney, dealing with God’s knowledge. Clearly, they were not written all at
once, and there are occasionally long gaps between their authorship. This
is evident by the dates given at the end of some of them, for instance,
1283/1866, 1285/1868, 1288/1871 and 1289/1872. They also vary in terms of
their structure: some are simply explanations, whereas some others con-
tain innovative opinions and creative theories. Most of them pertain to
Mullā Ṣadrā’s text. However, in some cases, Āqā ʿAlī comments on other
glosses of the text, most notably those by Sabzawārī, Mullā Aḥmad Arda-
kānī and Mullā Riḍāʾī Tabrīzī. Āqā ʿAlī’s superglosses on these glosses de-
serve particular attention since they often scrutinize ideas further. In ad-
dition to the above-mentioned glosses, Āqā ʿAlī takes into account the
previous glosses on this work by Āqā Muḥammad Bīdābādī (d. 1197/1782),

49  “Muqaddima-yi Kashf al-asrār fī sharḥ Asrār al-āyāt,” in Ibid. 3, pp. 153–160.
244 Kadivar

Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī, his father, Mīrzā Muḥammad
Ḥasan Nūrī and Mullā Āqā Qazwīnī, endorsing or criticizing them.
12. Glosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām:50 Āqā ʿAlī wrote 398
glosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s (d. 1072/1661) Shawāriq al-ilhām fī sharḥ
Tajrīd al-kalām. These glosses pertain to the introduction and the first
chapter (dealing with general metaphysics). This corpus of the glosses is
Āqā ʿAlī’s most important surviving work on general metaphysics (umūr
ʿāmma). In these glosses, Āqā ʿAlī examines and criticizes the glosses on
the Shawāriq, compiled by some earlier philosophers, in particular by
Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahānī. In his Taʿlīqāt al-Asfār, Āqā ʿAlī men-
tions his glosses on the Shawāriq.51
13. Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya:52 Along with al-Asfār
and al-Ḥikma al-ʿArshiyya, Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid received lots of at-
tention in the Qajar period. Apart from Āqā ʿAlī, the glosses on it were
compiled by his contemporaries Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sab-
zawārī and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. Āqā ʿAlī’s glosses consist of
two parts. The first part represents a set of glosses on twenty-five points
of the first chapter of the first part, dealing with sixteen philosophical
issues. The second part represents a separate unfinished discussion on
the Necessary Existent’s knowledge of its essence. This part deals with
eleven philosophical issues, presented as prolegomena. Gloss eighteen is
a summary of Āqā ʿAlī’s opinion on corporeal resurrection. It is worth
mentioning that these glosses include a comparative discussion of the
subjects of investigation of the legal theory and those of philosophy.
14. Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Commentary on Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī’s Hidāyat
al-ḥikma:53 Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s (d. 663/1264) Hidāyat al-ḥikma discuss-
es the basics of logic, physics and metaphysics. The final two parts of the
work, physics and metaphysics, were the subject of many commentaries
including the one by Mullā Ṣadrā. Āqā ʿAlī wrote ninety-four glosses on
the part of Ṣadrā’s commentary on physics (samāʿ ṭabīʿī). Almost all these
glosses pertain to the second section, on the existence of prime matter. It
is worth mentioning that in these Āqā ʿAlī critically examines numerous
proofs of the existence of prime matter and displays a remarkable insight
when discussing its properties.

50  “Taʿlīqāt-i Shawāriq al-ilhām,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2,
pp. 373–490.
51  Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 534.
52  “Taʿlīqāt al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt,
vol. 2, pp. 271–312.
53  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā sharḥ al-Hidāya al-Athīriyya,” in Ibid., pp. 313–340.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 245

15. Superglosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Commentary on the Metaphysics of Avi-

cenna’s al-Shifāʾ:54 Āqā ʿAlī wrote seventeen glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s
commentary on Book One and Two of the Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ (six-
teen of which pertain to Book One, dealing with the principles of philos-
ophy and the general metaphysics, and one to Book Two, which deals
with corporeal substances). In some of these glosses, Āqā ʿAlī criticizes
Mullā Ṣadrā, defending the position of Avicenna. In several instances,
Āqā ʿAlī also criticizes Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī’s commentary on the Meta-
physics of the Shifāʾ.
16. Superglosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Glosses on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.55 Āqā ʿAlī
wrote twenty-nine superglosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s glosses on Quṭb al-Dīn
Shīrāzī’s commentary on Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. All of them per-
tain to the third section of the third discourse (al-maqāla al-thālitha) of
Part One of the work (which discusses the Illuminationist judgements on
certain issues). In his short glosses, Āqā ʿAlī gives a summary analysis of
Suhrawardī, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s and Mullā Ṣadrā’s opinions on such is-
sues as prime matter and its relationship with magnitude, the form of the
species, the synthesis of form and matter, the accidents, the aspects in
which existence, quiddity and unity can be considered, Platonic likeness-
es and the rule of the noblest possibility.
17. Superglosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Glosses on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s
Commentary on Avicenna’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt:56 These consist alto-
gether of nine glosses written in 1287/1870, Āqā ʿAlī wrote nine super-
glosses pertaining to the first chapter on philosophy (namaṭ) of Avicen-
na’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (On the Substantiation of Bodies). The au-
thor signed his glosses with the expression ‘may God pardon him (ʿafī
ʿan-hu), 110’.57
18. Supersuperglosses on Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī’s Superglosses on ʿAbd al-
Razzāq Lāhījī’s Glosses on Mullā ʿAlī Qūshjī’s Commentary on Naṣīr al-
Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād:58 Āqā ʿAlī wrote three glosses on his father’s
superglosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s glosses on Mullā ʿAlī Qūshjī’s
commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād, in which he gave a
critical assessment of his parent’s opinion.

54  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā ḥawāshī Ilahiyyāt al-Shifāʾ,” in Ibid., pp. 341–352.

55  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā ḥawāshī sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” in Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 352–371.
56  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā ḥawāshī Fayyāḍ ʿalā sharḥ al-Ishārāt,” in Ibid., pp. 491–499.
57  M S Majlis 1723 contains Āqā ʿAlī’s glosses in his own hand, with the signature “110”.
58  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā ḥawāshī al-Zunūzī ʿalā ḥawāshī al-Fayyāḍ ʿalā sharḥ al-Qūshjī,” in Ā. ʿA.
Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 501–506.
246 Kadivar

19. Glosses on Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī’s Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya:59 Āqā ʿAlī’s only
gloss in Persian consists of twenty-eight short notes on his father’s work,
which establishes the existence of the Necessary Existent, the identity of
His essence with His existence, the impossibility of the knowledge of the
hidden core of His essence, and His unity, and discusses His knowledge.
In his works, in particular, in the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, Āqā ʿAlī refers to this
book a number of times.
20. Addendum on Jamāl-Dīn Khwānsārī’s Superglosses on Shams al-Dīn Kha-
frī’s Glosses on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s Commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s
Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād:60 In this work, Āqā ʿAlī critically examines Khwānsārī’s
objections against Mīr Dāmād’s teaching on the perpetual incipience
(ḥudūth dahrī).
21. Superglosses on Anonymous’ Glosses on [Pseudo-] Avicenna’s Sirr al-
qadr:61 In his one page gloss, Āqā ʿAlī soundly explains the opinion of the
author of Sirr al-qadr ʿan maʿnī qawl al-ṣūfiyya man ʿarafa sirr al-qadr fa-
qad alḥada, and defends it against any objections to it.
22. Glosses on Mīrzā Ḥasan Āshtiyānī’s Qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya:62 This is Āqā
ʿAlī’s only work in transmitted sciences, which consists of ninety-six short
glosses on the treatise of his teacher in law, Mīrzā Ḥasan Āshtiyānī. In his
glosses on al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, Āqā ʿAlī twice refers to his opinions
on the principles of jurisprudence—in Gloss Ten, dealing with the ad-
missibility of the combination of command and prohibition, and in Gloss
Twenty, dealing with the idea of two or more meanings being contained
in the same word.

3.3 Lost Works

23. Uṣūl al-ḥikam fī sharḥ uthūlūjiyā (The Principals of Philosophy on Com-
mentation of the Theology of [Pseudo] Aristotle). In two of his works,
namely the Risāla fī mabāḥith al-ḥaml and the Taʿlīqāt ʿala al-sharḥ al-
hidāya al-athīriyya, Āqā ʿAlī quotes (altogether five times) from his work,
which he calls ‘our commentary on the Uthūlūjiyā, known as the Uṣūl
al-ḥikam’.63 Until now, no trace of this work has been found.

59  “Taʿlīqāt-i Lamaʿāt-i ilahiyya,” in Ibid., pp. 507–525.

60  “Taʿlīqa ʿalā l-ḥawāshī al-Jamāliyya ʿalā l-ḥawāshī al-Khafriyya,” in Ibid., pp. 527–530.
61  “Taʿlīqa ʿalā ḥāshiya Sirr al-qadr,” in Ibid., pp. 531–535.
62  “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Risāla Qawāʿid al-fiqhiyya li-Mīrzā Ḥasan Āshtiyānī,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris
Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 187–227.
63  These five quotations were published in Āqā ʿAlī’s collected works (Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 173–180) under the title “Baqāyā uṣūl al-ḥikam fī sharḥ Uthūlūjiyā”.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 247

24. “A Treatise on Logic as a Philosophical Science”. In his Risāla-yi sargud-

hasht, Āqā ʿAlī describes his first work, whose length was ‘approximately
three thousand lines’, using this expression (thus, it must have been twice
as big as the Sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād and approximately half of
the size of the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam).64 No trace of this work has been found
so far.
25. Poems: In the Risāla-yi sargudhasht Āqā ʿAlī mentions that sometimes he
composed ghazals. However, only nine of his rubāʿīs survive.65

3.4 Notes of Lectures and Disputes

26. Notes of the Lectures on the al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād.66 Āqā ʿAlī taught
Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād in Tehran. The notes of his lectures,
partly in Arabic and partly in Persian, were made by an anonymous stu-
dent (as a rule, he introduces the words of Āqā ʿAlī with the expression
‘he said thus:’). In the first part of the book (on Lordship), 664 glosses
have been noted. These glosses are dealt with a portion of the work,
which begins with the Section Four of Chapter One and ends at Section
Sixteen of Chapter Three.
27. Lecture Notes on the Unity of Existence (waḥdat-i wujūd).67 The notes of
Āqā ʿAlī’s lecture in Persian on the unity of being according to Ṣūfī tenets,
made by an anonymous student.
28. Scattered notes of different lectures by Āqā ʿAlī.68 Three notes in Persian
of Āqā ʿAlī’s lectures, dealing with 1) the difference between the Isthmus
(barzakh) and the Hereafter (ākhira) of the Law and the Isthmus and the
Hereafter of existence; 2) the meaning of the Qurʾānic verse ‘We offered
the trust’ (33:72); 3) the subject of philosophy and rational theology
(kalām).
29. A Collection of Notes of the Dispute with Ḥājj Muḥammad Karīm Khān
Kirmānī.69 A debate between Āqā ʿAlī and Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān
Kirmānī, one of the masters of the Shaykhiyya, took place in Jumādā I
1275/December 1858 in the presence of eminent religious scholars and
princes. A report of this debate was made by an anonymous observer. The

64  See “Risāla-yi sargudhasht,” in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3,
p. 148.
65  These rubāʿīs were published in Ibid., pp. 183–184.
66  Published in Ibid., pp. 229–498.
67  Published in Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 3, pp. 499–504.
68  Published in Ibid., pp. 505–508.
69  Published in Ibid., pp. 509–517.
248 Kadivar

dispute consisted of five parts, which dealt with the following questions:
1) is God’s will identical to his essence or different from it? 2) does form
precede matter, or matter form? 3) do the antecedent and the consequent
have a common maker or no? 4) how can the truthfulness of a non-­
definitive proposition (e.g., ‘the existence of the companion of the Crea-
tor is impossible’) be established? 5) what is the meaning of the state-
ment ‘the thing which is simple in its reality is all things’? This collection
of notes was first published in 1276/1859 in a lithographic edition.70

3.5 Endorsements (taqrīẓāt)

30. Endorsement on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mafātīḥ al-ghayb.71 During the prepara-
tion of the first lithographic edition, Āqā ʿAlī was asked to write an en-
dorsement (taqrīẓ) of it. Āqā ʿAlī praises both the book and its author. In
his opinion, very few people are able to understand the true meaning of
this work. The expressions Āqā ʿAlī used to describe Mullā Ṣadrā testify to
the exceptional magnificence the latter possessed in his eyes. In particu-
lar, he described Ṣadrā as the valorous leader, the efficient sage, the ac-
complished scholar, the pride of the ancients and the moderns, the
achiever of the stations of success, the possessor of the true knowledge,
gained through verification, the expounder of the secrets of the transmit-
ted reports, the acquirer of the treasuries of mysteries, the disseminator
of the signs of guidance, the destroyer of the idols of delusion, the model
of the verifiers, the essence of the scrupulous investigators, the chief of
the unifiers, and the servant of the law of the lord of the envoys.
31. Endorsement on Luṭf-ʿAlī Dānish Tabrīzī’s Risāla Īḍāḥ al-adab.72 Āqā ʿAlī
wrote an endorsement of the treatise of his student Ṣadr al-afāḍil Luṭf ʿAlī
Dānish Tabrīzī (d. 1350/1931–32), which represents a sample of the Per-
sian prose of the early 14th /late 19th century.

70  Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād edited these notes, using the lithographic edition. See
Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris
Tihrānī,” Nāma-yi Farhangistān-i ʿulūm, 4 (1375 Sh./1996): 129–152, in particular, pp. 143–
147. In my edition, apart from the lithograph edition, I used MS Tehran, University of
Tehran 3325, copied in 1281/1864. See Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt,
vol. 3, pp. 509–517.
71  ‘Taqrīẓ ʿalā Mafātīḥ al-ghayb,” in Ibid., pp. 161–166.
72  “Taqrīẓ-i risāla-yi Īḍāḥ al-adab,” in Ibid., pp. 167–171.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 249

4 Thoughts

Of all works of Āqā ʿAlī, seven represent his views in most detail. These are
the following ones: Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, Sabīl al-rashād fī ithbāt al-maʿād, Risāla fī
mabāḥith al-ḥaml, Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭ, Taʿlīqāt al-Asfār, Taʿlīqāt Shawāriq
al-ilhām and Taʿlīqāt al-shawāhid al-rubūbiyya.
In his works, Āqā ʿAlī pays particular attention to the opinions of Mullā
Ṣadrā. Of all Ṣadrā’s writings, he gives the most attention to the Asfār. In his
works, Āqā ʿAlī also deals with the contemporary philosophers. He quotes their
works, examines and criticizes their opinions, particularly, those of Mullā Hādī
Sabzawārī, whom he often praises. From certain expressions, used in his in-
vocations, scattered throughout these glosses, it can be concluded that they
were written during Sabzawārī’s lifetime.73 Moreover, Āqā ʿAlī frequently re-
fers to the opinions of his father Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Zunūzī.74 Among other phi-
losophers whose opinions Āqā ʿAlī examines in his works, mention should be
given to Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī,75 Mullā Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī,76 Mullā Muṣṭafā

73  See e.g., Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 286, where Āqā ʿAlī men-
tions Sabzawārī as “the generous perfect knower, who has no match in our age, may his
station in the world of sanctity be elevated”; p. 460, where Āqā ʿAlī uses the expression
“may his shadow be extended! (dāma ẓillahu),” p. 505, where he says “may God extend
the shadow of the skilled verifier, the author of the glosses, upon the heads of the people,
as the shadow of knowledge”. Apart from his glosses on the Asfār, in the Risāla fī l-wujūd
al-rābiṭ, Āqā ʿAlī also quotes from Sabzawārī’s glosses on the Asfār (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris
Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 175).
74  Apart from his glosses on the works of his father, in his glosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Fayyāḍ
Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām, Āqā ʿAlī often refers to his father’s glosses on the same work
(see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 398, 429–430, 499). In ad-
dition, in his glosses on the Asfār, Āqā ʿAlī quotes his father’s glosses ono the Muḥākamāt
(see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 591).
75  In his glosses on the Asfār, Āqā ʿAlī quotes from the works of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī on numerous
occasions. In most of these cases Nūrī, in turn, quotes from his teacher Āqā Muḥammad
Bāqir Bīdābādī. In his glosses on the al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, Āqā ʿAlī refers to Mullā ʿAlī
Nūrī’s glosses on the same work and to the Asfār (see Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp.
292–293, 301).
76  Apparently, the only work of Mullā Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī available to Āqā
ʿAlī, was his glosses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-ilhām. In his own glosses on
it, Āqā ʿAlī refers to these glosses on numerous occasions. In addition, in his Risāla fī al-
wujūd al-rābiṭ Āqā ʿAlī refers to Mullā Ismāʿīl’s glosses on Shawāriq al-ilhām (see Ā. ʿA.
Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 172).
250 Kadivar

Qumsha‌ʾī,77 Mullā Riḍā Tabrīzī (d. before 1307/ 1889),78 Mullā Aḥmad Ardakānī
(d. 1240/1824),79 Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī Langarūdī (d. after 1251/1835),80
Mullā Muḥammad ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1253/1837),81 Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī,82
and Muḥammad Naʿīm Ṭāliqānī (Mullā Naʿīmā) (d. after 1152/1739).83
Certain passages in Āqā ʿAlī’s works show that he was influenced by Neopla-
tonism not only through the teachings of Mullā Ṣadrā but also directly from
the so called Theology of Aristotle. For example, his belief in the existence of
the universal soul and its impacts on the particular souls and bodies, as pre-
sented in the discussion on the corporeal resurrection, is not compatible with

77  Evidently, Āqā ʿAlī did not have access to Mullā Muṣṭafā Qumsha‌ʾī’s own works. In several
places, he refers to Qumsha‌ʾī’s opinions as they are related by his student Mullā Aḥmad
Ardakānī—in particular, in the latter’s commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mashāʿir (see Ā. ʿA.
Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 1, pp. 186, 234).
78  Mullā Riḍā Tabrīzī was a student of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. He taught in Iṣfahān at the madrasa
of his great-grandfather. Of his works, his glosses on the Asfār (the copy of which is kept
in Malik Library (MS Malik 2318)) should be mentioned. In his glosses on the Asfār, Āqā
ʿAlī discusses three of these glosses (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt,
vol. 1, pp. 117–118). In the Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, he respectfully refers to Mullā Riḍā as to “the
erudite verifier and the perfect victorious sage” (see Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, ed. Muḥammad
Jawād Sārawī & Rasūl Fatḥī Majd, p. 251).
79  Mullā Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Ardakānī was a student of Mullā Muṣṭafā Qumsha‌ʾī.
His known works are: 1) super-superglosses on Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī’s superglosses
on Shams al-Dīn Khafrī’s glosses on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn
Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād; 2) glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mashāʿir, titled Nūr al-baṣāʾir fī sharḥ
mushkilāt al-Mashāʿir; 3) glosses on the first “journey” (safar) of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār. Most
of Āqā ʿAlī’s glosses on the first journey, in fact, are glosses on Mullā Aḥmad Ardakānī’s
glosses. In the Risāla fī mabāhith al-ḥaml and the Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭ, Āqā ʿAlī refers
to Mullā Aḥmad Ardakānī as “the perfect sage” and “the distinguished learned man”, and
quotes from the latter’s glosses on the Mashāʿir (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 186, 234).
80  In the Risāla fī l-wujūd al-rābiṭ and the Risāla fī mabāhith al-ḥaml, Āqā ʿAlī refers to Mullā
Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī Langarūdī as “the pride of the philosophers of our days, the as-
cender of the degrees of truth and certainty, our teacher and warrant” (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris
Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 187, 234).
81  In his gloss on the Shawāriq al-ilhām, Āqā ʿAlī refers to Mullā Muḥammad ʿAlī Nūrī’s gloss
on this work (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 426–427,
430–431, 448, 450, 475).
82  In his gloss on the Shawāriq al-ilhām, Āqā ʿAlī quotes two Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī’s
gloss on this work, criticizing them (see Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt,
vol. 2, pp. 451–452).
83  In his gloss on the al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, Āqā ʿAlī quotes a passage from Muḥammad
Naʿīm Ṭāliqānī’s Risāla fī l-mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād. See Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi
muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 274–275. As of now, no copy of this work by Ṭāliqānī has been
found.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 251

the tenets of Mullā Ṣadrā.84 In his ontological discussions, Āqā ʿAlī, while gen-
erally following the Ṣadrian tenets, offers a number of innovative approach-
es. In particular, he provides new demonstrations for such principles as the
primacy and simplicity of existence, the perfection of the possible world and
that the Necessary Existent has no quiddity. He also offers new proofs of some
other principles of Mullā Ṣadrā—e.g., the existential unity of the ascending
and descending arcs, as well as the existential unity of the accidents with their
substrata.

4.1 Proofs for the Primacy of Existence

In his Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, Āqā ʿAlī proposes two new proofs for the primacy of
existence. The first proof rests on the fact that quiddity by itself and in its es-
sence does not exist. In other words, quiddity by itself does not necessitate
itself. It only exists accidentally (bi ʿaraḍ) and by means of existence. Whereas
existence by itself exists, that is to say, existence necessitates itself. Therefore,
existence is primary, and quiddity is secondary.85
The second proof is that every positive concept (mafhūm-i thubūtī), which
is extrinsic to the quiddity, yet predicable to it, is indicative of the primacy
of existence. In other words, it shows that existence is real and quiddity is
conceptual. The best example of these positive concepts is existence. Exist-
ence is predicable to quiddity, but it is extrinsic to quiddity. Beside exist-
ence, there are other positive concepts such as being the creator and being
the creature and all those things which are known as ‘the real existential
accidents’ (ʿawāriḍ-i ḥaqāʾiq-i wujūdiyya) such as knowledge, power, life ap-
plicable to all existents and concepts such as being existentially possible,
being caused, being a formal cause, being connectively united, can all be
positively predicated to quiddity, while they are all extrinsic to it. In order to
be distinct from negative and non-existential concepts (mafāhīm-i salbiyya
u ʿadamiyya), these concepts need the mediation of existence to predicate
quiddity. This mediating role of existence indicates that existence must be
real.86
The first proof is regarded as one of the strongest proofs of the primacy of
existence. Ḥāʾirī Simnānī Māzandarānī wrote a detailed refutation of the first

84  See below pp. 252–253.

85  Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam, ed. Muḥammad Jawād Sārawī and Rasūl Fatḥī
Majd, pp. 208–209.
86  Ibid., pp. 210–215.
252 Kadivar

proof. It seems, however, that Āqā ʿAlī was more innovative in his second proof
which received less attention.
In his epistemological and eschatological discussions, Āqā ʿAlī does not always
follow Mullā Ṣadrā. Particularly in his treatment of the essential accidents, the
subjects of different sciences, the relativity of the quiddity, and the corporeal
resurrection, he expresses opinions that noticeably differ from those of Mullā
Ṣadrā.87 For the modern students of philosophy, Āqā ʿAlī is known for his specific
opinions on three philosophical maters: corporeal resurrection, predication and
copulative existence. Whereas his views on corporeal resurrection were subject
to several studies which examined its various aspects,88 his views on predication
and copulative existence have never been analyzed properly.

4.2 The Theory of the Corporeal Resurrection

Many Muslim philosophers, following Avicenna, admitted the possibility of
corporeal resurrection only on the basis of the testimonies of the Qurʾān and
the hadīth. Mullā Ṣadrā tried to provide a rational apprehension for this belief.
He proposed a new theory, according to which individuals are assembled at
the resurrection (ḥashr) in their imaginal bodies instead of their physical ones.
According to Mullā Ṣadrā, the existence of the human being in its substantial
motion reaches the stage when the soul can live without the connection to the
physical body. He believes that the soul, after its separation from the elemental
body, continues to imagine the body, since the power of imagination remains
with the soul after the physical death. When it imagines its body, a body which
corresponds to the physical body emerges from the soul. In the hereafter, the
soul is resurrected in this body, which is produced by the power of imagina-
tion. This body, created by the soul, receives the reward or the punishment of
the hereafter. This body of the hereafter is like the shadow and the trace of the
soul. It is of such kind that whoever sees it instantly confirms that it is the same
this-worldly body and depending on the state of the soul, it is either luminous
or tenebrous.
Mullā Ṣadrā also explains that each power, regardless of whether it is one
of the faculties of the soul or not, has its particular perfection and it experi-
ences the pleasure and suffering that is peculiar to it. In accordance with its
actions, it will receive either reward or punishment. Every physical substance

87  See Kadivar’s introduction to his edition of Mudarris Ṭihrānī’s Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt,
vol. 1, pp. 57–58.
88  See Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī’s introduction to his edition of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ
wa-l-maʿād (Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1354 Sh./1975), pp. 52–88.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 253

experiences an essential motion, moving towards God by means of its soul and
nature, and being attracted to Him.
Āqā ʿAlī does not exactly accept this view of Mullā Ṣadrā: while he endorses
most of the general premises of Ṣadrā’s thought, he reaches somewhat differ-
ent conclusions. He holds that, although after the separation of the soul from
the physical body, the soul does not administer the body any more, it leaves in
the body certain traces and deposits, by means of which each body is distin-
guished from others. The stronger the soul is and the more of the perfection of
ascension it acquires, the stronger is the body after its separation from the soul.
Even after the separation from the body, the soul continues to administer the
body. The latter continues its substantial motion after its separation from the
soul. In turn, the soul, upon reaching its essential perfection, ceases to move.
Although the body of the hereafter appears the same as the physical body, this
similarity should not be understood as the former’s possession of the concom-
itants of the latter.
Explaining his views on the corporeal resurrection, Āqā ʿAlī distinguishes
between two types of compound affairs: truly compound and relatively com-
pound. Truly compound affairs consist of two parts—prime matter which
is potentiality (istiʿdād) and form which is actuality and the final cause. The
existence of truly compound affair can only be realized when its parts exist,
namely its form and matter.89 The composition of the soul and the body is a
true unified composition. While they are united, the body is the preparatory
cause and the basis of the essential and substantial perfection of the soul and
the latter necessitates certain forms in the body’s organs and parts. Due to this
essential homogeneity (musānakha), the traces of the soul pervade the body.
The kinship of the soul and the material body is so strong that a certain aspect
of it persists after physical death.90
After the separation of the soul from the material body, the soul achieves its
essential perfection and existential goal, by uniting with the universal soul. In
turn, the material body continues its essential movement to perfection. At that
time it is the universal soul that moves the body. It moves the body by means
of the particular soul to which the body was previously connected. The body’s
goal is to reunite with the soul, and it eventually achieves this goal:

The fullness of the mystery in it [consists of] the necessity of the com-
plete interrelation between the essential agent and the essential object

89  Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 88–89.
90  Ibid., pp. 88–91.
254 Kadivar

on which it acts. The separation of the body, through its essential mo-
tion, turns into unification, and the multiplicity becomes unity, and this
worldly [nature] turns into that of the hereafter—which is the place of
the realization of multiplicity in the form of unity, in spite of its being
multiplicity. It [= the body] unites with the soul, with which it is interre-
lated in the essence and in several aspects, at the station of the universal
soul. The latter establishes between them a unity, which is more com-
plete than the unity that existed between them in this world. […] This is
the meaning of their words ‘everything returns to its principle’. Hence,
the soul is the principle of the body in a certain sense, and the body is the
principle of the soul in another sense; the universal soul, which estab-
lishes the relationship between them, is the principle of both of them.91

In the Sabīl al-rashād, Āqā ʿAlī criticizes the views of Mullā Ṣadrā and the
Ashʿaris on corporeal resurrection. He thought that the latter identified the re-
stored affair with this world since they understand the restoration as the return
of the soul from the isthmus to this world, and the renewal of its connection
with its this-worldly body, without any change in that connection. They hold
that when the scattered parts of the this-worldly body are once again brought
together and united, the soul returns from the isthmus and joins them. As it is
evident, this claim is not only invalidated by reason but also contradicts the
testimonies of the transmitted reports, according to which this world and the
hereafter cannot be identical.92
Criticizing Mullā Ṣadrā, Āqā ʿAlī says that the literal meaning of his words
suggest that he does not consider the physical body as the object of restora-
tion, because, according to him, the bodies of the hereafter are void of any
matter and have different states and thus allow the renewal of motion, engen-
dering and corruption, whereas only continuous forms are treated as material.
Hence, the body of the hereafter, as treated by Ṣadrā, is the same as the body
of the isthmus; the this-worldly elemental body perishes, and the soul does
not reunite with it. Refuting this view, Āqā ʿAlī argues that the soul reunites
with the material body again. But this reunion is caused by the motion of the
material body. The reunion takes place through the return of this body to the
hereafter and its ascension to the soul, and not through the return of the soul
to this world and its descent to the body. Āqā ʿAlī’s proofs of this postulate are
mostly based on the transmitted reports, the most important of which is the
report, transmitted from the sixth Imām, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq:

91  Ibid., p. 92.

92  Ibid.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 255

Indeed, the spirit dwells in its [proper] place. The spirit of the well-doer
dwells in light and expanse, and the spirit of the evil-doer—in narrow-
ness and darkness. The body becomes dust, from which it was created
and which the beasts and vermin disgorge when they tear it and eat it.
All this is preserved in the dust […]. Then, upon the rising, the rain of
resurrection falls on the earth, and the earth ferments, and then it is
churned as a leather bottle [of milk], and becomes a human being, as
dust becomes gold when it is washed with water, and as milk turns into
foam when it is churned. The particles of every body (qālib) are brought
together in that body and with the permission of the Almighty God, they
are transferred to the place of the spirit, and, with the permission of the
Form-Giver, their forms, including their shapes, are restored, and the
spirit enters them. And, when they stood straight up they do not deny
anything in regard to themselves.93

Āqā ʿAlī explains this report sentence by sentence, making it the transmitted
proof of the subsistence of the spirits after the cessation of their administering
connection with the material body following physical death, and of the sub-
sistence of the relationship that necessitates the distinction of the bodies, and
their particles preserved in the earth, from each other. In Āqā ʿAlī’s opinion,
the statement “the spirit dwells in its [proper] place” indicates that the body
ascends to the station of the soul upon its resurrection and not vice versa. It is
impossible for the soul to descend from its lofty station to the body since that
entails the motion from actuality to potentiality. Āqā ʿAlī also uses this report
in order to demonstrate the impossibility of metempsychosis.
In his opinion, this world in its entirety is moving towards the hereafter,
because it is pervaded by substantial motion. The hereafter of every part of
this world is proportional to it, and the other-worldly configuration of each of
these parts is different, as it is the case with their this-worldly configuration.
Every part of this world moves towards the goal that matches it. When it reach-
es that goal, its individuality and ipseity achieve perfection. However, upon a
more insightful examination (i.e., in the aspect of the unity of actions and the
universal and general order), we see that all things move towards the same
goal—namely, God, who is the First and the Last.
According to Āqā ʿAlī, given the unified composition of the substratum and
the accident, and the perpetual essential motion of the substratum, consid-
ered as a substance since the possessor of origin is never separated from its

93  Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib al-Ṭabarsī, al-Iḥtijāj, 2 vols. (Qom: Intishārāt-i Sharīf al-Riḍā,
1380 Sh./2001), vol. 2, p. 350.
256 Kadivar

origin, and since the substratum is always considered as the origin of the acci-
dent, it can be concluded that every action which arises from the soul, being
related to one of its levels so that the origin of that action is realized in the
essence of that level, is present in the soul in a summary way.
At the end of the treatise, Āqā ʿAlī remarks that the corporeal resurrection,
in the way that was explained above, does not require a rational demonstration
(burhān). The proof (ḥujja) is only required by those who do not accept the
religion of Islam or rather do not accept any of the true religions (al-milal al-
ḥaqqa) since by intuition we know that belief in the corporeal resurrection is
one of the requirements of faith. For this reason, the divine philosophers did
not attempt to prove it in a rational manner, and to his knowledge, Āqā ʿAlī
maintains, no [Muslim] philosopher ever denied it. He then cites from Avicen-
na’s al-Shifāʾ and Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār what he regards as the commitment of
these two philosophers to this religious idea.94

Post Script: Just before the publication of this book a new edition of the col-
lected works of Āqā ʿAlī was published in five volumes: Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i Āqā
ʿAlī Mudarris-i Zunūzī: Ḥakīm-i Ṭihrān (Qom: Majma‌ʾ-i ʿĀlī-i Ḥikmat-i Islāmī,
1397 Sh./2018). The publication is the result of a project conducted by Ghulām-
Riḍā Fayyāḍī. Sixteen scholars collaborated on this project, editing the various
works. This new collected edition of Āqā ʿAlī’s writings has some advantages
over the previous one published in 1999. First of all, Āqā ʿAlī’s glosses on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Asfār have been expanded significantly from those in the previous
edition with 1325 additional glosses now available, mostly on the soul, resur-
rection, God’s Knowledge and Power, and one long gloss on essence. The addi-
tions are based on three manuscripts that were discovered in the past fifteen
years. Secondly, seven newly available short works of Āqā ʿAlī are included:
1) Khuṭba fī l-tawḥīd (A Sermon on God’s Unity); 2) Glosses on Naṣīr al-Dīn
Ṭūsī’s Asās al-iqtibās; 3) Superglosses on Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī’s glosses on ʿAlāʾ
al-Dīn Qūshjī’s commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād; 4) A gloss
on Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn; 5) Glosses on Mullā Ridā Tabrīzī’s commen-
tary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya; 6) A gloss on Fayḍ Kāshānī’s
Kalamāt maknūna; and 7) Fawāʾid dar manqūlāt. The new edition, however,
does not contain the following works attributed to Āqā ʿAlī, which were includ-
ed in the previous collection: 1) Lecture notes on the al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād,
2) Lecture notes on the unity of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd), 3) Scattered notes
of various different lectures, and 4) his poems. It is noteworthy that the editor
of the previous collected works (Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, 1999) is not referred

94  Ā. ʿA. Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt, vol. 2, pp. 139–141.
Āqā ʿ Alī Mudarris Ṭihrānī 257

to in the new edition and his pioneering endeavours in collecting and editing
Āqā ʿAlī’s works are ignored.

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Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Muḥammad Ḥasan. Rūznāma-ya Khāṭirāt-i Iʿtimād al-Salṭana. Ed.
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Qumsha‌ ʾī, Muḥammad Riḍā. Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā bi hamrāh-i
zindagīnāma-yi ʿārif-i ilāhī Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. Ed. Khalīl Bahrāmī
Qaṣrichamī and Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī. Tehran: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1378 Sh./1999.
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tiyānī, 2 volumes in one. Tehran, 1376 Sh./1997.
Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād. Ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī. Tehran:
Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1354 Sh./1975.
al-Ṭabarsī, Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. al-Iḥtijāj, 2 vols. Qom: Intishārāt-i Sharīf al-Riḍā,
1380 Sh./2001.
Ṭāliqānī, Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī. Kāshif al-asrār. Ed. Mahdī Ṭayyib, 2 vols. Tehran: Intishārāt-i
Rasā, 1373 Sh./1994.
Ṭārimī, ʿAbbās. Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm. Tehran: Rawzana, 1382 Sh./2003.
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Zunūzī, ʿAbd Allāh. Anwār jaliyya. Ed. S. J. Āshtiyānī. Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Muṭālaʿāt-i
Islāmī-i Dānishgāh-i McGill u Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1354 Sh./1975.
Zunūzī, ʿAbd Allāh. Lamaʿāt-i ilāhiyya dar maʿārif-i rubūbiyya. Ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī. Tehran: Anjuman-i Shāhanshāhiī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1355 Sh./1976.
Zunūzī, ʿAbd Allāh. Muntakhab al-khāqānī fī kashf ḥaqāʾiq ʿirfānī. Ed. Najīb Māyil
Hirawī. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlā, 1361 Sh./1982.
 chapter 6

Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī

Hamed Naji Esfahani1

1 Life

Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī was born in 1241/18252 in Qumsha (present-day

Shahreza), a small city to the southwest of Isfahan. He undertook his pre-
liminary religious studies under his father Shaykh Abū l-Qāsim Qumsha‌ʾī3
and other teachers in his hometown, after which he moved to Isfahan, where
he attracted the attention of the jurisprudent and philosopher Āqā Mīrzā
Ḥasan Mudarris Iṣfahānī,4 a former student of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. With Mudarris
Iṣfahānī’s financial support, he commenced his education in Isfahan.5 Among
his teachers were Ḥājj Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī (d. before 1294/1877)6 and
Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī, the son of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī.7 According to some marginal

1  Translated from Persian by Keven Brown.

2  Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Mahdawī, Tadhkirat al-qubūr yā dānishmandān u buzurgān-i Iṣfahān (Isfa-
han: Thaqafī, 1348 Sh./1969), p. 327. Mahdī Bāmdād believed he was born in 1234/1818–19.
See Mahdī Bāmdād, Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān dar qarn-i 12, 13, u 14 hijrī (Tehran: Zuwwār, 1357
Sh./1978), vol. 2, p. 355.
3  M. Mahdawī, Tadhkirat al-qubūr, p. 327.
4  He was a student of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī in the rational disciplines, and one of the teachers of
Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī-i Buzurg in the traditional disciplines.
5  Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā bi hamrāh-i zindagīnāma-yi
ʿārif-i ilāhī Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, ed. Khalīl Bahrāmī Qaṣrichamī and Ḥāmid Nājī
Iṣfahānī (Tehran: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1378 Sh./2009), p. 26.
6  Lāhījī was a commentator of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mashāʿir and wrote glosses on the metaphysics of
the Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād. He was a student of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī. His proficiency
in the principles of Ṣadrian philosophy is completely evident in his commentary on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Mashāʿir. See Jalāl al-Dīn Humāʾī, introduction to the Sharḥ Risālat al-Mashāʿir (Ḥājj
Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī, Sharḥ-i Risālat al-Mashāʿir, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Mash-
had: Intishārāt-i Bāstān, 1384/1964), p. 15; Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa (Beirut:
Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1430/2009), vol. 11, p. 575; Muḥammad ʿAlī Mudarris, Rayḥānat
al-adab, vol. 5, p. 124; Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir (2nd
ed., Tehran: Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002), p. 45.
7  Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī later went to Tehran at the invitation of Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, and for some
time he held a lectureship there. It has been said that he excelled his father in intelligence
and natural talent. It seems that Āqā Mīrzā Ḥusayn Kirmānshāhī attended his lectures in
Tehran. In addition to his glosses on philosophical works, his supplement to his father’s
commentary on Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ survives. For details about his life, see M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_008

260 Esfahani

notes that Qumsha‌ʾī wrote on the Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, he studied the Sharḥ al-
Ishārāt with Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī.8 Another of his teachers, who stands out above
the others for his influence on Qumsha‌ʾī’s ideas and views, was Mīr Sayyid Raḍī
Lārījānī (d. 1270/1853–4), who himself had been taught by Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī and
Mullā Ismāʿīl Iṣfahānī. As well as being erudite, he apparently had a charis-
matic personality through which he had a profound influence on his students.
In addition to teaching philosophical texts, Lārījānī instructed his students in
Islamic mystical literature. One of the texts that Qumsha‌ʾī studied under him
was Dāwūd Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam.9
After completing his education, Qumsha‌ʾī stayed in Isfahan to teach philo-
sophical and mystical works. Comte de Gobineau, in chapter four of his Les
religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, giving a brief history of philoso-
phy in Safavid and Qajar Iran, writes about Qumsha‌ʾī:

Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā, whom we consider to have attained the highest

level of intelligence and knowledge, studied philosophy and theology
under Ḥājjī Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lārījānī and Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan
Nūrī. He acquired his Sufi doctrines, in which he is excellent, from Ḥājj
Sayyid Raḍī [Lārījānī], and now he teaches in Isfahan.10

This work by Gobineau was published in 1283/1866 when Qumsha‌ʾī was 42

years old and a distinguished teacher in Isfahan. A few years later, in 1288/1871,
a famine struck Isfahan. Qumsha‌ʾī gave up teaching and spent the wealth
he had inherited on helping the destitute. When his property was seized
by some authorities in the area, he went to seek justice in the Qajar capital,
Tehran.11 According to the custom of students in that time, he decided to
take up residence in one of the colleges in the city, choosing the Madrasa-yi

 Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 21–24; M. Mahdawī, Tadhkirat al-qubūr, p. 327;
Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manhaj
al-sulūkiyya. Bā ḥawāshī Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī, ed. Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Mashhad:
Intishārāt-i Awqāf-i Khurāsān, 1386 Sh./1967), p. 126; Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād,
Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān (Tehran, 1379 Sh./2000), p. 315.
8  See below, p. 269.
9  Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī, Sharḥ Risālat al-Mashāʿir, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Teh-
ran: Amīr Kabīr, 1375 Sh./1996), p. 25; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā,
p. 27.
10  Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale
(Paris: 1865; 3rd ed., 1900), p. 102.
11  Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, 3 vols., ed. Muḥammad Jaʿfar Maḥjūb (Tehran:
Kitābkhāna-yi Sanāʾī, 1331 Sh./1952), vol. 3, p. 508.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 261

Ṣadr.12 It was not long before the students and teachers in the madrasa became
aware of his erudition and asked him to teach there.13
Apparently, Qumsha‌ʾī was the first teacher in Tehran to give lessons on
mysticism. His instruction on the mystical texts led to a trend for investigating
ʿirfān among seminary students in Tehran, although there was also strong op-
position to it. It is reported that a certain individual who opposed his mystical
ideas humiliated Qumsha‌ʾī in public in such a way that he incited a crowd
of people to turn on him, and Qumsha‌ʾī was nearly beaten up. In defense of
Qumsha‌ʾī, Mullā ʿAlī Kanī,14 a prominent Tehran jurist, ordered the instigator
of this event to be arrested and punished.15 But during continuing protests
against Qumsha‌ʾī, Ḥājj Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī, a confidant of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, was
petitioned to arrange for Qumsha‌ʾī to be exiled from Tehran. At first, he dis-
regarded these protests, however after the protests intensified he summoned
Qumsha‌ʾī to the royal court, where a number of clerics (ʿulamāʾ) interrogated
him about his beliefs. The shah was satisfied with his responses and let him
go with some gifts.16 But the accusations against him again intensified, finally
reaching the point where he was declared a heretic (kāfir).17 It may be due to
these accusations that in 1303/1885 Qumsha‌ʾī returned for a time to his home-
town of Qumsha, where he occupied himself with prayer and service at the
Imāmzāda there.18
Qumsha‌ʾī died in Tehran in 1306/1888.19 The location of his grave is not
known for certain. It has been said that he is buried in the cemetery of Ibn

12  The Madrasa-yi Ṣadr was built by the grand vizier (ṣadr-i aʿẓam), Mīrzā Shafīʿ Māzandarānī,
in front of the Masjid-i Shāh of Tehran.
13  See Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Shawāʿid al-rubūbiyya, p. 127.
14  For more information about Mullā ʿAlī Kanī, see Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān Iʿtimād al-
Salṭana, Kitāb al-ma‌ʾāthir wa-l-āthār, pp. 187–188. It is reported that Qumsha‌ʾī’s death co-
incided with the passing of Mullā ʿAlī Kanī, making it difficult to conduct the funeral of
the former in a befitting manner.
15  S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān, pp. 334–335; also Masīḥ Allāh
Jamālī, Tārīkh-i Shahriḍā (Tehran: Thaqafī, 1355 Sh./1976), pp. 275–279.
16  M. Jamālī, Tārīkh-i Shahriḍā, pp. 275–279.
17  Ghulām-Ḥusayn Khān Afḍal al-Mulk said: “Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī affirmed
about himself that some of the ʿulamā pronounced him a heretic from the top of their
pulpits.” See Ghulām-Ḥusayn Khān Afḍal al-Mulk Afḍal al-tawārīkh, ed. Sīrūs Saʿd-
wandīān (Tehran: Nashr-i Tārīkh-i Īrān, 1361 Sh./1982), p. 107.
18  M. Bāmdād, Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān, vol. 2, p. 235.
19  Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Kitāb al-ma‌ʾāthir wa-l-āthār, p. 222. Accord-
ing to Mahdī Bāmdād, he died in the late afternoon on Sunday 1 Ṣafar, 1306/7 October
1888. See M. Bāmdād, Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān, 6 vols. (Tehran: Zuwwār, 1350 Sh./1971),
vol. 2, p. 235; S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān, p. 362. Another
262 Esfahani

Bābawayh in Tehran near the resting place of Ḥājj Ākhūnd Maḥallātī.20 Jalāl al-
Dīn Humāʾī, however, learnt from students and colleagues of Qumsha‌ʾī that he
was buried in the Sar-i qabr-i āqā, the mausoleum of Abū l-Qāsim Imām Jumʿa
(d. 1272/1855–56) in Tehran.21

2 Students

During his lectures, Qumsha‌ʾī wrote notes, or comments, on the margins of

the original texts he was teaching, from which it is possible to ascertain which
philosophical and mystical works he taught. In philosophy, he taught Mullā
Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa and the Shawāhid
al-rubūbiyya, and Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Sharḥ al-Ishārāt. In ʿirfān, he taught
a number of the works of Ibn ʿArabī especially his Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam as well as
Dāwūd Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī’s Tamhīd
al-qawāʿid, and presumably Shams al-Dīn Fanārī’s Miṣbāḥ al-uns.22 Qumsha‌ʾī
had a large number of students, many of whom later became teachers in the
madrasas of Isfahan, Tehran, and Qumsha. Below there will be some detailed
discussion given about some students who were associated with his teachings
more while referring only briefly to others:
1) Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī. Born in Ashkivar, Māzandarān, for a while he
studied traditional sciences in Qazvin with Āqā Sayyid ʿAlī Qazwīnī, the
author of glosses on Mīrzā-yi Qummī’s al-Qawānīn al-muḥkama on legal
methodology. Then, he moved to Tehran, where he attended the lectures
of Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris, and especially Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. He was known as one of the most outstand-
ing pupils of Qumsha‌ʾī. When Mīrzā Abū l-Faḍl Ṭihrānī (d. 1316/1898)
founded the new Sipahsālār Madrasa in Tehran in 1312/1894, he appoint-
ed Ashkiwarī as one of its teachers. Ashkiwarī taught mystical texts there,
including Dāwūd Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ, Shams al-Dīn Fanārī’s Miṣbāḥ
al-uns, and Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī’s al-Nuṣūṣ. He instructed many students,
including Sayyid Kāẓim ʿAṣṣār (d. 1353 Sh./1974), Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī
Shāhābādī (d. 1328 Sh./1949), Mīrzā Aḥmad Āshtiyānī (d. 1354 Sh./1975),

source specifies the date of his death as Muḥarram/September-October of the same year.
See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 47.
20  Maʿṣūm ʿAlī Shāh, Ṭarāʾiq al-ḥaqāʾiq, vol. 3, p. 237.
21  M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, p. 108; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 48.
22  See Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa, vol. 14, p. 733; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 85.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 263

and Muḥammad Ḥusayn Fāḍil-i Tūnī (d. 1339 Sh./1961). Of his works, his
glosses on Miṣbāḥ al-uns and al-Nuṣūṣ are extant. After a long period of
affliction with various illnesses, he died in Tehran in 1332/1914.23
2) Āqā Mīr Shihāb al-Dīn Nayrīzī Shīrāzī; He was a descendant of Sayyid
Muḥammad Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī, a famous quṭb of the Dhahabī Sufi
order. Apart from Qumsha‌ʾī, he studied with Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. After the
death of Qumsha‌ʾī, he became an instructor in the Ṣadr Madrasa of Teh-
ran. His classmate, Ashkiwarī, has praised him for his abilities in scholar-
ship and teaching: “If Mullā Ṣadrā himself lived in this age, it is unlikely
he could have taught his books better than Āqā Mīr Shihāb al-Dīn.”24 Ap-
parently, he and Ashkiwarī shared many students, with Nayrīzī primarily
teaching philosophy and Ashkiwarī ʿirfān. In addition to his glosses on
the Asfār, a treatise of his on the reality of existence remains. After 18
years of teaching philosophy and ʿirfān at the Ṣadr Madrasa, he passed
away 1320/1902–1903 and was buried in the cemetery of Khāk-i Faraj in
Qom.25
3) Jahāngīr Khān Qashqāʾī: He was the son of Muḥammad Khān, descended
from the khāns of the Dara-shūrī clan. In his youth, he loved horseman-
ship and hunting, and he played the musical instrument, tār. It was only
in his mid-thirties that he decided to devote his time fully to learning. He
moved to Isfahan, where he first resided in the Almāsiyya Madrasa in
Chahār-Sū Maqsūd, then in the Jadda Buzurg Madrasa, and finally in the
Ṣadr Madrasa. He studied there the traditional disciplines under Shaykh
Muḥammad Bāqir Masjid-i Shāhī (d. 1301/1883–84) and Mīrzā Muḥammad
Ḥasan Najafī (d. 1317/1899–1900), while he studied philosophy with Mullā
Ismāʿīl (d. 1302/1884–85)26 and medicine and natural philosophy with
Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Jawād Tūnī-i Khurāsānī (d. 1281/1864–65). In order to com-
plete his studies in philosophy, he went to Tehran, where he spent an ex-
tended period studying Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār and Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ
with Qumsha‌ʾī. Subsequently, he returned to Isfahan, where he lived in
the Ṣadr Madrasa until the end of his life. With the assistance of his col-
league, Mullā Muḥammad Kāshānī (d. 1335/1916–17), Jahāngīr Khān en-
gaged in teaching the rational disciplines in Isfahan and had hundreds of

23  Ṣ. al-Shīrāzī, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, p. 108; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i
Ṣahbā, pp. 91–93; ʿA. Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm, pp. 103–105.
24  ʿA. Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm, p. 106.
25  M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 297–298; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī,
Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 93; ʿA. Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm, pp. 105–107.
26  This is a different Mullā Ismāʿīl from the famous Mullā Ismāʿīl Darb-i Kūshkī (d. 1242/1826).
264 Esfahani

students.27 He died in Isfahan in 1328/1910. In addition to his poems,

which have not been collected, some of his lectures on Sabzawārī’s
Sharḥ-i Manẓūma, transmitted by Mīrzā Ḥasan Waḥīd Dastgirdī, are ex-
tant. His most prominent students include Ḥakīm Muḥammad Khurāsānī
(d. 1355 Sh./1976),28 Shaykh Maḥmūd Mufīd Iṣfahānī (d. 1382/1963),29
Shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn Hāṭilī Kūpāyī (d. 1331 Sh./1952),30 and Sayyid Ḥasan
Mishkān Ṭabasī (d. ca. 1327 Sh./1948–49).31
4) Mīrzā Naṣr Allāh Qumsha‌ʾī; He was born in 1257/1841–42 in Qumsha to a
learned family.32 After completing his preliminary religious education in
his hometown, he moved to Isfahan, where he studied the traditional dis-
ciplines with Mullā Ḥusayn ʿAlī Tūysirkānī. Then he went to Sabzevar to
study philosophy under the famous philosopher Ḥājj Mullā Hādī
Sabzawārī. Only after this did he journey to Tehran to study under
Qumsha‌ʾī. Upon completing his training in Tehran, he returned to his
hometown of Qumsha, where he became a teacher. Among his notewor-
thy students were Mullā Muḥammad Hādī Farzāna Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1344
Sh./1963) and Shaykh Asad Allāh Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1334/1915–6). It seems he
had a greater aptitude for philosophy than ʿirfān. It is said that near the
end of his life he intended to correlate the ideas of Mullā Ṣadrā with those
of Ibn Sīnā. He died in Qumsha in 1324/1906.
5) Mīrzā Maḥmūd Mudarris Kahakī Qummī: He was known by the pen-
name Riḍwān and was from the village of Kahak near Qom. At first, he
pursued his religious education in Qom, but then later went to Tehran,
and it seems that he studied in the ʿAtabāt as well. He learned the tradi-
tional sciences from Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm Ḥāʾirī, Āqā Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn ʿIrāqī,

27  One of the jests about his instruction was that at first, he would appear calm, and then in
a fit of anger, in a tone altogether more severe than customary, he would say: “Dear fellow!
Listen and think before you speak!” See M. Ḥ. Kh. Jābirī Anṣārī, Tārīkh-i Iṣfahān, p. 269.
28  On Ḥakīm Muḥammad Khurāsānī, see ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda, “Khurāsānī, Ḥakīm,” Dānishnāma-
yi Takht-i fūlād-i Iṣfahān, ed. Aṣghar Muntaẓir al-Qāʾim and Nāṣir Karīmpūr, vol. 2 (Isfa-
han: Sāzmān-i Farhangī-Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1391 Sh./2002), p. 99.
29  On Mufīd Iṣfahānī, see ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda, “Mufīd-i Iṣfahānī,” Dānishnāma-yi Takht-i fūlād-i
Iṣfahān, vol. 4 (Isfahan: Sāzmān-i Farhangī-Tafrīḥī-i Shahrdārī-i Iṣfahān, 1394 Sh./2005),
pp. 314–324.
30  On Ṣadr al-Dīn Hāṭilī Kūpāyī, see ʿAlī Karbāsīzāda, “Kūpāyī”, Dānishnāma-yi Takht-i fūlād-i
Iṣfahān, vol. 3, p. 607.
31  On Sayyid Ḥasan Mishkān Ṭabasī, see Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Shaṭrī az awāʾil-i umūr-i
ʿāmma (Tehran: Mawlā, 1387 Sh./2008), pp. 48–49.
32  He was the son of Ḥājj Shaykh Murtaḍā, the grandchild of Mullā Muṣṭafā Qumsha‌ʾī (d.
1215/1800), also known as Muṣṭafā al-ʿUlamāʾ, a famous scholar contemporary with Mullā
ʿAlī Nūrī. Of his works, glosses on Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ishārāt are extant.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 265

and Mīrzā Ḥusayn Nāʾīnī, while he studied the rational disciplines under
Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. After the latter’s death, he continued
his studies under Āqā Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī, Āqā Mīr Shihāb Nayrīzī,
and Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī (d. 1336/1918). When his teacher Nayrīzī
died, he became the dean of instruction in the Madrasa-yi Ṣadr. In addi-
tion to some of his poetry, his surviving works include glosses on the
Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, Asfār, Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ, and a treatise on the universal
spiritual authority (walāya) [of the Imāms].33 He died in Tehrān in 1304
Sh./1925 and was buried in Qom.
6) Āqā Shaykh Ghulām-ʿAlī Shīrāzī: He was a student of Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris,
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, and was
himself one of the distinguished teachers and residents of the new
Sipahsālār Madrasa. He specialised in lecturing on the Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam,
and he reportedly wrote a number of glosses on the Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ, Asfār,
and Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya. At the end of his introduction to the Tamhīd
al-qawāʿid, Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī attributes a new reading of Avi-
cenna’s proof for the existence of God, known as proof of the veracious
(burhān al-ṣiddīqīn) to him, which demonstrates his intellectual ability. It
is said that he passed away while still in the prime of his life. A number of
his poems in Persian and Arabic have survived. At first, he used the pen-
name Fānī (“evanescent”), but later he adopted the pen name Ḥakīm
(“philosopher”).34
7) Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris Ḥikmī Yazdī: He was in the circle of Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. He was the son of Ḥājj Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan
Tājir Ardakānī and was born in the city of Yazd. After completing his pre-
liminary religious education in Yazd, he moved to Isfahan, where he
joined Qumsha‌ʾī’s circle of students. Following the migration of Qumsha‌ʾī
to Tehran, he continued his studies under Jahāngīr Khān Qashqāʾī,35 for
which reason he is considered one of Qumsha‌ʾī’s oldest students. Later,
he moved to Tehran, where he took up residence in the Madrasa-yi

33  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 97–100; Murtaḍā Mudarris Gīlānī,
Muntakhab Muʿjam al-ḥukamāʾ, selected and annotated by Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā (Teh-
ran: Muʾassasa-yi Pazhuhishī-i Ḥikmat u Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1384 Sh./2005), pp. 182–184; ʿA.
Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār ḥakīm, p. 110.
34  See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 136; ʿA. Ṭārimī, Shahr-i hazār
ḥakīm, p. 216.
35  For his studies in Isfahan under Jahāngīr Khān Qashqāʾī, see Sayyid Muṣtafā Muḥaqqiq
Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān, p. 125. At the same time, it is said that Jahāngīr
Khān Qashqāʾī was living in Tehran at the time. These reports seem to contradict each
other. One is obliged either to reject the one about Qashqāʾī’s journey to Tehran or the
other about Ḥikmī Yazdī studying with him in Isfahan.
266 Esfahani

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn, and at Qumsha‌ʾī’s request engaged in teaching.

After the establishment of the modern Seminary of Higher Learning
(ḥawza-yi ʿilmiyya) in Qom in 1300 Sh./1922 by Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm
Ḥāʾirī Yazdī, he moved there and was engaged in lecturing on the rational
disciplines. Many of the juristic marājiʿ (“sources of emulation”) of the
next generation studied under him, including Sayyid Aḥmad Khwānsārī,
Sayyid Muḥammad Taqī Khwānsārī, Sayyid ʿAlī Yathribī Kāshānī, and oth-
ers. Badīʿ al-Mulk Mīrzā ʿImād al-Dawla, a Qajar prince, who was also one
of his students, wrote a commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Mashāʾir and trans-
lated Jāmī’s al-Durra al-fākhira based on Mullā Ṣadrā’s writings.36 A num-
ber of Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris Ḥikmī Yazdī’s works on philosophy,
ʿirfān, mathematics, and astronomy remain, as fortunately a collection of
his writings together with some of his poems signed with the pen name
Tajallī (“effulgence”) were published.37
8) Mīrzā Maḥmūd Burūjirdī: He was the son of a learned man from Burūjurd
named Mullā Ṣāliḥ. After completing his preliminary religious studies, he
moved to Tehran, where he took up jurisprudence and the principles of
jurisprudence with Mīrzā Ḥasan Āshtiyānī and the rational sciences with
Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumshāʾī and Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan. He was killed in
1337/1918–19 in western Iran while returning from a pilgrimage to the
ʿAtabāt.38 The years in which Burūjirdī studied under Qumshāʾī are not
precisely known. But apparently, he was with Qumshāʾī in 1300/1882–83
and had read the Tamhīd al-qawāʿid of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī with
him. Between the years 1300/1882 and 1305/1887–88, he compiled and
copied a large number of Qumshāʾī’s works in a codex (MS Malik 5957).39
This codex includes the following works of Qumsha‌ʾī: his numerous
glosses on the Tamhīd al-qawāʿid of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka, his glosses on
Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār, his systematic glosses on Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-
ḥikam: namely, a treatise on the oneness of existence, a treatise on the
distinction between the names and attributes of the Essence, a

36  See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 111–120; ʿA. Ṭārimī, Shahr-i
hazār ḥakīm, pp. 212–214; S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān, pp.
115–186.
37  Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Ḥikmī Yazdī, Majmūʿa-yi rasāʾil-i kalāmī u falsafī u milal u niḥal, with an
introduction by Ghulām-Ḥusayn Ibrāhīmī Dīnānī (Tehran: Sāzmān-i Chāp u Intishārāt-i
Wizārat-i Farhang u Irshād-i Islāmī, 1373 Sh./1994).
38  Ghulām-Riḍā Mawlānā Burūjirdī. Tārīkh-i Burūjird (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi Ṣadr, 1354
Sh./1975), vol. 2, pp. 525–528.
39  See Īraj Afshār and Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh in collaboration with Muḥammad
Bāqir Ḥujjatī and Aḥmad Munzawī, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi millī-i
Malik (Mashhad: Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī, 1370 Sh./1991), vol. 9, p. 23.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 267

commentary on the ḥadīth concerning the zindīq, a treatise affirming

substance and accident in the parlance of the people of God, a treatise on
the caliphate, a treatise on spiritual authority (walāya), and his various
glosses on the eighth and ninth chapters of this same Sharḥ. Burūjirdī
played a significant role in the correction and preparation of a number of
important philosophical texts, which were printed by lithography in Teh-
ran between 1312/1894–95 and 1317/1899–1900. These texts include Mullā
Mahdī Narāqī’s Jāmiʿ al-saʿādāt (published in 1312/1894), al-Jamʿ bayna
ra‌ʾyay al-ḥakīmayn attributed to Fārābī and Qumsha‌ʾī’s Risālat al-khilāfa
al-kubrā (published in 1315/1897–8), and Mīr Dāmād’s al-Qabasāt togeth-
er with the marginal notes of the compiler and those of Shams al-Dīn
Muḥammad Gīlānī, and some glosses of Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, as well as
three more works of Mīr Dāmād, his Khusat al-malakūtiyya, al-Īqāḍāt,
and Risāla fī madhhab Arisṭāṭālīs, and lastly al-Uthūlūjiyā (The Theology)
attributed to Aristotle (published in 1315/1897–98).
Besides the above-mentioned persons, there were other distinguished scholars
who studied for a while with Qumsha‌ʾī, such as Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī,40
Shaykh ʿAlī Nūrī (d. ca. 1335/1917),41 and Mīrzā Ṭāhir Tunikābunī (d. 1320
Sh./1941).42 These students, however, were not following the teachings of
Qumsha‌ʾī closely and instead they chose to follow other trends of thoughts
represented at the time.

3 Works

The oldest source for many of Qumsha‌ʾī’s writings is a codex, produced by

Qumsha‌ʾī’s student, Shaykh Maḥmūd Burūjirdī, which is held in the Malik Na-
tional Library (MS Malik 5759).43 Hereafter this codex will be referred to as the
Burūjirdī Codex. Qumsha‌ʾī was a fastidious writer whose works are each, in
some manner, in the nature of glosses on an important philosophical or mysti-
cal text. It appears that many of his works were written during the course of
teaching these texts. Often the volume of one of his glosses is equivalent to a

40  On Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī, see chapter 7, p. 290.

41  On Shaykh ʿAlī Nūrī, see chapter 5, p. 238.
42  Tunikābunī studied Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ and Turka’s Tamhīd al-qawāʿid with
Qumsha‌ʾī. See S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal, pp. 338–339. On Mīrzā
Ṭāhir Tunikābunī see chapter 7, pp. 288–289.
43  Ī. Afshār and M. T. Dānishpazhūh in collaboration with M. B. Ḥujjatī and A. Munzawī,
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-i millī-i Malik, vol. 9, p. 23.
268 Esfahani

treatise (risāla), and in this regard, it is interpreted as an independent treatise.

With this point in mind, his works will now be described.44
1. Risāla fī bayān taḥqīq al-Asfār al-arbaʿa (A Treatise on the Investigation of
the Four Journeys)
This treatise is actually a commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār. There is
a manuscript of it in the Burūjirdī Codex. It was first published in lithograph
in 1313/1895–96 in the margins of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Sharḥ al-Hidāya al-Athīriyya,
and later in the margins of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār.45 Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq
Dāmād also independently produced a critical edition of it, based on four
manuscripts, and a translation of it into Persian.46 It was also published in
Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.
2. Glosses on the Discussion on Motion in Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-
mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa
These glosses can be found in the Burūjirdī Codex. Additionally, a hand-
written copy of this work made by another of Qumsha‌ʾī’s students, ʿAlī Akbar
Ḥikmī Yazdī, is held in the Library of the Academy of Sciences (kitābkhāna-
yi farhangistān-i ʿulūm). Muḥaqqiq Dāmād published it in Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u
ʿamal-i Īrān,47 and it was also published in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.48
3. Glosses on Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka’s Tamhīd al-qawāʿid
The oldest copy of this work of which we are aware is in the Burūjirdī Codex,
whose compiler transcribed it from a holograph copy under the supervision of
the author in Shaʿbān 1304/April-May 1887. Burūjirdī himself also added some
glosses to it.49 Despite this, not all of Qumsha‌ʾī’s glosses are in this codex. Over
seven hundred additional glosses by Qumsha‌ʾī are extant in another codex
that was compiled and transcribed by Maḥmūd Mudarris Qummī, who was
likewise one of Qumsha‌ʾī’s students.50 These glosses were first published by

44  The compilation of Qumsha‌ʾī’s works has been critically edited in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i
ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.
45  See margin of Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, 9 vols.
(Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 13–16.
46  Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: ʿārif u ḥakīm-i
muta‌ʾallih Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī Iṣfahānī mulakhkhaṣ bi Ṣahbā,” Nāma-yi
Farhangistān-i ʿUlūm 6–7: 104–109; it is also included in Muḥaqqiq Dāmād’s Nukhbagān-i
ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān, pp. 372–381.
47  Ibid., pp. 379–381.
48  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 209–222.
49  Ibid., pp. 12–13.
50  The precise number of these additional glosses is 768. See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 17.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 269

Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī in his edition of Tamhīd al-qawāʿid.51 They were
also published in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.52
4. Glosses on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Commentary on Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ishārāt
wa-l-tanbīhāt
In the course of his glosses, Qumsha‌ʾī also transmitted a number of glosses
from his teacher, Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī. MS Malik 1321, which contains Naṣīr al-Dīn
Ṭūsī’s Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, includes these glosses in the hand of Qumsha‌ʾī. After
Qumsha‌ʾī’s death, this manuscript came into the hands of one of his students,
ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Iḥtishām al-Dawla Thānī, who had studied the glosses with his
teacher.53 He transcribed them, together with his own glosses, in the margins
of another copy of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Sharḥ al-Ishārāt (MS Majlis 1818). These
glosses were later published in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.54
5. Risāla fī waḥdat al-wujūd (A Treatise on the Oneness of Existence)
Qumsha‌ʾī wrote numerous glosses on Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, some
of which attained independent status. They form the predominant share of his
works. The Risāla fī waḥdat al-wujūd is one of these glosses, and he wrote it in
the margins of the first chapter of Qayṣarī’s introduction to his commentary on
the Fuṣūṣ. The oldest known copy of this treatise is in the Burūjirdī Codex. It was
copied by Burūjirdī in 1300/1882–3.55 This treatise was printed in lithographic
form for the first time in 1315/1897–98 in the margins of Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka’s
Tamhīd al-qawāʿid together with a brief gloss on it by Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. Later
on, Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī published it in his edition of Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ
al-Fuṣūṣ. This work was critically edited in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā
on the basis of the copy of it in the Burūjirdī Codex and the lithographed copy,
which contains Jilwa’s gloss as well.56 William Chittick translated this treatise
into English based on the lithograph edition.57

51  Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka, Tamhīd al-qawāʿid, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, (Tehran: Anju-
man-i Shāhanshāhī-i Falsafa-yi Īrān, 1355 Sh./1976), pp. 37–45. The glosses in this edition
appear in the footnotes attached to the relevant passages of the text.
52  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 177–192.
53  See S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: ʿārif u ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih
Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī Iṣfahānī mulakhkhaṣ bi Ṣahbā,” 35–36.
54  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 225–237.
55  Ī. Afshār and M. T. Dānishpazhūh in collaboration with M. B. Ḥujjatī and A. Munzawī,
Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi millī-i Malik, vol. 9, p. 23.
56  Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd Qayṣarī and Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,
ed. Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (Tehran: Shirkat-i ʿIlmī u Farhangī, 1378 Sh./2009), pp. 25–28;
M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 33–38.
57  See Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi, An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia: Vol-
ume 5, From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century (London & New York: I. B. Tauris
Publishers, 2015), pp. 493–497.
270 Esfahani

6. Risāla fī l-farq bayna asmāʾ al-dhāt wa-l-ṣifāt (A Treatise on the Distinc-

tion between the Names of the Essence and the Attributes)
This is a commentary on the second chapter of Qayṣarī’s introduction. The
oldest copy of this work is preserved in the Burūjirdī Codex. It was published
in Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam and in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.58
7. Sharḥ ḥadīth al-zindīq (A Commentary on the Tradition Concerning the
Zindīq)
This is another of Qumsha‌ʾī’s glosses on the second chapter of Qayṣarī’s
introduction. This treatise, which is preserved in the Burūjirdī Codex,59 was
first published by Āshtiyānī in Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī,60 and later in Nuṣūṣ wa-rasāʾil61
and Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.62
8. Risāla fī jawhar wa-l-ʿaraḍ fī lisān ahl Allāh (A Treatise on the Affirmation
of Substance and Accident in the Parlance of the People of God)
This is Qumsha‌ʾī’s commentary on the fourth chapter of Qayṣarī’s intro-
duction. Preserved in the Burūjirdī Codex, it was published in Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ
Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam63 and in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.64
9. Risāla fī l-ḥaqīqa al-insāniyya (A Treatise on the Human Inner Reality)
This is Qumsha‌ʾī’s commentary on the eighth chapter of Qayṣarī’s introduc-
tion. It was published in Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam65 and in Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.66
10. Risālat al-khilāfa (A Treatise on the Caliphate)
This treatise is Qumsha‌ʾī’s commentary on the twelfth chapter of Qayṣarī’s
introduction. It is one of the works transcribed by Burūjirdī in his codex.67 He

58  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 54–55; M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 50–52.
59  See the first part of the introduction (Qumsha‌ʾī’s biography) in M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 15.
60  See Dāwūd b. Maḥmūd Qayṣarī and Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī
bā ḥawāshī-i ʿārif-i muḥaqqiq Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Mashhad: Chāpkhāna-yi Dānishgāh-i Mashhad, 1357 Sh./1978), pp. 96–108.
61  Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, “Sharḥ ḥadīth al-zindīq,” Nuṣūṣ wa-rasāʾil, ed. Khalīl Bahrāmī
Qaṣrichamī and Ḥāmid Nājī Iṣfahānī (Isfahan: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1378 Sh./1999), vol. 4,
pp. 239–257.
62  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 53–69; idem, “Sharḥ ḥadīth al-
zindīq,” pp. 239–257.
63  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 83–85.
64  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 70–71.
65  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 121–124.
66  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 80–88.
67  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 7.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 271

also prepared this work for lithographic reproduction in 1315/1897.68 Ṣadūqī

Suhā published it as an appendix to his Dhayl-i faṣṣ-i Shīthī-i Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam.69
It was also critically edited and published in Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī70 and in Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.71 Furthermore, ʿAlī Zamānī Qumsha‌ʾī translated it
into Persian and commentated on it.72
11. Risālat al-walāya (A Treatise on Spiritual Authority)
This work consists of Qumsha‌ʾī’s glosses on the chapter of Seth (Shīth) in
Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. As is evident from its numerous extant cop-
ies, it is one of the most widely read of Qumsha‌ʾī’s works.73 The oldest extant
copy of it is in the Burūjirdī Codex, where its transcription date is given as
1302/1884–85.74 Ṣadūqī Suhā published this work with the title Dhayl-i faṣṣ-i
Shīthī-i Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam.75 It was also published in Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī,76 Qayṣarī’s
Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,77 and Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.78 An English
translation of this treatise was produced by William Chittick.79
12. Glosses on Dawūd Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam
During the course of instruction, Qumsha‌ʾī apparently wrote scattered gloss-
es on the eighth and ninth chapters of Qayṣarī’s introduction and on the chap-
ters of Adam, Seth, Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, Hūd, Solomon, David, Jonah, Aaron,
Elias, Moses, and Muḥammad. The Burūjirdī Codex only contains Qumsha‌ʾī’s
glosses on the chapter (faṣṣ) of Muḥammad. Some other glosses may be con-
tained in a manuscript held at the University of Tehran (MS ­University of
Tehran, Ilāhiyyāt 652/6), which was copied by Sayyid ʿAlī Akbar Ṭabāṭabāʾī be-
tween 1311/1893–94 and 1312/1894–95. All of these glosses have been published

68  Appendix of al-Jamʿ bayna ra‌ʾyay al-ḥakīmayn (attributed to Fārābī) (lithograph edition,
Tehran, 1315/1897–98).
69  Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Dhayl-i faṣṣ-i Shīthī-i Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam-i Muḥyī l-Dīn dar
mabāḥith-i walāyat bā risāla-yi Mawḍūʿ al-khilāfa al-kubrāʾ, ed. Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā
(Qazvin: Maṭbaʿa-yi Nūr, 1354 Sh./1975), pp. 1–9.
70  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī, pp. 90–96.
71  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 92–98.
72  Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Risāla-yi Khilāfat-i kubrā, Persian translation by ʿAlī Zamānī
Qumsha‌ʾī (Isfahan: Kānūn-i Pazhūhish, 1378 Sh./1999).
73  See the editors’ introduction to M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 16,
where six different copies of this treatise are referred to.
74  Ī. Afshār and M. T. Dānishpazhūh et al., Fihrist-i nuskhahā-yi khaṭṭī-i kitābkhāna-yi millī-i
Malik, vol. 9, p. 23.
75  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Dhayl-i faṣṣ-i Shīthī-i Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 1–35.
76  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Rasāʾil-i Qayṣarī, pp. 61–89.
77  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 440–451.
78  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 111–129.
79  See S. H. Nasr, and M. Aminrazavi, An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, pp. 498–512.
272 Esfahani

by Āshtiyānī in his edition of Qayṣarī’s Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,80 and they were
also published in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.81
13. Glosses on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya
To date, no manuscript of this work has been discovered. Although, accord-
ing to Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, there is a copy of it in the Amīr al-muʾminīn
Library in Najaf.82
14. Glosses on Muḥammad b. Ḥamza Fanārī’s Miṣbāḥ al-uns
These glosses are to be found in the margins of one of the manuscripts of
Miṣbāh al-uns, MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 14255, copied between the
years 1316/1898–99 and 1320/1902–1903.83 Muḥammad Khwājawī included most
of these glosses in his critical edition of Miṣbāḥ al-uns.84 All of them were pub-
lished in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.85
15. Risāla fī mawḍūʿ al-ʿilm (Treatise on the Subject of Knowledge)
In this short treatise, Qumsha‌ʾī discusses knowledge and refers to Mullā ʿAlī
Nūrī’s analysis of the essential accident. This work was printed lithographically
for the first time in 1315/1897–98,86 and using this version it was published in
Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.87
16. Risāla fī radd jawāz intizāʿ mafhūm wāhid min al-ḥaqāʾiq al-mutabāyina
(Treatise on the Rejection of the Possibility of Abstracting the Same Concept
from Contrary Inner Realities)
As mentioned in the section on Qumsha‌ʾī’s philosophical thought, this
treatise supports and explains the doctrine of the individual oneness of exis-
tence and refutes the position of Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. Despite this difference of
opinion, he speaks respectfully of Jilwa.88 A manuscript of this work, copied
in 1315/1897–98 by Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Sāwajī, is held in the Library of the
University of Tehran (MS University of Tehran 5248). Sāwajī studied with both

80  D. Qayṣarī and M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 7–1197.
81  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 173–178.
82  Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, Sharḥ-i ḥāl u ārāʾ-i falsafī-i Mullā Ṣadrā (Qom: Daftar-i
Tablīghāt-i Islāmī-i Ḥawza-yi ʿIlmiyya-yi Qum, 1378 Sh./1999), p. 220.
83  See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 17.
84  Muḥammad b Ḥamza al-Fanārī, Miṣbāḥ al-uns, ed. Muḥammad Khwājawī (Tehran:
Mawlā, 1375 Sh./1996).
85  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 193–197.
86  Copy printed at the end of al-Jamʿ bayna ra’yay al-ḥakīmayn (attributed to Fārābī) (litho-
graph edition, Tehran, 1315/1897–98).
87  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 239–243.
88  See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, p. 21.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 273

Jilwa and Qumsha‌ʾī.89 This copy was used as the basis for a critical edition in
Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.90
17. Sharḥ faqara min Duʿāʾ al-saḥar (Commentary on a Verse of the Dawn
Supplication)
This treatise was written in response to a question put by Muḥammad
Mahdī Qumsha‌ʾī, who studied with Qumsha‌ʾī and Jilwa. Muḥammad Mahdī
Qumsha‌ʾī wanted to find an explanation for the disparity between the phrase
“O God! I beseech Thee for Thy glory at its most glorious (though all Thy glory
is glorious)! O God! I beseech Thee by all Thy glory!” and the other verses in
the Dawn Prayer, and a response to this problem. Consequently, he resolved to
first pose this question to Qumsha‌ʾī and then to Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. Afterwards,
he engaged in a meticulous legal examination and analysis of the positions
of these two philosophers and presented his own approved view. Thus, the
present compilation consists of four parts: the presentation of the question,
Qumsha‌ʾī’s response, Jilwa’s response, and the legal examination and analy-
sis by Mullā Muḥammad Mahdī Qumsha‌ʾī. The only known copy of this com-
pilation is MS Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 6947.91 It was published in Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā.92
18. Poems
In writing his ghazals, Qumsha‌ʾī used the pen name “Ṣahbā” (lit. reddish
wine). The unique source for his poems is a codex in the private collection of
Ḥusayn Shafīʿī (Isfahan). The poems were first published by Āshtiyānī. They
were published in Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā and also elsewhere.93

4 Philosophical Thought

As mentioned in the section on his life, by the time he had reached middle age
Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī was widely recognized as one of the most dis-
tinguished authorities of Ṣadrian philosophy. This philosopher, as will be seen,
followed in the footsteps of Ibn ʿArabī and believed in the individual oneness
of existence, for which reason he was declared a heretic. Some of Qumsha‌ʾī’s
ontological ideas will now be examined in detail.

89  Ibid.
90  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 245–252.
91  See M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 18–19.
92  Ibid., pp. 199–205.
93  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 255–269; Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā,
Tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 268–285.
274 Esfahani

4.1 Existence and Its Individual Oneness

In the course of his philosophical investigation, Mullā Ṣadrā’s ontology under-
went several stages of development. At first, like his teacher, Mīr Dāmād, he
considered existence to be conceptual (iʿtibārī). But before long he rejected
this and proposed the idea that existence was an extra-mental reality and in-
dividually one, being, in fact, identical to the reality of the Necessary Existent
(wājib al-wujūd). Mullā Ṣadrā then amended this view when he argued that
existence is analogically graded unity (waḥda tashkīkiyya); in other words, he
considered existence a single reality exhibiting unlimited degrees, which differ
from each other in intensity and weakness. Consequently, from one perspec-
tive, existence is unitary, while, from another, it is multiple. In other words, it
can be said that in existence oneness is identical to multiplicity and multiplic-
ity is identical to oneness.94
Of the later Qajar philosophers, Sabzawārī, Mudarris Ṭihrānī, and Qumsha‌ʾī
each had a different opinion about Mullā Ṣadrā’s conceptual development.
While Mudarris Tihrānī believed that the correct, methodical reading of the
system of ḥikma mutaʿāliya is the reading of the analogically graded unity of
existence, Qumsha‌ʾī considered the reading of the individual oneness of exis-
tence to be the final word on the ḥikma mutaʿāliya. Sabzawārī’s position was
a combination of these two views. In addition to composing a demonstra-
tion for his theory, Qumsha‌ʾi, whose goal was to strengthen and consolidate
the argument for the individual oneness of existence, also discovered a new
proof for establishing the existence of God, and consequently, he was obliged
to borrow the remainder of his conceptual framework from the teachings of
Ibn ʿArabī. This is why he did not present any of his philosophical work on
the prevailing foundation of the ḥikma mutaʿāliya. From a rational point of
view, his entire conceptual system is strongly influenced by Ibn ʿArabī and
his followers. This outlook is exactly the opposite of the reading of Mudar-
ris Ṭihrānī, whose goal was to present a precise reading of Mullā Ṣadrā’s
philosophical propositions based on his own interpretation. In order to un-
derstand Qumsha‌ʾī’s reasoning, the premises of his argument must first be
explained.
In an independent treatise titled Risāla fī radd jawāz intizāʿ mafhūm wāḥid
min al-ḥaqāʾiq al-mutabāyina, Qumsha‌ʾī points out that existence has a hom-
onymous meaning for all the subjects to which it is predicated. The abstraction
of any concept from a single denotative object (miṣdāq) points to the existence

94  See ʿAbd Allāh Jawādī Āmulī, Raḥīq-i makhtūm: Sharḥ-i ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliya, 5 vols. (Qom:
Dār al-asrāʾ, 1376 Sh./1997), vol. 5, part 2, p. 110.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 275

of the reality of that concept in the object denotated. Thus, if it is judged that
existence is predicable to the totality of things in the real world—that is, if
all of these things, in fact, share in common the term “existent”—then they
actually have existence as a common root. In another place, Qumsha‌ʾī distin-
guishes three kinds of circumstantial modes used in the description of sub-
jects by predicates: (1) When what is predicated is contained in the subject,
this is called the “absolute circumstantial mode” (ḥaythiyya iṭlāqiyya), as when
we say, “Four is an even number.” (2) When what is predicated of a subject is
describing its agency, this is called the “causal circumstantial mode” (ḥaythiyya
taʿlīliyya), as when we say: “This man is moving.” In order to give assent to this
proposition, we must also infer that man is animate, for every animate thing is
moving. (3) When what is predicated is external to the subject and merely de-
scriptive of their accidental relationship, this is called the “qualifying circum-
stantial mode” (ḥaythiyya taqyīdiyya), as when we say “This paper is black.”
In his treatise on the oneness of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd), after affirm-
ing existence and its oneness, Qumsha‌ʾī turns to the difference between the
philosophers and the mystics on the existence of the Necessary Existent. While
the philosophers consider the existence of the Necessary Existent to be neg-
atively conditioned (bi-sharṭ lā), the mystics say His existence is non-condi-
tioned (lā bi-sharṭ). Despite this difference, they both agree that the common
unfolding existence (wujūd ʿāmm munbasiṭ) is the “shadow” of the Necessary
Existent. Since the shadow of each thing is, in one respect, different from that
thing, and, in another respect, united to it, this characteristic is also true in the
case of common existence and its relationship to the Necessary Existent. Now,
the corresponding view of the mystics can be examined with the aim of estab-
lishing the proof for the Necessary Existent with help from the two following
principles:
(A) The essential denotation of every concept is the same as the meaning
derived from that concept without any kind of qualifying or causal cir-
cumstantial mode.
(B) The abstraction of the concept of existence from a single nature and its
predication to that nature is essentially necessary and has no qualifying
or causal circumstantial mode, and if that nature is eternal, the predica-
tion of the concept of existence to it is necessarily eternal.
Consequently, the predication of existence to that nature is necessarily eter-
nal, and since the qualification of being negatively conditioned (bi-sharṭ lā)
plays no role in the abstraction of the concept of existence and qualification
is negated, then non-conditioned existence is the essence of the Necessary
Existent.
276 Esfahani

Qumsha‌ʾī presents this argument in his commentary on the Tamhīd al-

qawāʿid in this way:
Minor Premise: The abstraction of the concept of existence from absolute
existence (wujūd muṭlaq), [i.e., existence not conditioned by any determina-
tion] does not require either a qualifying circumstantial mode or a causal cir-
cumstantial mode.
Major Premise: Every reality from which the concept of existence is ab-
stracted without a qualifying or causal circumstantial mode is by necessity
eternally existent.
Conclusion: Absolute existence is perforce eternally necessary.
In his commentary on the Tamhīd, he says:

From existence insofar as it is itself, namely, the absolute nature without

consideration of any causal or qualifying aspects and modes, the concept
of existence is abstracted and then predicated and applied to it. What-
ever is like this is the essentially Necessary Existent. Consequently, exis-
tence insofar as it is itself is the essentially Necessary Existent. As for the
minor premise, it is evident. As for the major premise, because in what-
ever thing the concept of existence is abstracted from itself essentially
the mode of its essence is the mode of actualization and affirmation,
therefore the occurrence of non-existence to it is essentially impossible
due to the impossibility of the conjunction of the two contradictories
and the conversion of one of them into the other. This is what we set out
to prove.95

Qumsha‌ʾī himself anticipated certain difficulties that might be raised against

this position, and in answering them, he explained what he meant more clearly.
The first difficulty might be to consider the reality of the Necessary Existent
as the same as the nature of existence, yet argue that the Necessary Existent is
neither identical to all things nor to any part of anything.
Qumsha‌ʾī argued that the concept of existence is abstracted from the na-
ture of existence without any kind of causal or qualifying circumstantial mode,
whereas the quiddities of possible things are abstracted from them via causal
and qualifying circumstantial modes, and the abstraction of possible existence
requires the causal circumstantial mode. Therefore, none of the possible exis-
tents is identical to the nature of existence. So, if individuals exist because of
the nature of existence, God’s state is expressed by the verse “Nothing is like
him” (Q 42:11).

95  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Ṣahbā, pp. 187–188.

Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 277

The second difficulty is that according to the answer given above, the Nec-
essary Existent can never have any kind of company (maʿiyya) with possible
things.
Qumsha‌ʾī stated that according to the mystics, the common unfolding exis-
tence is the shadow of the Necessary Existent, being in one respect identical to
the Necessary Existent and in another respect other than Him. This unfolding
existence in its aspect of identity with the Necessary Existent allows for the
company of the Necessary Existent with possible things, while in its aspect of
otherness it allows for the transcendence (tanzīh) of God from everything else.
Furthermore, as Qumsha‌ʾī himself pointed out, individual oneness (waḥda
shakhṣiyya) predominates over existence: “Should you reflect upon what has
been said, you will clearly apprehend another significance, which is that the
oneness of existence is an individual oneness. There is no existence, and no
existent save Him.”96 Consequently, the aspect of existence as negatively con-
ditioned (bi-sharṭ lā) is a concomitant of the Divine Essence, not the whole of
His reality.
The Third Difficulty: Based on the above answer, how are we to understand
the diffusion (sarayān) of the reality of existence, whether in the Necessary
Existent or in possible being?
Answer: It should be noted that by “diffusion,” or “permeation,” is meant the
self-manifestation (ẓuhūr) of that reality. On occasion, this manifestation is es-
sential and oriented towards itself, which is its manifestation in the Necessary
Existent. On occasion, it is in the names and the fixed entities (aʿyān thābita)
in the station of God’s knowledge. And on yet other occasions it is in the pos-
sible entities (aʿyān imkānī). Thus, this reality is diffused both in the Necessary
and the possible existents.97
Qumsha‌ʾī maintained that in the opinion of the theologians and the major-
ity of the philosophers, multiplicity in existence is real and its oneness is ficti-
tious (iʿtibārī) since by the evidence of the senses and rational judgement the
concrete entities in the external world are multiple and existence is abstracted
from them. But there is a group of mystics who consider the oneness of exis-
tence real and its multiplicity imaginary. In Qumsha‌ʾī’s opinion, however, this
position entails the negation of the religious law and the mission of the proph-
ets. They believe this, he said, because of the predominance of the influence
of oneness during their spiritual wayfaring (sulūk) or due to the intrusion of
Satan in the mystical discoveries of its advocates. He said in this regard:

96  Ibid., p. 36.

97  Ibid., p. 36.
278 Esfahani

We ascribe this belief to their mystical revelations, which cause them to

negate religious laws and religions and the sending down of the Books
and the messengers, but the senses and the intellect refute them, as you
are aware. So this is either because of the influence of the state of one-
ness, which elevates them [beyond multiplicity] or due to the intrusion
of Satan in their mystical discoveries.98

Besides these two views, there is another view, which Qumsha‌ʾī ascribed to the
preeminent mystics and the intuitive philosophers (ḥukumāʾ muta‌ʾallih), and
it is the view which he himself held. According to this position, oneness and
multiplicity in existence are both real. The multiplicity of existence is observ-
able in the external world, while its oneness is established through traditional
and rational proofs. Existence, from this perspective, is an unfolding absolute
oneness in which oneness is identical to multiplicity. Qumsha‌ʾī said:

The things in their very multiplicity are one, while in their very oneness
they are multiple. If you want to say that existence is both really one and
really multiple, there is no contradiction in this since this oneness is ab-
solute [i.e., not conditioned by any determination] and not numerical;
otherwise, its multiplicity would be contradictory.99

Qumsha‌ʾī explained the point that the wayfarer in the station of oneness per-
ceives the reality of existence as an unfolding oneness (waḥda inbisāṭiyya)
which includes both the necessary and the possible. But in a higher station,
he sees oneness as a reality appointed only to the Necessary Existent. He said:

By oneness here is meant individual oneness, for the term “oneness of

existence” (waḥdat al-wujūd) may be applied, according to their conven-
tion, to the unfolding oneness, which includes both the Necessary and
the possible (as clearly revealed in the middle of the first journey of the
four spiritual journeys), or it may be applied to the individual oneness
confined to the essentially Necessary Existent (which is mystically wit-
nessed at the end of that journey by the perfected and greatly favoured).
In this case, existence fades away from the possible entities for it is one
with the existence of the Necessary while [being] many. Indeed, there is
no existence or existent save Him. Existence is one individual, namely,
the essentially Necessary Existent, and the possible existences are gleams

98  Ibid., p. 179.

99  Ibid., p. 180.
Āqā
‌ʾ Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha ī 279

(lumʿāt) of His light and rays (ishrāqāt) of His self-manifestation, which

are “like a mirage in the desert, which the thirsty man mistakes for water
until, coming upon it, he finds it to be nothing, but find God with him”
(Q 24:39). The first is the special profession of God’s unity (tawḥīd), while
the second is the special profession of the special profession of His unity.100

4.2 Shīʿī Mysticism

Qumsha‌ʾī attempted to present a new and mystic reading of the question of
the Shīʿī imamate. In his opinion, the appointment of a successor (khalīfa)
to the Messenger of God can only be accomplished by God. Man and even
the Messenger himself are not acquainted with the divine knowledge, or as
he expressed it, with the exclusive names of God. Because the Messenger
is the mediating agent of divine revelation and grace, he is commanded to
continue delivering God’s judgement until his prophetic mission is fulfilled.
He also had a special interest in the mystical enquiries of Ibn ʿArabī con-
cerning spiritual authority (walāya), from which he attempted to construct a
Shīʿī narrative tradition. In this respect, he followed in the footsteps of Sayyid
Ḥaydar Āmulī, Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī, and Mullā Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī. Of
these predecessors, he was most familiar with the mystical works of Mullā
Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī, including his al-Kalimāt al-maknūna.101 An example of
an area in which Qumsha‌ʾī intermingled his Shīʿī ideas with Ibn ʿArabī’s mysti-
cism is the debate over “the seal of spiritual authority” (khātam al-walāya).
Ibn ʿArabī’s statements in this regard are confusing. In some places, he refers
to himself as the khātam al-walāya.102 Dāwūd Qayṣarī, the commentator of
the Fuṣūṣ, whom Qumsha‌ʾī held in the highest regard, considered Jesus the
khātam al-walāya. However, in a detailed critique of this statement, Qumsha‌ʾī
recognized ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib as the khātam al-walāya. He argued that ʿAlī was
the closest of all human beings to the Seal of the Prophets. This nearness was
both external and internal, and whoever is closest to the Seal of the Prophets
in this way is the seal of spiritual authority.

100  Ibid., p. 39.

101  On Fayḍ Kashānī’s views on walāya, see Shigeru Kamada, “Fayḍ al-Kashānī’s Walāya: The
Confluence of Shīʿī Imamology and Mysticism,” in Todd Lawson (ed.), Reason and Inspira-
tion in Islam: Theology, Philosophy and Mysticism in Muslim Thought, Essay in Honour of
Hermann Landolt (London & New York: I. B. Tauris/The Institute of Ismaili Studies 2005),
pp. 455–470.
102  On the view of Ibn ʿArabī on this matter see Michel Chodkiewicz, The Seal of the Saints:
Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn ‘Arabi (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts
Society, 1993), pp. 116–146.
280 Esfahani

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 chapter 7

Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa

Encieh Barkhah1

1 Life

Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan Ṭabāṭabāʾī, who came to be known by his pen name
Jilwa,2 was born in 1238/1822–23 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Jilwa’s ancestors
were Ṭabāṭabāʾī sayyids. He considered himself a descendant of Imām Ḥasan
al-Mujtabā. Jilwa’s lineage can be traced back six generations to the theolo-
gian and philosopher Rafīʿ al-Dīn Ṭabātabāʾī Nāʾīnī, known as Mīrzā Rafīʿā
(d. 1083/1672–73).3
Jilwa’s father, Sayyid Muḥammad Ṭabāṭabāʾī, whose pen name was Maẓhar,
was a physician and littérateur in the early Qajar era.4 In his autobiogra-
phy, written in 1294/1877 at the request of ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā Iʿtimād al-Salṭana
(d. 1298/1880), the minister of education in Iran at the time,5 Jilwa provided
some information about his father’s journey to India. It was in his youth that
his father went from Qandahar and Kabul to Hyderabad and its neighbour-
ing regions in Sindh province in order to complete his training in medicine,
and in order to increase his knowledge of literature and history. In Sindh,
Mīrzā Ibrāhīm Shāh, the vizier of the emir of Sindh Mīr Ghulām-ʿAlī Khān (r.

1  Translated from Persian by Aun Hasan Ali. The translator would like to thank Syed Rizwan
Rizvi for his help.
2  Muḥammad Ḥasan Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Kitāb al-ma‌ʾāthir wa-l-āthār (lithograph, Tehran:
Dār al-Ṭibāʿa-yi Khāṣṣa-yi Dawlatī, 1307/1928), p. 140; ʿAbbās Qummī, Hadiyyat al-aḥbāb fī
dhikr al-maʿrūf bi-l-kunā wa-l-ansāb (Tehrān: Chāpkhāna-yi Ṣadr, 1363 Sh./1984–85), p. 15;
Muḥammad Ṭāhir Tunikābunī, “Mukhtaṣar-i sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” Āyanda 2 9 (1306
Sh./2027–28): 654–56 (654); Muḥsin Amīn, Aʿyān al-Shīʿa, ed. Ḥasan Amīn (Beirut: Dār al-
Taʿāruf li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1403/1983), vol. 2, p. 337.
3  Mīrzā Rafīʿā was a student of Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī, Mīr Findiriskī and ʿAbd Allāh Shushtarī.
He wrote several works on philosophy and theology, including Thamara-yi shajara-yi ilāhiyya.
4  Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥabībābādī, Makārim al-āthār dar aḥwāl-i rijāl-i du qarn-i 13 u 14 hijrī (Isfa-
han: Nafāʾis-i Makhṭūṭ, 1352 Sh./1973–74), vol. 4, p. 1040; Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Mahdawī, Tadhkirat
al-qubūr yā dānishmandān u buzurgān-i Iṣfahān (Isfahan: Thaqafī, 1348 Sh./1969–70), p. 74;
Ghulām-Riḍā Gulī Zawāra, Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i Jilwa: Ḥakīm-i furūtan (Tehran: Sāzmān-i
Tablīghāt-i Islāmī, 1372 Sh./1993–34), pp. 20, 22; Muḥammad Ḥasan Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al.,
Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī (Qom: Dār al-fikr, 1338 Sh./1959–60), vol. 3, p. 31.
5  See M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, pp. 32–35.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_009

284 Barkhah

1217–1227/1802–1811), gave Maẓhar his daughter in marriage. He stayed in Sindh

for a while, then went to Ahmedabad, Gujarat and from there to Bombay. After
a while, at the request of his brother, he returned to Isfahan, and since most of
his family lived in Zavareh, probably his place of birth, he stayed in Zavareh.
Ultimately he died from cholera sometime between 1252/18366 and 1254/18397.
After his father’s death, Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa went to the madrasa of
Kāsagarān in Isfahan. After completing his preliminary studies, he began to
study the rational sciences, metaphysics, natural philosophy and mathematics.
He writes:

Since people’s dispositions are inclined toward different subjects, my

mind inclined toward the rational sciences, and I spent my time study-
ing the rational sciences including metaphysics, natural philosophy and
mathematics, particularly metaphysics and natural philosophy which are
popular in Iran, especially metaphysics.8

Jilwa did not give the names of any of his teachers in his autobiography. It is re-
ported, however, that he studied with Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī (d. before
1294/1877),9 Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar Langarūdī Lāhījī (d. before 1294/1877),10

6   M. Mahdawī, Tadhkirat al-qubūr, p. 74.

7  Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥabībābādī, Makārim al-āthār, vol. 5, pp. 1481–82.
8  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, pp. 33–34.
9  M. Ṭ. Tunikābunī, “Mukhtaṣar-i sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 655. Tunikābunī only men-
tions Mīrzā Ḥasan Nūrī as Jilwa’s teacher. Muḥammad Ḥasan Nūrī was buried in Najaf.
He was also one of Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī’s teachers. Mahdawī, 327; Sayyid
Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “ʿĀrif u ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī
mutakhalliṣ bi Ṣahbā,” Nāma-yi Farhangistān-i ʿulūm, 6 & 7 (1376 Sh./1997–98): 47–136
(53–54).
10  He was the son of Muḥammad Ṣādiq Lāhījī. He wrote a commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s
Mashāʿir and a supercommentary on the section on metaphysics in ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s
commentary on the Tajrīd and Shams al-Dīn Khafrī’s gloss on it. He was a student
of Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Mudarris Khātūnābādī (d. 1202/1787–88), Mullā Miḥrāb Gīlānī
(d. 1217/1802–1803) and Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1830). He was a teacher of Āqā Muḥammad
Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī and Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī. See Manūchihr
Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir (2nd ed., Tehran:
Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002), p. 262; S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “ʿĀrif u ḥakīm-i muta‌ʾallih Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī,” 53–54.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 285

Sayyid Raḍī Lāhījī (d. 1270/1853–54),11 Mīrzā Ḥasan Chīnī (d. 1264/1847–48) and
Mullā ʿAbd al-Jawād Tūnī Khurāsānī (d. 1281/1864).12
In 1273/1856–7 Jilwa left Isfahan and moved to Tehran. In his autobiography
he says:

For a time in Isfahan, I was busy with the same pursuit, until staying
there became unbearable to me because of the prevalence of poverty,
people’s cavilling and the pain they caused to each other, as well as the
belief of certain people that they ought to be followed blindly. So I came
to Tehran.13

Therefore, based on this, we may conjecture that he did not leave Isfahan in
order to further his education. The idea that he went to Tehran with the inten-
tion of going to Sabzevar in order to benefit from the learning of Ḥājj Mullā
Hādī Sabzawārī14 does not seem to be correct.15 In Tehran, Jilwa started teach-
ing in the Dār al-Shifāʾ madrasa. He chose to live there as well because he was
accustomed to the environment, and because he failed to arrange an alterna-
tive for himself.
Jilwa was thin and tall. It is said that he lived an ascetic and unpretentious
life. He lived off the revenues of estates endowed to his ancestors. He did not
accumulate any other worldly wealth: his books were his only possessions. He

11  Sayyid Raḍī Lāhījī was one of the students of Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī and Mullā Ismāʿīl Wāḥid al-
ʿAyn, and one of the teachers of Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī and Mīrzā Naṣīr Gīlānī.
He had studied the works of Ibn ʿArabī and Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī. See Muḥammad ʿAlī
ʿIbrat Nāʾīnī, Tadhkira-yi madīnat al-adab (Tehran: Kitābkhāna, Mūzi u Markaz-i Asnād-i
Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1376 Sh./1997–98), vol. 2, pp. 731–732; M. Mahdawī, Tadhkirat
al-qubūr, p. 328; Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i
muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 261–263.
12  Mullā ʿAbd al-Jawād Tūnī Khurāsānī was a scholar of mathematics, law, jurisprudence,
medicine and literature. On Jilwa’s teachers see Ghulām-Ḥusayn Afḍal al-Mulk, Afḍal al-
tawārīkh, ed. Manṣūra Ittiḥādiyya and Sīrūs Saʿdwandiyān (Tehran: Nashr-i Tārīkh-i Īrān,
1361 Sh./1982), p. 107; M. Ṭ. Tunikābunī, “Mukhtaṣar-i sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 655;
M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 469–470.
13  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, p. 36.
14  Murtaḍā Muṭahharī, Khadamāt-i mutaqābil-i Islām u Īrān (Qom: Ṣadrā, 1360 Sh./1981–82),
vol. 2, p. 222.
15  Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, ed. Ḥasan Riḍāzāda (Tehran: Ḥikmat,
1385 Sh./2006–2007), p. 29.
286 Barkhah

never married.16 In the last years of this life, he lost his sight, possibly as a re-
sult of cataracts. According to a report by Afḍal al-Mulk,17 he was afflicted with
strangury (ḥabas al-būl), possibly a diseased prostate, and was bedridden as a
result. He died at the age of seventy-six on the night of Thursday 6 Dhū l-Qaʿda
1314/9 April 1897 in Tehran. He was buried in the vicinity of the grave of Ibn
Bābawayh known as Shaykh Ṣadūq. Two years later, due to the efforts of Mīrzā
Aḥmad Khān-i Badr Nāṣir al-Dawla and Prince Sulṭān Ḥusayn Mīrzā Nayyir al-
Dawla, the architect of Kashan, ʿAbd al-Bāqī, built a dome over his grave. Later
on, another dome was constructed over his grave.18
Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Āqā ʿAlī Ṭihrānī (d. 1305/1888) and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā
Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1306/1888) were the main teachers of philosophy in Tehran to-
ward the end of the 13th/19th century. These three philosophers, all of whom
had studied in Isfahan, had many students in common. After the deaths of Āqā
ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, the study of the
rational sciences in Tehran was mainly limited to the circle of Jilwa.19
Jilwa had a good relationship with the senior jurists and government offi-
cials of the day and, above all, with Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh himself. He also wrote
poetry praising Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, and the shah used to visit Jilwa once a year
in the Dār al-Shifāʾ madrasa.20 Jilwa, however, did not visit the court without
an invitation. In his autobiography, Jilwa writes, “In this period, due to my na-
ture or because I was content, they did not invite me in person or in writing;

16  Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī,
1430/2009), vol. 13, p. 42.
17  G. Ḥ. Afḍal al-Mulk, Afḍal al-tawārīkh, p. 106.
18  Ibid.; Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā (Tehran: ʿAṭṭāt/Firdawsī, 1362 Sh./1983–84), vol. 1,
p. 175; Muḥammad ʿAlī ʿIbrat Nāʾīnī, Tadhkira-yi madīnat al-adab, vol. 1, p. 652; Ghulām-
Riḍā Gulī Zawāra, Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i Jilwa. Ḥakīm-i furūtan, pp. 186–193.
19  G. Ḥ. Afḍal al-Mulk, Afḍal al-tawārīkh, pp. 106–107.
20  On Jilwa’s character and various anecdotes on him see G. Ḥ. Afḍal al-Mulk, Afḍal al-
tawārīkh, pp. 106–107; ʿAbd Allāh Mustawfī, Sharḥ-i zindagānī-i man yā Tārīkh-i ijtimāʿī u
idārī-i dawra-yi Qājāriyya (Tehran: Zuwwār, 1377 Sh./1998–99), vol. 1, pp. 521–522; Mahdī
Bāmdād. Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān dar qarn-i 12 u 13 u 14 hijrī (2nd ed., Tehran: Zuwwār, 1357
Sh./1978), vol. 1, p. 41; Ḥasan Taqīzāda, “Iḥtirām-i ʿulamāʾ,” Yaghmā 2 5 (1328 Sh./1949–50):
181; Aḥmad ʿAlī Dīwān Baygī, Ḥadīqat al-shuʿarāʾ, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Nawāʾī (Tehran: Zarrīn,
1364–66 Sh./1985–88), vol. 1, p. 375; M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i
Nāṣirī, vol. 3, p. 31; Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān:
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i Jilwa-yi Iṣfahānī,” Nāma-yi farhangistān-i ʿulūm 5 (1375 Sh./1996–97):
97–112 (103); See also Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Dīwān, ed. Aḥmad Suhaylī Khwānsārī (Tehran:
Chāpkhāna-yi Firdawsī, n.d.), pp. 32–35, 44–48; Aḥmad Bānpūr, “Ḥakīm-i Jilwa,” Kayhān-i
andīsha 10 (1365 Sh./1986–87): 75–79 (78); Muḥammad Riḍā Ḥakīmī, Bīdārgarān-i aqālīm-i
qibla (Tehran: Daftar-i Nashr-i Farhang-i Islāmī, 1355 Sh./1976–77), pp. 47–48.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 287

nor did the Sulṭān or vizier ever invite me, and without an invitation, although
my friends wanted me to come, I did not go.”21
Edward Brown, who met Jilwa in Tehran, said about him:

Unfortunately, I did not have the advantage of any prolonged conversa-

tion with him, and even such as I had chiefly consisted in answering his
questions on the different phases of European thought. He was greatly
interested in what I told him about the Theosophists and Vegetarians,
and was anxious to know whether the Plymouth Brethren were believers
in the transmigration of souls!22

Jilwa had a great interest in Persian literature, and, as he writes in his autobiog-
raphy, he used to recite poetry himself:

Even in my youth, I was sociable. I kept company with literati, poets and
witty people (ẓurafāʾ). I was friendly with my neighbors and, occasion-
ally, due in part to having inherited this skill, and due in part to the com-
pany I kept, I would even recite poetry. Until a time came when I myself
understood the art and was able to distinguish between good and bad
poetry, and understood that composing a good poem, though it is not of
much benefit, is difficult, and mediocre and bad poetry is worthless, but
this did not deter me …23

He followed Nāṣir-i Khusraw Qubādiyānī’s (d. 481/1088) style, and the similar-
ity between their poems, in terms of both form and content, is noteworthy.24
Jilwa had an excellent library consisting of the writings of philosophers, li-
terati, mystics and intellectuals, and it was counted among the richest libraries
of his time. In his will, he stated that his books were to be sold and the money
given to the poor and needy. Later, the books of this library, which amounted
to over two hundred volumes, were sold to the Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Millī Library
where they remain. Most of them are listed in the second volume of Yūsuf
Iʿtiṣāmī’s catalogue of the library. The books from Jilwa’s personal library are
valuable because, aside from his corrections and comparisons with other

21  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana & others, Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, p. 34.
22  Edward Granville Brown, A Year amongst the Persians (London: A. and C. Black, 1893), p.
162.
23  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, p. 34.
24  G. Ḥ. Afḍal al-Mulk, Afḍal al-tawārīkh, pp. 106–107; Murtaḍā Mudarrisī Chahārdahī, “Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Ṣahbā-yi Qumsha‌ʾī,” Yādgār 1 (1325 Sh./1946): 74–75; A. Jilwa, Dīwān,
p. 10.
288 Barkhah

manuscripts that were to be found in Tehran at the time, they contain his an-
notations, super-commentaries and personal notes.

2 Students

In his many years of teaching in Isfahan and Tehran, Jilwa had numerous stu-
dents. According to Jilwa himself, some of them only studied with him to learn
terminology, others to boast. Very few came seeking truth sincerely and believ-
ing in the immaterial world.25 Those of his students who became philosophers
in their own right include the following:
1) Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṭāhir Tunikābunī (d. 1320 Sh./1941–2). Jurist, philoso-
phy teacher, and politician in Tehran, he was born in one of the villages of
Kalārdasht in 1280/1863–64. After receiving his preliminary education in
his hometown, he came to Tehran and began to study philosophy under
Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī. After Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī
died, he attended the classes of Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. He attended
Jilwa’s classes until 1314/1897. Jilwa acknowledged his excellence, and
after Jilwa’s death, most students turned to Tunikābunī. In the Majlis Li-
brary, there is a manuscript of Jilwa’s gloss on the introduction to Qayṣarī’s
Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, which Jilwa gifted to him. In addition to his studies
with Jilwa, Tunikābunī also studied philosophy under Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris
Ṭihrānī and Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, and law under Mīrzā
Muḥammad Ḥasan Āshtīyānī.
Tunikābunī lived in the Madrasa Sipahsālār in Tehran for nearly fifty
years. He lectured mainly on the philosophy of Avicenna. He also lec-
tured on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt wa-l-
tanbīhāt, Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ, al-Najāt, al-Qānūn and Ṣā’in al-Dīn Turka
Isfahānī’s Tamhīd al-qawāʿid, and he was an expert on mathematics, as-
tronomy (hayʾat), astrology (nujūm) and medicine.
He was an active member of parliament in at least two terms (1284–
1286 Sh./1905–1907 and 1300–1302 Sh./1921–1922). From 1310 Sh./1931–1932,
Tunikābunī fell on hard times when he was exiled and imprisoned for
criticizing Riḍā Shāh (r. 1305–1320 Sh./1925–1941). He died in 1320 Sh./1941
and, in accordance with his will, was buried next to the grave of his
teacher.26

25  See M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, pp. 34–35.
26  Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṣafwat, Dāstān-i dūstān (Tabrīz: Chāpkhāna-yi Qum, 1328 Sh./1949–50),
pp. 119–121; Ḥasan Faqīh ʿAbd Allāhī, “Bi yād-i ḥakīm az yād rafta Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṭāhir
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 289

Tunikābunī’s writings include glosses on Avicenna’s al-Shifā’ (Logic and

Metaphysics), Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya, Naṣīr al-Dīn
Ṭūsī’s Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt, Jamāl al-Dīn Ḥillī’s Jawhar al-naḍīd, Ṣā’in
al-Dīn Turka’s Tamhīd al-qawāʿid, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s al-Durra
al-fākhira.27 Most of these glosses are listed in volumes five and nine of
the catalogue of the Majlis Library. He wrote a biography of Jilwa which
was published as Mukhtaṣar sharḥ aḥwāl Mīrzā Jilwa in the journal
Āyanda (2, 9 1306 Sh./1927–28). He transcribed some of Jilwa’s writings.
For example, in MS Majlis 3942, which includes the Asfār and super-com-
mentaries on it, there are some super-commentaries by Jilwa transcribed
by Tunikābunī.28
2) Mullā Muḥammad Āmulī (d. 1336/1917–18). He was born in 1263/1846–47
in Āmul. After completing his preliminary education in Amol (Āmul), he
went to Tehran and studied law and jurisprudence under Mīrzā Ḥasan
Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Kalāntarī and Sayyid Ṣādiq Ṭabāṭabāʾī. He
studied philosophy under Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris.
After that, he began to hold his own classes in law, jurisprudence, and
philosophy. Mullā Muḥammad Āmulī was an opponent of the 1906 Con-
stitutional Revolution. He worked alongside Shaykh Faḍl Allāh Nūrī dur-
ing the revolution. After the revolution, he was imprisoned and then ex-
iled to his hometown, Amol. He returned to Tehran a few years later and
started teaching again. His philosophical works include a gloss on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Asfār; a gloss on Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī’s commentary on Sirāj al-Dīn
Urmawī’s Maṭāliʿ al-anwār and Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī’s commentary on Najm
al-Dīn Kātibī’s al-Shamsiyya. He is buried next to the grave of Jilwa.29

Tanikābunī shāgird-i barjasta-yi Jilwa-yi Zawāra‌ʾī,” in Ghulām-Riḍā Gulī Zawāra (ed.),

Gulshan-i Jilwa, pp. 161–169; M. M. Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa, vol. 15,
p. 973; Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥabībābādī, Makārim al-āthār, vol. 7, p. 2302; S. M. Muḥaqqiq
Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i Jilwa-yi Iṣfahānī,” 104.
27  Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥabībābādī, Makārim al-āthār, vol. 7, p. 2302; Sayyid Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq
Dāmād, Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i ʿUlūm-i Islāmī, 1378
Sh./1999), pp. 48–50.
28  He also transcribed a collection of Jilwa’s remarks (fawāʾid) for himself, a manuscript of
which is owned by Tunikābunī’s grandchildren. His Munāzara-yi ḥakīm u faqīh, which
was edited and published by Sayyid Muṣtafā Muḥaqqiq Dāmād is based on the same col-
lection. See S. M. Muḥaqqiq Dāmād, “Nukhbagān-i ʿilm u ʿamal-i Īrān: Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i
Jilwa-yi Iṣfahānī,” 97–112.
29  Muḥammad Sharīf Rāzī, Ikhtirān-i furūzān-i Ray u Tihrān yā Tadhkirat al-qābir fī aḥwāl
al-mafākhir (Qom, n.d.), pp. 365–366; Manūchihr Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i
ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, p. 458; Ḥasan Ḥasanzāda Āmulī, “Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i du
ḥakīm-i faqīh,” Kayhān-i andīsha 54 (1373 Sh./1994): 3–20; M. M. Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-
Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1403/1982–83), vol. 4, p. 424; Muḥammad
290 Barkhah

3) Mīrzā Ḥasan Kirmānshāhī (d. 1336/1917–18). He was born and grew up in

Kermanshah, where he received his early education. Then he moved to
Tehran and studied the rational sciences under Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī
and Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa. After that, he started teaching philosophy. After
Ṭihrānī’s death, Kirmānshāhī was appointed as a teacher at the Sipahsālār
Madrasa in Tehran. He trained numerous students, the most famous of
whom were Mīrzā Mahdī Āshtiyānī (d. 1372/1952–53), and Sayyid Mūsā
Zarābādī (d. 1353/1934). His writings include glosses on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-
Ṭūsī’s commentary on Avicenna’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, on Mullā
Ṣadrā’s Asfār and on Physics and Metaphysics of Avicenna’s al-Shifāʾ.30
4) Ḥakīm Mullā Muḥammad Hīdajī Zanjānī (d. 1339/1920–21). He was born
in 1262/1846. After completing his preliminary education in Zanjan, he
went to Qazvin in 1297/1879. He lived there for eight years and continued
his education under the prominent teachers of Qazvin such as Sayyid ʿAlī
Khuʾaynī Qazwīnī, the author of a gloss on Mīrzā-yi Qummī’s (d. 1231/1815–
16) Qawānīn. In 1305/1887–88 he went to Tehran, where he studied phi-
losophy and mathematics under Āqā Mīrzā Ḥusayn Sabzawārī and
Jilwa.31 After having studied with some of the most learned scholars of
philosophy, law, and ḥadīth, Hīdajī moved to the Munīriyya Madrasa in
Tehran and began teaching.32 He is famous for his expertise in mathe-
matics, astrology, and astronomy. Āqā Mīrzā Ibrāhīm Zanjānī was one of
his students. He taught the rational and the transmitted sciences until
the very end of his life. He died in Tehran in 1348/1929 and was buried in
Qom. His writings include a gloss on the Manẓūma of Sabzawārī, Risāla-
yi Dukhkhāniyya33 and Kitāb-i Kashkūl as well as poetry.34

Taqī Āmulī, Durar al-fawāʾid: wa-huwa Taʿlīqa ʿalā Sharḥ al-manẓūma li-l-Sabzawārī, ed.
Ḥasan Musṭafawī (Tehrān: Markaz Nashr al-Kitāb, 1377/1958), pp. iii–iv.
30  Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Durrī, Kanz al-ḥikma (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Dānish, 1306 Sh./1927), vol. 2,
p. 156.
31  Murtaḍā Muṭahharī, Khadamāt-i mutaqābil-i Islām u Īrān, vol. 2, p. 225.
32  This place, where he taught for a few decades, is one of the buildings of Amīr Niẓām
Ḥākim of Tehran. His sister, Munīr al-Salṭana, the wife of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, completed it,
and that is why it is called Munīriyya.
33  Mullā Muḥammad Hīdajī, Risāla-yi dukhkhāniyya, ed. ʿAlī Akbar Wilāyatī (Tehran:
Markaz-i Chāp u Intishārāt-i Wizārat-i Umūr-i Khārija, 1381 Sh./2002).
34  Mullā Muḥammad Hīdajī, Taʿlīqat al-Hīdajī ʿalā al-manẓūma wa-sharḥihā (Tehran:
Manshūrāt al-Aʿlamī, 1363 Sh./1984–85), pp. 8–11; M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i
ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 496–497; Mullā Muḥammad Hīdajī, Dānishnāma
u dīwān-i ḥakīm-i aʿẓam u shāʿir-i muḥaqqiq Ḥājī Mullā Muḥammad Hīdajī, ed. Ghulām-
Ḥusayn Riḍānizhād Nūshīn and Muḥammad Diyhīm (Tabriz: Tālār-i Kitāb, n.d.), pp. 9–33.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 291

5) Āqā Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir Iṣṭahbānātī. He began his education early

and at the age of twelve went to Shiraz where he studied for eight years in
the Manṣūriyya Madrasa. Around 1284/1867–68, he went to Tehran and
studied under Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, Mullā ʿAlī Kanī, Sayyid Mahdī Qazwīnī
Najafī and Muḥammad Taqī Harawī. He returned to Shiraz around
1296/1878–79. He was exiled to Samarra on account of a dispute with the
governor of Fārs, Qawām al-Mulk. In Samarra, he joined the classes of
Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥassan Shīrāzī (d. 1312/1895), from whom Iṣṭihbānātī
earned a license for ijtihād. After the death of Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī, he went
to Najaf and established a school for philosophy there. Iṣṭihbānātī was an
accomplished litterateur, and an authority on mathematics and related
sciences. He wrote various articles in this field. Being politically involved
in support of the Constitution, he was killed by the opponents in 1326
Sh./1908 in Shiraz.
6) Sayyid ʿAbbās Mūsawī Shāhrūdī (d. 1341/1922–23). One of Jilwa’s students
who, on account of his beautiful script, transcribed some of Jilwa’s writ-
ings. These included: Jilwa’s gloss on Qayṣarī’s commentary on Ibn ʿArabī’s
Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam;35 his gloss on ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s al-Durra al-fākhira,
which Shāhrūdī copied in Nastaʿlīq in 1306/1888–89;36 his Risāla-yi kullī u
aqsām-i ān, copied in 1307/1889–90;37 his gloss on Dawūd Qayṣarī’s com-
mentary on Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam;38 and his Risāla dar wujūd u aqsām-i ān.39
7) Sayyid Naṣr Allāh Taqawī (d. 1326 Sh./1947–48). He was born in Tehran in
1288/1863–64. He studied the rational and transmitted sciences under
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and Mīrzā Ḥasan Āshtiyānī (d. 1319/1901–1902).
Then, in order to complete his education, he travelled to the shrine cities
of Iraq and studied with the scholars of Najaf. Taqawī also travelled to
Europe where he became particularly interested in Western discussions
on positive laws (qawānīn-i mawḍūʿa), that is the laws enacted by the
properly instituted branch of government. He was one of the leaders of
the constitutional movement from its inception or even earlier. He was
the representative of the ulama and their students (ṭullāb) in Tehran in
the first two terms of the parliament (1324–1328/1906–1910). Later in his
career, Taqawī taught at the Faculty of Law and Rational and Transmitted

35  M S Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 418.

36  M S Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 649.
37  M S Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 1172.
38  M S Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 418.
39  Mūsawī Shāhrūdī transcribed this work at least twice: MSS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds-i
Riḍawī 648 and 1173.
292 Barkhah

Sciences of the University of Tehran and was for a while the head of the
faculty. He edited some philosophical and mystical texts including Awṣāf
al-ashrāf by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī; Durrat al-tāj by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d.
710/1311); and Jāwidān-nāma and al-Mufīd li-l-mustafīd by Afḍal al-Dīn
Kāshānī known as Bābā Afḍal (d. ca. 667/1212–13). He was also involved in
the establishment of the National Library of Iran in 1322/1904.40 He pur-
chased some two hundred and five volumes of Jilwa’s library from Jilwa’s
heirs, which he then transferred to the Majlis Library.41
Apart from the above-mentioned students, some students of Āqā Muḥammad
Riḍā Qumsha’ī’s used to attend Jilwa’s classes regularly, including Mīrzā Shihāb
al-Dīn Nayrīzī (d. 1320/1902–1903), Mīrzā Hāshim Ashkiwarī (d. 1332/1913–1914),
Mīrzā Maḥmūd Mudarris Kahakī Qummī (d. 1304 Sh./1925–1926), and Shaykh
ʿAbd al-Nabī Nūrī (d. 1343/1924).42

3 Writings

Most of Jilwa’s writings are glosses on philosophical and non-philosophical

books. These glosses have no introduction, and the author made no attempt to
organize them. He wrote all his philosophical and scholarly works in Arabic. In
his autobiography, he says, “Because I knew that writing an entirely new work
is difficult if not impossible, I did not write independent works. Rather I wrote
many glosses, on the Ḥikma mutaʿāliya, which is known as the Asfār, and other
books. Currently, they are in hands of certain students and can be made use
of.”43 Jilwa’s most important writings are listed below:

3.1 Glosses
1. A Gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya
al-arbaʿa44: This is the only work that Jilwa mentions in his

40  Ḥasan Mursalwand, Zindagīnāma-yi rijāl u mashāhīr-i Īrān (Tehran: Ilhām, 1369 Sh./1990–
91), vol. 2, pp. 269–271; Maḥmūd Hidāyat, Gulzār-i jāwīdān (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Zībā,
1353–55 Sh./1974–76), vol. 1, p. 281; Muḥammad Bāqir Burqaʿī, Sukhanwarān-i nāmī-i
muʿāṣir-i Īrān (Qom: Khurram, 1373 Sh./1994), vol. 2, p. 907; M. ʿA. ʿIbrat Nāʾīnī, Tadhkira-yi
madīnat al-adab, vol. 3, pp. 504–507.
41  M. M. Āqā Buzurg Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa, vol. 6, p. 403.
42  M. Ṭ. Tunikābunī, “Mukhtaṣar-i sharḥ-i aḥwāl-i Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 656; M. M. Āqā Buzurg
Ṭihrānī, Ṭabaqāt aʿlām al-Shīʿa, vol. 14, p. 845; Y. Dawlatābādī, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā, vol. 1, pp. 112–
113; M. Ṣadūqī Suhā, Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, pp. 373,
475–483.
43  See M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, p. 34.
44  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 81–308.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 293

autobiography. It is among the few writings for which there are many ex-
tant manuscripts. Throughout the work, the author identifies many unac-
knowledged sources of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār. A portion of this work com-
prises an explanation of the text of the Asfār. Another portion of the
work consists of Jilwa’s critical comments. In some places, he defends
Avicenna’s ideas, rejecting Mullā Ṣadrā’s objections to them as invalid.45
Given the fact that he referred to this work in his autobiography, most of
it must have been written before 1294/1877. MS Majlis 106 contains a ho-
lograph of this work.46
2. A Gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat
al-ḥikma47: This gloss was published in lithograph along with the com-
mentary in 1313/1895–96 in Tehran.48
3. A Gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mashāʿir49: In this work, Jilwa drew greatly on
the commentary on the Mashāʿir by his teacher Muḥammad Jaʿfar Lāhījī.
This work was lithographed in Tehran in 1315/1897–98 along with the text
of the Mashāʿir. MS Majlis 101 contains a holograph of this gloss.50
4. A Gloss on Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād51: This work was litho-
graphed in Tehran in 1314/1896–97 along with the text of al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-
maʿād. It mostly consists of explanatory comments. In places, however,
he also raises objections and provides answers to them.52
5. A Gloss on Dawūd al-Qayṣarī’s Introduction to His Commentary on Ibn
ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam53: This work reveals Jilwa’s mystical inclinations
and in writing it he drew on the mystical writings of ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla

45  Ibid., p. 93.

46  For the description of the manuscript copies of this work, particularly MS Majlis 106, see
A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 87–91.
47  Ibid., pp. 449–482.
48  Another copy of this gloss is MS Majlis 133. According to Ḥasan Riḍāzāda, some glosses
preserved in MS Majlis 133 do not exist in the lithograph and vice versa. For his edition,
Riḍāzāda used both the lithograph and the manuscript copy. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 451–452.
49  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 373–388.
50  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, p. 376.
51  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakim-i Jilwa, pp. 343–371.
52  Ḥasan Riḍāzāda’s edition of this work is based on the lithograph edition only. He states
that his efforts to find a manuscript of it have proved unsuccessful. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakim-i Jilwa, pp. 345–346.
53  Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtīyānī edited and published this gloss along with Qayṣarī’s com-
mentary on Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. See Dāwūd Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. Jalāl al-Dīn
Āshtiyānī (Tehran: 1375 Sh./1996–97). Further, Ḥasan Riḍāzāda edited it on the basis of
two manuscripts; MSS Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 418 and Marʿashī 7021. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-
yi āthār-i ḥakim-i Jilwa, pp. 483–576.
294 Barkhah

Simnānī, Muʾayyad al-Dīn Jandī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān

Jāmī, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Turka Iṣfahānī, and Ibn ʿArabī, as well as the philosophi-
cal writings of Avicenna, the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī and Fayḍ
Kāshānī.54
6. A Gloss on Avicenna’s Shifāʾ55: In this gloss Jilwa draws on Avicenna’s
other writings as well as Bahmanyār’s al-Taḥṣīl, Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s al-
Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya, Sayyid Sharīf Jurjānī’s Sharḥ al-Mawāqif, Mīr
Dāmād’s al-Qabasāt, Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār and his Sharḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma,
Fayḍ Kāshānī’s ʿAyn al-yaqīn and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-
ilhām in order to elucidate the discussions in the Shifāʾ. Regarding this
work, Murtaḍā Mudarrisī Chahārdahī writes:

Among the benefits of Mīrza Jilwa’s gloss on Avicenna’s Shifāʾ is that,

first, as much as possible, he explains ambiguous passages in the Shifāʾ
by directly quoting clearer passages by Avicenna himself. Second, Jilwa
mentions issues that are related to the writings of early philosophers
(qudamāʾ); he confirms, explains, rejects, or problematizes them. He
quotes the text verbatim, and he also mentions the sources of his re-
marks at the end. Jilwa has actually explained the Shifāʾ in Avicenna’s
own words, and the words of early philosophers, while remaining true
to the text. He always connects the content of a passage to its author,
even for contemporaneous issues in natural philosophy. In particular,
he notes issues in which there have been developments, and he offers
additional explanations in the discussions of natural science.56

A copy of the Shifāʾ with holograph marginalia by Jilwais preserved in the

Central Library of the University of Tehran (MS Tehran, University of
Tehran, Mishkāt 241). Jilwa seems to have been teaching the Shifāʾ on the
basis of this copy.57 He also wrote some editorial remarks in the margins.58
7. A Gloss on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s commentary on Avicenna’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-
tanbīhāt: Most of this gloss comprises citations from other books of

54  For example, see D. Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 170–206.
55  Jilwa’s gloss on Physics of the Shifāʾ has been edited in A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakim-i
Jilwa, pp. 309–342.
56  Murtaḍā Mudarrisī Chahārdahī, “Ḥakīm Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan-i Jilwa,” Jilwa 2 (1324 Sh./1945):
11–23 (17–18).
57  See Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, Fihrist-i kitābkhāna-i ihdāyī-i Āqā Sayyid Muḥammad
Mishkāt bi kitābkhāna-yi dānishgāh-i Tihrān, vol. 3, part 1 (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānīshgāh-i
Tihrān, 1332 Sh./1953–54), p. 289.
58  See Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakim-i Jilwa, pp. 315–316.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 295

philosophy and theology, including Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī’s al-Muḥākamāt,

Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Asās al-iqtibās, Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s al-Mabāḥith al-
mashriqiyya, Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār, and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī’s Shawāriq al-
ilhām as well as the latter’s Gawhar-i murād. Jilwa cites these works to
elucidate the text. MS Majlis 126 contains a holograph of this work.59
8. A Gloss on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Qūshjī’s Commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd
al-iʿtiqād60: This gloss was written in a critical manner. MS Majlis 84 con-
tains a holograph of this work.
9. A Gloss on Qāḍīzāda Rūmī’s Commentary on Muḥammad Jaghmīnī’s al-
Mulakhkhaṣ: On astronomy, this work was published in lithograph in
Tehran in 1311/1893–94.

3.2 Short Treatises

1. A Remark on the Unity of the Intellect and the Intelligible (Fāʾida fī
ittiḥād al-ʿāqil wa-l-maʿqūl)61: A refutation of the Neoplatonic idea of the
unity of the intellect and the intelligible, defended by Mullā Ṣadrā in his
writings. This treatise was published in Tehran in 1313/1895 in lithograph
on the margins of Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s
Hidāyat al-ḥikma.62
2. A Remark on Substantial Motion (Fāʾida fī bayān al-ḥaraka fī l-jawhar wa-
anna al-murād minhā mā hiya): In defense of Avicenna, this is a refuta-
tion in Arabic of motion in the category of essences, and a critique of
Mullā Ṣadrā’s notion of substantial motion. A lithograph edition of this
treatise was published in Tehran in 1313/1895–96 in the margins of Mullā
Ṣadrā’s commentary on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma.63
3. An Investigation into the Relationship between the Originated and the
Pre-Eternal (Taḥqīq fī bayān rabṭ al-ḥādith bi-l-qadīm): In this work, Jilwa
delved into the views of Avicenna, Ghazālī, and Mīr Dāmād in order to
critique Mullā Ṣadrā’s view on the relation between that which is

59  Yūsuf Iʿtiṣāmī, Fihrist-i kitābkhāna-yi Majlis-i shūrā-yi millī, vol. 2 (Tehran: Majlis-i Shūrā-
yī Millī, 1311 Sh./1932–93), p. 65. Ḥasan Riḍāzāda edited and published the portion of this
work, which he thinks represents Jilwa’s distinguished views. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi
āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 389–415.
60  A portion of this work was published by Ḥasan Riḍāzāda. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i
ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 417–448.
61  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakim-i Jilwa, pp. 468–470.
62  Riḍāzāda’s edition of this gloss is based on the lithography edition and MS Majlis 133.
63  Muḥsin Kadīwar edited this work on the basis of the lithograph edition. See Abū l-Ḥasan
Jilwa and Muḥsin Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” Nāma-yi Mufīd 2 6 (1375
Sh./1996–97): 109–122. It was also edited by Ḥasan Riḍāzāda on the basis of the lithograph
edition and MS Majlis 133. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 470–477.
296 Barkhah

originated and that which is pre-eternal. Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris and Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī both responded to Jilwa’s criticisms in their
own writings.64 This treatise was first published in lithograph in Tehran
in 1313/1895–96 in the margins of Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on Athīr al-
Dīn Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma.65 The date of its authorship is unknown.
However, given the responses to it by Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris and Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, it must have been written before 1306/1888,
the year of the death of Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī.
4. A Remark/Treatise on How a Single Concept Can Be Abstracted from Dis-
tinct Quiddities (Fāʾida/Risāla fī kayfiyyat intizāʾ mafhūm al-wāḥid min
al-ḥaqāʾiq al-mutabāyana):66 Jilwa argues in this work that a single con-
cept of existence can be abstracted from different quiddities in the world
without any need to consider these quiddities as being one. Āqā
Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī (d. 1306/1888) responded to this treatise in a
work titled Refutation of the Permissibility of Abstracting a Single Concept
from Distinct Quiddities (Risāla fī radd jawāz intizāʾ al-mafhūm al-wāḥid
min al-ḥaqāʾiq al-mutabāyana). Despite disagreements with Jilwa,
Qumsha‌ʾī refers to him with respect giving him titles such as the philoso-
pher (ḥakīm), the verifier (muḥaqqiq) and the meticulous thinker (mu-
daqqiq). Given Qumsha‌ʾī’s response, Jilwa must have completed his trea-
tise before Qumsha‌ʾī’s death.67
5. A Remark on the Proof of the Existence of the Forms of Species in Bodies
(Fī ithbāt wujūd al-ṣuwar nawʿiyya fī l-ajsām)68
6. A Remark/Treatise to Establish that An Indefinite Proposition is a Uni-
versal Proposition (Fāʾida/Risāla al-qaḍiyya al-muhmala hiya al-qaḍiyya
al-ṭabīʿiyya): In this treatise, after discussing the views of Fakhr al-Dīn
Rāzī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, and Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī, Jilwa concludes that a uni-
versal proposition (qaḍiyya ṭabīʿiyya) and an indefinite proposition
(qaḍiyya muhmala) are one and the same.69

64  See A. Jilwa and M. Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 111.
65  Kadīwar’s edition is based on the lithograph edition only. But Riḍāzāda used MS Majlis
133 as well. See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 477–482.
66  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 605–608.
67  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 603–604.
68  M S Qom, Marʿashī 8081, fols. 49b–50b. See Aḥmad Ḥusaynī Ashkiwarī, Fihrist-i nuskhahā-
yi khaṭṭī-yi kitābkhāna-yi ʿumūmī-i ḥaḍrat-i Āyat Allāh al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī (Qom:
Kitābkhāna-yi ʿUmūmī-i Ḥaḍrat-i Āyat Allāh al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī, 1372 Sh./1993–94),
vol. 21, pp. 81–82.
69  See Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and ʿIzz al-Dīn Riḍānizhād (ed.), “Risāla-yi al-Qaḍiyya al-muhma-
la hiya al-qaḍiyya al-ṭabīʿiyya,” in Ghulām-Riḍā Gulī Zawāra (ed.), Gulshan-i Jilwa, pp.
119–123. This edition is based on the single known copy of this work, MS Marʿashī 8081,
fols. 52b–53b.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 297

7. A Remark on the Acceptance of Supplication (Fāʾida/Risāla fī bayān

istijābat al-duʿā):70 In this short Arabic work, Jilwa divides quiddity into
three categories: a quiddity that is auspicious (saʿīd) by nature (dhāt); a
quiddity that is wretched (shaqī) by nature; and a quiddity that has the
capacity for happiness (saʿāda). If God showed this last type of quiddity
blessing (khayr) and happiness, and that quiddity accepted it, it would
achieve happiness. Supplicating God is also one of the causes of salvation
and success. For the third type of quiddity, known in the Qurʾān as “the
Companions of the Right” (aṣḥāb al-yamīn), supplication acts as a medi-
cine for the sick. However, supplication will not benefit the first or second
types of quiddity. Jilwa considers knowing God the most effective means
of ensuring the acceptance of supplication.

3.3 Lecture Transcriptions

1. On Universals and their Divisions (Fī l-kullī wa-aqsāmihā): This treatise is
a transcript of a lecture that Jilwa delivered in 1307/1889–90, by his stu-
dent Sayyid ʿAbbās Mūsawī Shāhrūdī.71
2. On Existence (Risāla Wujūdiyya): This piece, on the idea of the pervasive-
ness of existence (sarayān al-wujūd), is a transcript of Jilwa’s lecture on
this issue by one of his students, possibly Sayyid ʿAbbās Mūsawī
Shāhrūdī.72
3. Short Philosophical Comments: It comprises several philosophical dis-
cussions. It begins with a comment about existence and quiddity, how
they are related, and how they are abstracted. The next comment is on
Suhrawardī’s theory of light. As far as Jilwa was concerned, when saying
that the soul and what lies beyond it is pure light, Suhrawardī was refer-
ring to existence. Another comment concerns mathematical body (jism-i
taʿlīmī) or the three-dimensional extension of body. The piece also in-
cludes questions and responses on the relationship between the exis-
tence of actual things (wujūd al-aʿyān) and God, and how existence can
be abstracted. In addition, Jilwa poses a question about the incipience
(ḥudūth) of existents and then supplies an answer to it. In another

70  There are two known manuscript copies of this work: MSS Marʿashī 8081 (fols. 55a–57b)
and Majlis 1911 (copied by Yahyā Dawlatābādī in 1312/1894–95). For the edition of this
work see Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and Sayyid Hādī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, “Risāla fī bayān istijābat al-duʿā,”
in Ghulām-Riḍā Gulī Zawāra (ed.), Gulshan-i Jilwa, pp. 107–117.
71  For the edition of this treatise, see Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa and Ḥusayn Sayyid Mūsawī (ed.),
“Risāla dar kullī wa aqsām-i ān: Az taqrīrāt-i marḥūm Āqā Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa,”
Khiradnāma-yi Ṣadrā 3 (1375 Sh./1996): 93–99.
72  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 623–638.
298 Barkhah

comment, he also discusses Mullā Ṣadrā’s view on the copulative func-

tion of existence and explains other expressions from the Asfār.73
4. A Gloss on ʿAbd al-Rahmān Jāmī’s al-Durra al-fākhira: In this gloss, which
is a transcription of Jilwa’s classes made by Sayyid ʿAbbās Mūsawī
Shāhrūdī in 1306/1888, an attempt is made to explain the concept of the
unity of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd) as it was understood by ʿAbd al-
Rahmān Jāmī in his al-Durra al-fākhira.74

3.4 Poetry and Other Writings

1. Dīwān: Including odes (qasīdas), love poetry (ghazals), couplets (qaṭʿa)
and poems of different forms.75
2. An introduction to the dīwān of Mujmar: It was published in Tehran in
1312/1894–95.
3. His autobiography: This was written at the request of ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā
Qājār Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana to be included in Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī.76

4 Jilwa’s Philosophical Thought

Even though Jilwa lived at a time when philosophical discourse revolved around
Mullā Ṣadrā more than any other figure, he inclined toward the philosophical
views of Avicenna. Most of Jilwa’s views were criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā’s ideas
and al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya. According to Yaḥyā Dawlatābādī (d. 1318 Sh./1939)
who also attended some of his classes, Jilwa, “teaches the books of later phi-
losophers, particularly Mullā Ṣadrā, but he does not attach much importance
to them, especially the Asfār, which Jilwa considers a collection of other books
compiled later by Mulla Ṣadrā’s students.”77 Below we will note some impor-
tant examples of Jilwa’s criticisms of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy.

4.1 Abstracting a Single Concept from Distinct Quiddities

One of the philosophical discussions that Jilwa focused on is the abstraction of
a single concept from distinct quiddities. In the Asfār this issue is fundamen-
tal to the univocality, the primacy (aṣālat) and the gradation (tashkīk) of exis-
tence. Jilwa wrote an independent treatise on this issue. In it Jilwa maintained

73  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 581–582.

74  Ibid., pp. 639–651.
75  As mentioned before, Aḥmad Suhaylī Khwānsārī edited Jilwā’s Dīwān.
76  M. Ḥ. Iʿtimād al-Salṭana et al., Nāma-yi dānishwarān-i Nāṣirī, vol. 3, pp. 31–37.
77  Y. Dawlatābādī, Ḥayāt-i Yaḥyā, vol. 1, p. 113.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 299

that abstracting a single concept from distinct quiddities, which do not have
anything essential in common, is impossible.78 In other words, he agrees with
Mullā Ṣadrā that abstracting a single concept from distinct quiddities neces-
sitates the existence of something in common. However, as far as he is con-
cerned, this does not require what is common in these quiddities to be essen-
tial (dhātī) or real (ḥaqīqī). Therefore, it is possible for the concept of existence
to be abstracted from the concomitants (lawāzim) of those distinct quiddities
since there is no proof for the argument that the concept of existence is essen-
tial (dhātī). The thing in common might be a negative concept (maʿnā salbī),
for example, “human” and “tree” are both “not-horse.” in which case it does not
entail that the thing in common is real or essential. If, however, the existence
of the Necessary Existent and the existence of contingents are completely dif-
ferent, how can a single concept be abstracted from them? Jilwa replies that
there is indeed something in common between the existence of the Necessary
Existent and the existence of contingents. But having something in common
does not mean that they have an essential similarity, for it can be said that both
of them are effective (mabda‌ʾ al-āthār). In sum, Jilwa undermines the need to
posit essential commonality in order to abstract a common concept. So long
as there is something in common, even something that is non-essential (ghayr
dhātī), it will suffice. Therefore, things which have something in common are
not necessarily one and the same.
In response to Jilwa’s view, Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī wrote a trea-
tise titled Risāla fī radd jawāz intizāʿ al-mafhūm al-wāḥid min al-ḥaqāʾiq al-
mutabāyana. In this treatise, Qumsha‌ʾī argues that abstracting a single con-
cept from distinct quiddities is possible only when there is an essential com-
monality between the quiddities. Even when the intended commonality is
not essential for the two sides, it must be based on something in common in
their essences.79 In the closing paragraphs of it, he writes that Jilwa was either
speaking to the tastes of laypeople or that what he really meant has not been
understood because he was too great to utter such nonsense. Either that or we
have not understood the true meaning of his view.80

4.2 Rejecting the Unity of Existence

As mentioned, the question of the abstraction of a single concept from distinct
quiddities is one of the fundamental discussions in Mullā Ṣadrā’s ontology. It is
precisely for this reason that Jilwa discusses this issue. For Jilwa, the ability to

78  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 605–608.

79  M. R. Qumsha‌ʾī, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā Qumsha‌ʾī, pp. 247–252.
80  Ibid., p. 252.
300 Barkhah

abstract a single concept of existence from different quiddities does not entail
these quiddities having any essential commonality. Basically, Jilwa is against
the conception of existence found in Ibn ʿArabī’s thought, and subsequently
in Mullā Ṣadrā’s discussions of ontology under the rubric of a single reality,
which pervades all existents. He also criticizes the idea of unfolding existence
(wujūd al-munbasiṭ), or existence negatively conditioned (wujūd bi-sharṭ lā)
which allowed Mullā Ṣadrā to unify all existents. In his gloss on the introduc-
tion to Qayṣarī’s commentary on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, he makes clear
his disagreement with the idea of the unity of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd):
“Know that the unity of existence, in the sense that existence is necessary in
itself and by its essence, is wrong, even if the expressions of mystics give that
impression.”81
In his lecture On Existence (al-Risāla al-wujūdiyya), which is about this
issue, in particular, Jilwa provides more details. He quotes two examples from
the statements of mystics that express the idea of the unity of existence. These
two statements are from Ibn ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya:
(1) “He [= existence of the Truth] is identical with every thing in terms of
manifestation, [yet] He is not identical with things in their essences, glo-
rified and exalted be He. Rather, He remains He, and things remain
things.”82
(2) “The Absolute is the Truth, described through every description.”83
Criticizing these statements, Jilwa said that if we accept that the totality of ex-
istence runs through every existent, then every existent has the capacity to be
determined by all determinations (taʿayyunāt). For example, the existence of
man can be determined by the quiddity of horse or any other determination.
For every existent, the existence of one of these determinations over another
is not to be preferred:

I say that the unity of existence means that existence is necessary in it-
self and by its essence (al-wājib bi-ʿaynih wa-bi-dhātih), and it pervades
all existents and is determined by every determination, and there is no
level of existence, which is separate and detached from those determina-
tions, because if existence is in its totality in every determination, then
all [possible] determinations must be in every single determination. For
example, it should have been possible to abstract the quiddity of horse,
and an infinite number of other quiddities, from the existence of human.

81  See A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, p. 493.

82  Mūḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), vol. 2, p. 484.
83  Ibid., vol. 2, p. 245.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 301

If you say that is indeed so, except that some determinations are manifest
while others are not, for instance, in the humanized existence (al-wujūd
al-insānī) of the human all determinations are there, however only the
human determination is manifest, then, I ask, what is the reason that
some are apparent while others are not? Since all exist through a single
existence, all should be apparent, or all should be concealed.84

Jilwa also says that if we consider the Necessary Existent a non-determined

existence, then we have actually made it conceptual (iʿtibārī) because extra-
mental existence is determined existence:

Furthermore, it means that the existence of the Necessary Existent is

conceptual, and the existence of the contingent is real because existence
outside the mind and in and of itself (fī nafs al-amr) is determined exis-
tence. According to the proponent of the unity of existence, determined
existence is contingent. When the existence of this determined thing is
considered without considering the determination (of it), it is the Neces-
sary Existent according to the proponent of the unity of existence. So the
Necessary Existent is conceptual; it does not exist in the external world
qua the Necessary Existent because it is an existent that is free from all
determinations apart from being conceptual in the intellect.85

In the above passage, it appears that Jilwa is alluding to the issue of existence
and quiddity in the Necessary Existent. According to Mullā Ṣadrā, quiddity is
determination itself (ʿayn al-taʿayyun), and for this reason, he completely re-
jects it for the Necessary Existent. This is why Jilwa raises objections in the
passage above: he thinks the doctrine of the unity of existence entails the Nec-
essary Existent being conceptual, especially from the perspective of Ibn ʿArabī,
for whom there is no clear distinction between the existence of the Necessary
Existent and the existence of the contingents.

4.3 Substantial Motion

One of the most significant discussions in Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy concerns
substantial motion. Opposing the view of Aristotle and Avicenna, Mullā Ṣadrā
links motion and change with the existence of things, and not with categories
pertaining to the essence. According to Mullā Ṣadrā, the substance of a thing
which is in motion does not stay the same. It changes all the time. Its existence,

84  A. Jilwa, Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i ḥakīm-i Jilwa, pp. 232–233.

85  Ibid., p. 234.
302 Barkhah

however, remains stable and that provides individuation (waḥda shakhṣiyya)86

of the thing over time and it joins the states of quiddity in the course of move-
ment/change. Furthermore, he argues that substantial motion is something
continuous (muttaṣil), in other words, a thing in motion does not relinquish
any of its actualities.87
Mullā Ṣadrā proffers several arguments to prove substantial motion. For ex-
ample, he argues that according to philosophers the nature (ṭabīʿa) of every-
thing is the origin of motion in that thing, and they have established proofs
for that. What is meant by “nature” here is the form itself, in the sense that it is
related to movements and actions. Thus, the nature of a thing must be subject
to motion because it is impossible for a new and changeable thing to come
from something that is unchangeable.88
Avicenna was aware of this issue too. His conclusion, however, was the exact
opposite of Mullā Ṣadrā’s. He argued that motion does not necessitate a chang-
ing nature because movements are gradual: through the process, the thing
moves away from one thing and approaches something else, even as its nature
remains unchanged. Thus, the cause of the renewal and change of something
must be the renewal of a state of that thing which is not its nature, but some-
thing accidental (ʿāriḍī) to it.89
Mullā Ṣadrā believed that this renewal of states must boil down to its na-
ture, because every forced movement (ḥaraka qasriyya) eventually cannot re-
sist the nature of the moving object, and the soul as an agent which possesses
the will to move and change could not accomplish this task without involving
the nature of the moving object itself. Therefore, he concluded, every renewed
motion indicates a change in the nature of the thing, and is caused by it.90
The concept of substantial motion was subject to several criticisms. Most
of these were actually based on the arguments of Avicenna.91 Jilwa was one of

86  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 3, pp. 83, 86–87.

87  See Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, pp. 608–609.
88  See Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 3, p. 65; vol. 5, p. 253.
89  Avicenna, al-Shifāʾ. al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt, ed. Ibrāhīm Madkūr et al. (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi ʿUmūmī-
yi Ḥaḍrat-i Āyat Allāh al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī, 1404–1406/1984–86), vol. 1, p. 302; idem,
al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Nūrānī (Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies of Mc-
Gill University [Tehran Branch], 1363 Sh./1984–85), p. 52.
90  Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 3, pp. 61–62, 65.
91  On Avicenna’s rejection of trans-substantial motion, see Avicenna, al-Najāt min al-gharq
fī baḥr al-ḍalālāt, ed. Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i
Tihrān, 1364 Sh./1985), p. 205. See also Ṣ. Shīrāzī, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, pp. 210–211.
For further reading on this issue, see Munīra Palangī, “Ḥarakat-i jawharī,” Dānishnāma-yi
jahān-i Islām, ed. Ghulām-ʿAlī Ḥaddād ʿĀdil (Tehran: Bunyād-i Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī,
1388 Sh./2009–10), vol. 13, pp. 51–54.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 303

those who rejected the concept of substantial motion and wrote a treatise on
this topic. He first presented Mullā Ṣadrā’s argument: every accidental motion,
be it natural (ṭabīʿī), voluntary (irādī) or forced (qasrī), is caused by an essential
motion. This essential motion is the motion of the nature of the moving ob-
ject. Since the nature of movable objects is their substance, we can conclude
that the substance of all moving bodies is in motion.92 Jilwa then explained
that the idea that accidental movements are due to an essential motion is
only correct insofar as a moving object cannot be associated with a stationary
one.93 However, it is not correct to assume that essential motion is the same
as substantial motion because one can say that every movement in the world
of generation and corruption is caused by the motions of the spheres. In other
words, essential motion can be considered to be the renewal of the spheres,
since all accidental movements are related to the renewal of celestial bodies,
and caused by them.94 Celestial movement has nothing to do with the nature
of the celestial bodies, in other words, that motion is not substantial. Even if
it were, the nature of celestial bodies was considered to be different from the
nature of elements in the sublunary world. So what is applicable to them may
not be applicable to the moving objects of the sublunary world.
Jilwa then quotes and criticizes another of Mullā Ṣadrā’s arguments for sub-
stantial motion.95 This, according to Jilwa, is as follows: if there is no motion in
the substance, then, in the process of the alteration and succession of instants,
prime matter must be without form in between two instants. So, when the
form of water changes into the form of air as a result of heat, if first the form of
water ceases to exist, and then the form of air comes into existence, without an
instant of time between them, that entails a succession of instants (tawālī al-
ānāt), which boils down to atomism, the falsity of which has been established.
And if there is a duration of time between the extinction of one form and the
generation of another, then, in between those two forms, prime matter must
be void of any type of essence, which is also impossible. Therefore, both the
extinction and generation of specific forms occur to prime matter gradually,
not instantaneously, and that is substantial motion.
Jilwa problematizes this argument by saying that it does not necessitate a
succession of instants (tawālī al-ānāt), nor does it mean that prime matter will
remain formless, because we can posit another reason for the generation of

92  A. Jilwa and M. Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 112.
93  Ibid., 112–113.
94  We will explain this idea in greater detail in the next section on the connection between
what is originated (ḥādith) and what is pre-eternal (qadīm).
95  A. Jilwa and M. Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 113–117.
304 Barkhah

the form of air, i.e., the form of air comes into being at the time when it is
connected to the form of water. The corruption (fasād) of the first form of air
is instantaneous but the generation of the second form of air is like intermedi-
ary motion (ḥaraka tawassuṭiyya), which does not conform to time even when
it is temporal (zamānī). In defence of the Aristotelian notion of generation
and corruption, Jilwa explains that the second form comes into existence at a
time when it is connected to the extinction of the first form. The emergence
of this new form is not gradual, and therefore it does not entail the alteration
of the substance or the nullification of generation and corruption; rather, it is
intermediary (tawassuṭī), since in intermediary motion there is distance and
a lapse of time between the beginning and the end. In the same way that the
incipience of intermediary motion is not gradual, the emergence of the second
form is not gradual either. So we cannot assume that there is an instant, or
a period of time (zamānī) between the instant when the first form becomes
devoid of matter, and the time when the second form comes into existence;
and without this assumption, there is no danger of matter being without form
since, according to this theory, there is no gap between the first form and the
second. Explaining how an essential form (ṣūra jawhariyya) comes into tempo-
ral being, Jilwa says, “If you object by saying that Avicenna said that the second
form emerges instantaneously, the answer to your question is that Avicenna,
in the Physics of the Shifāʾ, said that “instantaneous” (dafʿī) has two meanings:
one in the sense of occurring in an instant, and another in the sense of some-
thing that stands in contrast to occurring bit by bit.”96
Jilwa also gives other arguments for substantial motion and criticizes and
refutes them on the basis of Avicenna’s principles of philosophy. His most im-
portant criticisms are based on the idea that, if we presume that motion oc-
curs within the substance [of a thing], then there is no stable (thābit) subject
(mawḍūʿ) for motion.
Some of the followers of Ṣadrian philosophy responded to Jilwa’s criticisms
of substantial motion. In his lectures on the Asfār, Muṭahharī discussed Jil-
wa’s first objection. He said that to respond to Jilwa’s objection, one must fully
grasp the difference between two types of motion. In substantial motion, mo-
tion is essential (dhātī); however, when it comes to accidental motion (ḥaraka
ʿaraḍiyya), motion cannot be essential (dhātī), since the existence of accidents
is not an independent one. According to Muṭahharī, it is considered indepen-
dent and as having individuation (tashakhkhuṣ), when, in reality, accidents
are not independent of their subjects (mawḍūʿ). And if it were assumed to be
independent, then by definition it would no longer be an accident. Therefore,

96  A. Jilwa and M. Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 113–117.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 305

without an independent subject, accidents (aʿrāḍ) cannot be the subject of

motion. When Mullā Ṣadrā says that the renewal of things (mutajaddidāt)
comes down to the fact that their essence (dhāt) is in flux, he refers to a m
­ otion/
change which involves the essence. The objection by Jilwa that motion is not
identical to the moving object is only true for accidental motion. In substantial
motion, however, motion is indeed identical to the moving object. It is only in
accidental motion that these two are distinct and the essence of the moving
object remains stable in the course of motion/change.97
Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī repeatedly alluded to Jilwa’s critical views in his
writings and responded to some of them. On one occasion he quoted a passage
from Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār which was the subject of Jilwa’s criticism:

The subject for trans-substantial motion is prime matter, but not in and
of itself, since it cannot exist without some form, rather the subject for
this motion is some form (ṣūratun mā) that has no determination (lā ʿalā
l-taʿayyun); its motion only occurs in the characteristics of the substantial
form (al-ṣūra al-jawhariyya).”98

Jilwa objected to this passage by saying that a form that is the basis of the in-
dividuation of an individual cannot have an existence that is separate from its
characteristics, such that one could say motion occurs in them; rather renewal,
change and the transience of characteristics are change and the transience of
the substantial form. Both of these exist in a single existence. Although ac-
cording to rational analysis, they are different, this [purely rational] difference
is insufficient, because motion occurs in the external world, and therefore it
must have a stable subject too, not just an analytical and mental existence. The
description that Mullā Ṣadrā presents of a stable form truly exists in reality. Ad-
dressing this objection, Āshtiyānī regarded it as the same as that of Avicenna,
in which it is argued that motion requires a subject, and since prime matter
does not have independent reality, it cannot be the subject.99 According to
Aristotle, prime matter is inextricable from form. Based on the inextricabil-
ity of prime matter and form, it is necessary that, when the form ceases to
exist, the body becomes completely nonexistent. According to Āshtiyānī, Jilwa
based his argument on Mullā Ṣadrā’s principles, in which matter and form are

97  Murtaḍā Muṭahharī, Ḥarakat u zamān dar falsafa-yi Islāmī (Tehran: Ilhām, 1366 Sh./1987–
88), vol. 1, pp. 302, 332.
98  Ṣ. al-Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya, vol. 4, p. 274.
99  See Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī’s introduction to his edition of Fayḍ Kāshānī’s Uṣūl al-maʿārif
(Qom: Daftar-i Tablīghāt-i Islāmī-i Ḥawza-yi ʿIlmiyya-yi Qum, 1362 Sh./1983–1984),
pp. 275–304.
306 Barkhah

unified. Nevertheless, he supposed that his objection was applicable. However,

he missed the fact that Mullā Ṣadrā believed in the gradational unity (waḥda
tashkīkiyya) of existence, and he did not consider existence to be in motion.
Had he given due attention to the discussion on existence and motion in real-
ity, he would have seen that motion is a description of existence; existence
by its essence is not composite; it is characterized by a special gradation; and
based on the primacy of existence, and the unity of reality and this special gra-
dation, levels of existence exist in a single existence. In substantial motion it
is not necessary for the subject of motion to be individuated; however, in acci-
dental motion, this is necessary since accidents come forth from the substance
itself. Āshtiyānī maintained that in all his objections to substantial motion,
Jilwa, like Avicenna, had confused the precepts of existence with the precepts
of quiddity.100

4.4 The Origin of Motion

According to Avicenna, the circular motion of the spheres (aflāk) has no begin-
ning or end, because time, which is the measure of motion, also has no begin-
ning or end. This motion is in one respect singular, simple (basīṭ), unchang-
ing (thābit) and continuous, and in another respect, it admits the existence
of multiplicity and change. Therefore, with respect to change and origination,
the circular motion of the spheres is a condition for the origination of the mo-
tion of other contingents. On the one hand, it is connected to the immutable
and eternal cause from which it is emanated, and on the other, it causes the
motions of other contingents. Avicenna considered the “souls” of the spheres
to be the proximate cause of their voluntary circular motion, and at the same
time considered the intellects to be the primary cause of their motion.101 This
is because the eternal motion of the spheres is caused by an eternal agent. The
desire to resemble the First Principle with respect to perfection and actualiza-
tion becomes the basis of their motion. The desire pertains to the “soul” of
the sphere, which necessitates its eternal voluntary circular motion. Given the
fact that, according to Avicenna, the motion of an individual sphere is neither
essential (bi-l-dhāt) nor accidental (bi-l-ʿaraḍ),102 we can say that the relation

100  M. Fayḍ Kāshānī, Uṣūl al-maʿārif, pp. 276–278.

101  Avicenna, al-Shifāʾ. al-Ilāhiyyāt, ed. Ibrāhīm Madkūr et al. (Qom: Kitābkhāna-yi ʿUmūmī-i
Ḥaḍrat-i Āyat Allāh al-ʿUẓmā Marʿashī Najafī, 1404–1406/1984–86), vol. 1, pp. 381–393.
102  Avicenna, al-Shifāʾ. al-Ilāhiyyāt, vol. 1, p. 387; Avicenna, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and Quṭb al-
Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt maʿa l-sharḥ li-Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī wa-sharḥ al-sharḥ
li-Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī (Tehran: Daftar-i Nashr-i Kitāb, 1403/1983), vol. 3, p. 207; see also
Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s relevant comment: vol. 3, p. 209.
Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Jilwa 307

between what is unchanging/immutable (thābit) and what is changing is the

sphere itself, because it possesses a universal soul (nafs kullī) and a universal
will, and, in this respect, is connected to the immutable world of the intellect.
Moreover, it also possesses particular soul, by virtue of which it is the direct
cause of the eternal circular motion of the sphere. This eternal circular motion
of the spheres is the origin of other changes in the material world. Avicenna’s
theory is based on Aristotle, but, in contrast to Aristotle, who only considered
the unmoved mover (i.e., the intellect) to be the final cause (al-ʿilla al-ghāʾiyya),
Avicenna also emphasized its efficient causality.
In this case, Mullā Ṣadrā did not follow Avicenna. He proffered another so-
lution based on substantial motion (al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya), which he claims
to be in harmony with the view of Plato.103 He argued that nature (ṭabīʿa) or
the species form of bodies is that which mediates between what is unchang-
ing and what is changing. To him, the existence of the physical body, or to use
his terminology “the natural body (al-jism al-ṭabīʿī)”, is essentially changing. In
one respect, the existence of the natural body is an intellectual reality in the
knowledge of God. In another respect, it is a continuous (ittiṣālī) and graded
(tadrījī) form which coexists with prime matter. The quiddity of this nature
has nothing to do with origination and change; rather it is its mode of exis-
tence which makes it receptive to origination and change. In this way, based on
trans-­substantial motion, change is an essential characteristic of bodies and
one of the modes of their existence. From this perspective, the nature of bod-
ies vis-à-vis their existence is itself the condition for the actualization of all
change. At the same time, its oneness is explained by the intelligible (ʿaqlī)
reality which is connected to the unchanging and eternal existence.104
Jilwa wrote an independent treatise on this issue. He formulated his critique
of Mullā Ṣadrā by delving into the views of Avicenna, Ghazālī and Mīr Dāmād.
Following Avicenna, he considered the circular motion of the spheres to be
that which mediates between that which is originated and that which is pre-
eternal.105 According to Jilwa, in terms of the argument for substantial motion,
the existence of nature is changing; if such an existence comes from an agent
( fāʿil), then change itself must come from the same agent. If you were to say
that everything has a stable aspect, and the renewed thing comes from that

103  Ṣ. al-Shīrāzī, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, vol. 3, pp. 66, 67–69,
128–41; idem, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, pp. 149–151.
104  See Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Kāfī (lithograph. Tehran: Maktaba Maḥmūdī, 1391
Sh./1971–72), p. 276; Avicenna, al-Mabda‌ʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 387–398, 410–411, 519.
105  A. Jilwa and M. Kadīwar (ed.), “Du risāla az Mīrzā-yi Jilwa,” 118–122.
308 Barkhah

stable aspect, not from the aspect of renewal, we would say that the quiddity
of nature is stable whereas its existence is in constant flux. And that which
comes from the agent (fāʿil) is existence. The problem is that existence which
is changing does not have a stable aspect for one to say that it is on account
of that stable aspect that it comes from the agent. Therefore, the agent which
is supposed to be the Unmoved mover should be the direct cause of change
and motion. After presenting several objections and the answers to them, Jilwa
ultimately returned to Avicenna’s view, and considered the circular motion of
sphere, which is in one aspect immutable (thibāt) and in another aspect chang-
ing, to be what connects that which is pre-eternal to that which is generated.106
Jilwa’s belief in the role of spheres in this matter is strange given that he lived
at a time when the findings of modern astronomy were known in Iran, particu-
larly in Jilwa’s circles. However, in general, there is no indication in his writings
that he was aware of modern discoveries in astronomy.

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Ramaḍānī, Ḥasan. “ʿĀlimī nāmdār.” In Ghulām-Riḍā Gulī Zawāra (ed.), Gulshan-i Jilwa.
Qom: Qiyām, 1374 Sh./1995–96, pp. 139–143.
Rāzī, Muḥammad Sharīf. Ikhtirān-i furūzān-i Ray u Tihrān yā Tadhkirat al-qābir fī aḥwāl
al-mafākhir. Qom, n.d.
Ṣadūqī Suhā, Manūchihr. Taḥrīr-i thānī-i tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ u ʿurafāʾ-i muta‌ʾakhkhir, 2nd
ed., Tehran: Ḥikmat, 1381 Sh./2002.
Ṣafwat, Muḥammad ʿAlī. Dāstān-i dūstān. Tabrīz: Chāpkhāna-yi Qum, 1328 Sh./1949–50.
Shahrazūrī, Shams al-Dīn. Kanz al-ḥikma (Tārīkh al-ḥukamāʾ). Trans. Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn
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Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn (Mullā Ṣadrā). al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fī l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-
arbaʿah. Ed. R. Luṭfī [et al.]. Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1981.
Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya fī l-manāhij al-sulūkiyya. Bā ḥawāshī-i
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī. Ed. Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī. Mashhad: Intishārāt-i
Awqāf-i Khurāsān, 1386 Sh./1967.
Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. Sharḥ Uṣūl al-Kāfī. Lithograph. Tehran: Maktaba Maḥmūdī,
1391/1971–2.
Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. Mafātīḥ al-ghayb. Ed. Muḥammad Khwājawī. Tehran; Muʾassasa-yi
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Suhrawardī, Yaḥyā b. Ḥabash. Majmūʿa-yi muṣannafāt-i Shaykh-i Ishrāq. Ed. Henry
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Īrān, 1355 Sh./1976.
 chapter 8

The Reception of European Philosophy

in Qajar Iran

Roman Seidel

1 Introduction (Historical Context)

Iranian intellectual history in the Qajar era was marked by the incipient re-
ception of European philosophical trends, which took place in the broader
context of various processes of knowledge transmission between Europe and
the Middle East. Alongside the increasing influence of European colonial-
ist powers, intellectuals and scholars in the Middle East began to encounter
various strands of modern Western thought. These encounters initiated new
intellectual discourses, which were intended to either overcome the Islamic in-
tellectual tradition or, at least, to supplement or reform Islamic thought. These
discussions did not, in fact, lead to a rapid change in the philosophical dis-
course in Qajar Iran and were—from the perspective of eminent philosophers
of the time, as presented in this volume—a rather marginal phenomenon.
Nevertheless, they added an important facet to the philosophical tradition
by gradually making European philosophical doctrines accessible to Iranian
scholars, a phenomenon that became especially significant in the context of
the reform of the educational system.
Initially, however, the Iranian interest in European thought was of a techni-
cal rather than a philosophical nature. Facing the enormous military, the ad-
ministrative and economic superiority of Europe, reformists, state officials and
intellectuals propagated the idea that reform was needed in matters relating to
the army and governmental administration.1 This reform movement, which,
in the context of the Irano-Russian wars,2 became known as Niẓām-i jadīd

1  For early Qajar attempts at military and administrative reform and the rise of European influ-
ence on Iran, see Vanessa Martin, “An Evaluation of Reform and Development of the State in
the Early Qajar Period,” Die Welt des Islams 36 1 (1996): 1–24; Shaul Bakhash, “The Evolution
of Qajar Bureaucracy: 1779–1879,” Middle Eastern Studies 7 2 (1971): 139–168; and Stephanie
Cronin, “Importing Modernity: European Military Missions to Qajar Iran,” Comparative Stud-
ies in Society and History 50 1 (2008): 197–226.
2  The first Irano-Russian war in the Qajar period, which took place between 1804 and 1813,
led to the Treaty of Gulistān (1813); the second war (1826–28) was concluded by the Treaty

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004387843_010

314 Seidel

(New Order) was first initiated by Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā (d. 1249/1833),3
who was governor of Azerbaijan at that time. Besides attempts to reorganize the
armed forces with the help of various European military advisors,4 he decided
to dispatch what was to be the first of a series of groups of Iranian students to
study in England in 1226/1811 and 1230/1815.5 The idea of this endeavour was to

of Turkmānchāy. These treaties established the borders between Russia and Persia, ceding
most of the lands that were the object of struggle between the two kingdoms to imperial
Russia. For more detailed accounts of Russo-Persian relations before, during and following
the wars, their significance in the “Great-Game”, i.e., the struggle of the colonial powers for
supremacy in Central Asia, and their impact on Persian politics, see Muriel Atkin, Russia
and Iran, 1780–1828 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); Kamran Ekbal, Der
Briefwechsel Abbas Mirzas mit dem britischen Gesandten MacDonald Kinnier im Zeichen des
zweiten russisch-persischen Krieges (1825–28): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der persisch-eng-
lischen Beziehungen in der frühen Kadscharenzeit (Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz, 1977); Stepha-
nie Cronin. “Importing Modernity: European Military Missions to Qajar Iran,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 50 1 (2008): 197–226; G. R. G. Hambly, “Āghā Muḥammad Khān
and the Establishment of the Qajar Dynasty,” in W. B. Fisher, P. Avery, G. R. G. Hambly and
C. Melville (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), pp. 104–143; idem, “Irān during the reigns of Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh and Muḥammad
Shāh,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, pp. 144–173; and F. Kazemzadeh, “Iranian Re-
lations with Russia and the Soviet Union, to 1921,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7,
pp. 314–349. For relevant diplomatic records documenting these relations, see J. C. Hurewitz,
Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East. A Documentary Record: 1535–1914, vol. 1 (Princeton: Van
Nostrand, 1956).
3  For more on ʿAbbās Mīrzā and the significance of his reform measures for modern Iranian
history, see H. Busse. “ʿAbbās Mīrzā Qajar,” EIr, vol. I, pp. 79–84; Kamran Ekbal, Der Brief-
wechsel Abbas Mirzas mit dem britischen Gesandten MacDonald Kinnier im Zeichen des
zweiten russisch-persischen Krieges (1825–28), pp. 13–49; Karīm Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrānīyān
bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i Farhang u Andīsha-yi Islāmī, 1384
Sh./2005–2006), pp. 93–112; Monica M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cul-
tural Reform in Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001), pp. 15–51; and Vanessa
Martin, “An Evaluation of Reform and Development of the State in the Early Qajar Period,”
Die Welt des Islams 36 1 (1996): 1–24.
4  From the very beginning of the Qajar era, the various colonial powers tried to acquire influ-
ence over the Iranian government. Both Great Britain and Napoleonic France, in turn, sought
alignment with Iran.
5  For a brief account of these first two groups of Iranian students in England and their sig-
nificance, see M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar
Iran, pp. 26–37; Farideh Jeddi, Politische und kulturelle Auswirkungen des Auslandsstudiums
auf die iranische Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 20–36;
Ḥusayn Maḥbūbī-Ardakānī. Tārīkh-i muʾassasāt-i tamaddunī-i jadīd dar Īrān (3rd ed., Tehran:
Intishārāt-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1378 Sh./1999–2000), pp. 122–208; Denis Wright, The Persians
amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), pp. 70–86;
and Mohammad Hossein Azizi and Farzaneh Azizi, “Government-Sponsored Iranian Medi-
cal Students Abroad (1811–1935),” Iranian Studies 43 3 (2010): 349–363. For a more detailed
account of Iranian students abroad and their significance for modern Iranian intellectual
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 315

train a number of future governmental officials in modern sciences, (military)

technology and medicine to transfer these new fields of knowledge to Iran and
so make them available to ʿAbbās Mīrzā’s attempted modernization project.6
Although the primary motivation for sending students abroad was the
acquisition of technical knowledge, one student on the second mission
(1230/1815–1234/1819), Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ Shīrāzī (d. ca. 1261/1845), who mainly stud-
ied in London and Oxford, unlike his colleagues focused on history, languages,
and philosophy.7 Upon his return to Iran, he not only worked as a translator for
ʿAbbās Mīrzā and was charged with several diplomatic missions but also estab-
lished one of the earliest printing presses in Iran and founded the first newspa-
per. Beyond that, he wrote a travelogue about his experiences during his stay
in Europe, which is said to have been very popular up until the Constitutional
Revolution.8 Although this book can hardly be regarded as an example of the
reception of modern European philosophy in the proper sense, it nevertheless
reflects upon a number of ideas belonging to the realm of political philoso-
phy such as liberalism, constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, and freedom of
speech. Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ was among the first writers to introduce and discuss these
ideas in Persian to the Iranian reading public. Concepts of political l­iberalism
were of particular interest to him. He displayed great e­ nthusiasm for the po-
litical—i.e., constitutional—system of England, which he called “the lands of
freedom” (wilāyat-i āzādī). In his book, Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ d­ iscusses and describes at

history, see Nile Green, The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Aus-
ten’s London (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015); and Ghulām-ʿAlī Sar-
mad, Iʿzām-i muḥaṣṣil bi khārij az kishwar dar dawra-yi Qājāriyya (Tehran: Nashr-i Bunyād,
1372 Sh./1993–94).
6  On the subsequent occupations of the students after their return to Iran, see M. M. Ringer,
Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran, pp. 30–34; F. Jeddi,
Politische und kulturelle Auswirkungen des Auslandsstudiums auf die iranische Gesellschaft im
19. Jahrhundert, pp. 82–102; 155–218; Ḥ. Maḥbūbi-Ardakānī, Tārīkh-i muʾassasāt-i tamaddunī-i
jadīd dar Īrān, pp. 176–195; and Gh. ʿA. Sarmad, Iʿzām-i muḥaṣṣil bi khārij az kishwar dar daw-
ra-yi Qājāriyya, pp. 223–483. The latter is an appendix to the actual study, offering an exten-
sive inventory of 254 students who studied abroad in the Qajar period, listing their names,
periods and subjects of study abroad, their subsequent occupation(s) and known works.
7  For an edition of this travelogue see Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ Shīrāzī, Safarnāma, ed. Ismāʾīl Rāʾīn (Tehran:
Rawzan, 1347 Sh./1968). On Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ in Oxford, see Nile Green, “The Madrasas of Oxford:
Iranian Interactions with the English Universities in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Iranian
Studies 44 6 (2011): 807–829; idem, The Love of Strangers, pp. 83–129.
8  On the reception of Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ’s Safarnāma and its importance for the genre of travel lit-
erature in Iran, see Bozorg Alavi, Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen persischen Lit-
eratur (Berlin: Akademie, 1964), p. 24; Bert G. Fragner, Persische Memoirenliteratur als Quelle
zur neueren Geschichte Irans (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979), pp. 15–18 and N. Green, The Love of
Strangers, pp. 319–321.
316 Seidel

some length the effort put into establishing the provision of education, medi-
cine and public transport. Moreover, he presents the idea of a parliament,
for which he coined the Persian expression mashwirat-khāna (house of con-
sultation). He maintains that parliament was a decisive factor in England’s
prosperity and one which can serve as a model for Iran.9 He was, therefore,
albeit somewhat obliquely, a kind of forerunner of the protagonists of the
Constitutional Revolution.
Beyond that, the significance of Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ’s Safarnāma lies not merely in
the highlighting of various political ideas but also in the literary form in which
these ideas are presented. Persian travel writing from the early nineteenth cen-
tury in general, although not modern in terms of style, metaphor, and literary
devices, marks a shift towards modern Persian literature. The Safarnāma of
Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ Shīrāzī can be regarded as a kind of prototype of this travelogue
genre. It reveals the individual perspective of the writer describing the benefits
and disadvantages of the European way of life and European thought as well as
an explicit or implicit reflection on and construction of an Iranian “Self” and a
European “Other”.10 In the subsequent decades, other literary genres emerged,
often modelled on European examples, such as fictional travelogues (most
prominently the Siyāḥatnāma-yi Ibrāhīm Bay by Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn-i Marāgha‌ʾī11),
fictional epistolary writings (for instance, Maktūbāt-i Kamāl al-Dawla by Mīrzā
Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda),12 literary criticism,13 novels, short stories, and theatre
plays.14 These new literary developments were crucial for the early reception

9  For a very summary of Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ Shīrāzī’s evaluation of these ideas and concepts with
references to the 1968 edition of his Safarnāma, see Kermatollah Rasekh, Das politische
Denken der Reformisten im Iran 1811–1906 (Münster: Lit Verlag 2000), pp. 95–102.
10  For travelogue literature in the Qajar era, see B. G. Fragner, Persische Memoirenliteratur
als Quelle zur neueren Geschichte Irans; Sohrabi, Naghmeh, Taken for Wonder: Nineteenth-
Century Travel Accounts from Iran to Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and
M. M. Ringer, “The Quest for the Secret of Strength in Iranian Nineteenth-Century Travel
Literature: Rethinking Tradition in the Safarnameh,” in Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee
(ed.), Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 2002), pp. 146–161.
11  For Marāgha‌ʾī and his Siyāḥatnāma-yi Ībrahīm Bay, see Iraj Parsinejad, A History of Lit-
erary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951): Literary Criticism in the Works of Enlightened Thinkers
of Iran, Akhundzadeh, Kermani, Malkom Khan, Talebof, Maraghe’i, Kasravi and Hedayat
(Bethesda & Maryland: Ibex Publishers, 2003), pp. 141–161.
12  See below, p. 325.
13  For the development of that genre in the context of modern Persian literature, see I.
Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951).
14  The emergence of modern Persian prose fiction and playwriting appears to be crucial for
the early appropriation and representation of modern European philosophical thought
and vice versa. However, since the phenomenon of the reception of modern European
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 317

of European philosophy since they heavily influenced the way in which the
early reception of modern European ideas took place. However, philosophical
reflections were barely presented in systematic scholarly treatises on various
concepts and doctrines; instead, we find scattered discussions of European
philosophical ideas in a number of intellectual writings of that period, and
their authors are often not very thorough with regard to either the original
arguments or the sources they refer to. Since these writings belong more to
the realm of littérature engagée than to that of academic treatises, philosoph­
ical accuracy was not their main purpose. Nevertheless, it was largely through
these writings that doctrines of modern European philosophical discussions
were presented for the first time to an Iranian audience.
Another factor that gradually supported the reception of modern European
philosophy in Iran was the reform of the educational system. While sending
students abroad was one of the first measures taken to train Iranians in var-
ious forms of modern science, it turned out to be an inappropriate and far
too expensive way of providing this kind of education for a larger group of
­prospective state officials. So, reform-minded functionaries at the Qajar court
suggested setting up European-style institutions of higher learning in Iran. The
most prominent example was the establishment of the Dār al-Funūn in Tehran
in 1268/1851, which was fostered by Amīr Kabīr (d. 1268/1852), prime minister
under Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1264–1313/1848–1896) and a staunch advocate of
administrative centralization and educational reform.15 The importance of the
establishment of this school and similar institutions of learning for the history
of education can hardly be exaggerated. It marked the beginning of a parallel
educational system in Iran that challenged the monopoly of learning which

philosophy by Iranian writers as a whole is very much under-researched, the discussion

of the influence of modern European thought on these literary genres goes far beyond the
scope of this essay. However, it remains an important object of further research. A case
in point is, for instance, the dramatic writings of Ākhūndzāda. See below, pp. 324–326.
15  For a brief account of the significance of Amīr Kabīr and the reform of the educational
system see Anja Pistor-Hatam, Iran und die Reformbewegung im Osmanischen Reich. Per-
sische Staatsmänner, Reisende und Oppositionelle unter dem Einfluß der Tanẓīmāt (Ber-
lin: Schwarz, 1992), pp. 38–47; For a more detailed study, see Firiydūn Ādamiyyat, Amīr
Kabīr u Īrān (Tehran: Khwārazmī, 1348 Sh./1969). On the history of the Dār al-Funūn,
see M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran,
pp. 67–108; John Gurney and Negin Nabavi, “Dār al-Fonūn,” EIr, vol. VI, pp. 662–668;
Maryam Ekhtiar, Modern Science, Education and Reform in Iran: The Dar al-Funun (Rich-
mond: Curzon Press, 1999); idem, “Nasir al-Din Shah and the Dar al-Funun: The Evolution
of an Institution,” Iranian Studies 34 1–4 (2001): 153–63; Ḥ. Maḥbūbī-Ardakānī, Tārīkh-i
muʾassasāt-i tamaddunī-i jadīd dar Īrān, pp. 253–320.
318 Seidel

the ʿulamāʾ had previously held.16 Dār al-Funūn and other “new schools.” for
instance, Madrasa-yi ʿUlūm-i Siyāsī (School for Political Sciences) can be re-
garded as forerunners of the Iranian universities set up later in the twentieth
century. To run these schools, European teachers were hired, in the initial
phase, to instruct Iranian students in subjects such as the military sciences
(infantry, artillery, cavalry), mining, medicine, physics and pharmacology. As
was the case with the students sent to Europe, subjects from the humanities in-
cluding philosophy played only a minor role. But in the decades that followed
this situation was to change gradually and foreign languages, history, and po-
litical theory, in particular, gained more importance. These development were
to some extent supported by the establishment of Farāmūshkhānahā (Houses
of Forgetfulness), Masonic lodges set up by Mīrzā Malkum Khān (d. 1326/1909)
in the early 1860s, which a considerable number of students from the Dār al-
Funūn joined.17 Consequently, the students at these new schools studied ap-
plied sciences and modern political ideas either from their instructors in the
classroom, in private lessons or via textbooks that had been originally written
for teaching in Persian or translated from European languages.18
The translation of writings from European languages, in general, was anoth-
er development that increasingly gained significance. Not only were t­ extbooks
and manuals of the applied sciences translated into Persian, especially from
French and English, but a considerable number of historical and literary writ-
ings were too.19 This translation movement was partly supported and, to some

16  It is worth mentioning that, prior to the establishment of the Dār al-Funūn, a number of
missionary and other foreign schools had been set up in Iran. These also played a role in
the development of alternative education, especially women’s education, in the country.
See M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran,
pp. 109–143; and Abbas Amanat, “Mujtahids and Missionaries: Shi’i Responses to Chris-
tian Polemics in the Early Qajar Period,” in Robert Gleave (ed.), Religion and Society in
Qajar Iran (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 247–269.
17  For more on the teaching of political theory at these new schools, see Ḥ. Maḥbūbī-
Ardakānī, Tārīkh-i muʾassasāt-i tamaddunī-i jadīd dar Īrān, pp. 366–420; M. M. Ringer,
Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran, pp. 155–162 and
170–173. On freemasonry and the farāmūshkhānahā in Iran, see Hamid Algar, “Freemason-
ry ii. In the Qajar Period,” EIr, vol. X, pp. 208–212; idem, “An Introduction to the History of
Freemasonry in Iran.” Middle Eastern Studies 6 3 (1970): 276–296.
18  For more on the compilation and translation of textbooks in the context of the Dār al-
Funūn, see M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar
Iran, pp. 75–76; Yaḥyā Āriyanpūr, Az Ṣabā tā Nīmā, 5th ed., vol. 1 (Tehran: Zuwwār, 1372
Sh./1993–94), pp. 252–260.
19  For more on the beginning of this translation movement, see Iraj Afshar, “Book Transla-
tions as a Cultural Activity in Iran 1806–1896,” Iran 41 (2003): 279–289; Muḥammad Taqī
Danishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar Īrān,” Nashr-i dānish 8
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 319

extent, initiated by the government. It not only sponsored the translation of

textbooks but also set up a government translation bureau (Dār al-tarjuma-
yi khāṣṣa-yi dawlatī) headed by Muḥammad Ḥasan Khān Iʿtimād al-Salṭana
(d. 1313/1896). He was an influential statesman and scholar who, in this func-
tion, was also responsible for official censorship as well as organizing the
translations of books from European languages (some of which he undertook
himself).20
The intellectual activities connected with transferring modern Western
thought to Iran, including translation, studying abroad or establishing new ed­
ucational institutions, did not receive unconditional backing from the state.
Whereas the Niẓām-i jadīd reform measures were an initiative of a high func-
tionary of the Qajar government, namely Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā, from
early on those reformers who were state officials had to face sharp opposition
from within the administration as well as from the ʿulamāʾ. Support for and
opposition to a single reform project or a specific protagonist of reform often
alternated without warning. For instance, at first Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh approved
of the idea of establishing the Dār al-Funūn proposed by Amīr Kabīr as well as
other reform measures he put forward. Nevertheless, in 1267/1851, opponents
of Amīr Kabīr, who all feared that his growing influence could eventually limit
their importance in political affairs, persuaded the Shah that his activities to
institutionalize European education constituted a threat to the cultural and
religious integrity of the country. Nāṣir al-Dīn finally dismissed him from of-
fice and had him put to death shortly afterwards. The Dār al-Funūn, however,
continued to operate and remained one of the central projects of Qajar edu-
cational reform.21
Despite the fact that educational reform continued, the situation for crit-
ics of the government remained insecure. Because of the many threats to the

(1360 Sh./1982): 88–101; and Jamshīd Kiyānfar, “Tarjuma dar ʿahd-i Qājār,” Nashr-i dānish
55 (1368 Sh./1989): 23–28.
20  For more on the significance of the Government Translation Bureau and Iʿtimād al-
Salṭana as official promoter of translations from European languages in the context of
Qajar politics, see A. Amanat, “Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, Moḥammad-Ḥasan Khan Moqaddam
Marāḡa‌ʾī,” EIr, vol. 8, pp. 662–666; Sayyid Aḥmad Hāshimī, “Tarjuma 4) Tarjuma-yi Fārsī
dar Dawra-yi Muʿāṣir,” Dānishnāma-yi jahān-i Islām, ed. Ghulām-ʿAlī Ḥaddād ʿĀdil, vol. 7
(Tehran: Bunyād Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1382 Sh./2003), pp. 50–66.
21  For more on Amīr Kabīr’s struggle for the Dār al-Funūn project and the opposition to-
wards him from inside the court and the ʿulamāʾ, see F. Ādamiyyat, Amīr Kabīr u Īrān, pp.
347–361; M. M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar
Iran, pp. 67–108; J. Gurney and N. Nabavi, “Dār al-Fonūn”. For the development of the Dār
al-Funūn following Amīr Kabīr’s death, see the concise account by M. Ekhtiar, “Nasir al-
Din Shah and the Dar al-Funun: The Evolution of an Institution”.
320 Seidel

sovereignty of the Qajar government from both inside and outside the coun-
try, censorship and political oppression increased during the reign of Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh.22 Consequently, many reform-minded officials or intellectuals
felt obliged to leave the country to promote their ideas from outside Iran. The
exiled dissidents then began to organize themselves in various circles and in-
tellectual networks in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, especially Istanbul and
Cairo, and the Caucasus region under Russian control.23 In the second half of
the nineteenth century, they began to launch intellectual journals, which, al-
though prohibited, also circulated in Iran. In these journals, the intellectuals
discussed various topics ranging from politics, history (Iranian and European)
and economics to religion and related issues, often connected to the question
of political and social reform. In their articles, these intellectuals regularly re-
ferred to European thinkers and their doctrines although, again, usually with-
out referring accurately to their writings.24
On the one hand, it was via such channels that “Western” philosophy, for
one thing infiltrated the curricula of the newly founded institutions of higher
learning, and on the other, it became an influential issue in intellectual de-
bates. As a consequence, modern European philosophy was, albeit not in a
scholarly fashion, introduced into the Iranian intellectual realm and encour-
aged subsequent thinkers to engage with it, either exclusively or in comparison
with Islamic thought.25

22  Besides the competing European colonialist powers, who were constantly trying to in-
crease their political influence over the Qajar court, various opposition groups inside
the country challenged the government, in particular, the Babi movement. See Abbas
­Amanat, Resurrection and renewal: The making of the Babi movement in Iran, 1844–1850
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989).
23  A comprehensive (intellectual) history of these expatriate communities, their inner net-
works, and their interconnectedness as well as their significance for Iranian history has
yet to be written. A reasonable vantage point for such an endeavour would be a system-
atic examination of expatriate journals, their themes, and contributors. For an exemplary
case study in this field, see A. Pistor-Hatam, Iran und die Reformbewegung im Osmanisch-
en Reich. Persische Staatsmänner. This study, however, does not specifically deal with the
reception of European philosophy. See also Thierry Zarcone & Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr,
Les Iraniens d’Istanbul (Paris and Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1993).
24  For an overview of the relevant journals and their significance, see Yaḥyā Āriyanpūr, Az
Ṣabā tā Nīmā, 5th ed., vol. 1 (Tehran: Zuwwār, 1372 Sh./1993–94), pp. 234–252; For Akhtar
see A. Pistor-Hatam, Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsbörse und Diskussionsforum: Aḫtar-e
Estānbūl (1876–1896)—Anstöße zur frühen persischen Moderne (Münster: Broschiert,
1999).
25  Literature particularly focusing on the reception of European philosophy is rather
limited. Mention should be made of K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-
yi jadīd-i gharb and Ahmad Ali Heydari, Rezeption der westlichen Philosophie durch
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 321

Probably the most prominent vehicles used to introduce modern European

philosophy into Iran in the Qajar period were the writings of eminent intellec-
tuals, such as Mirzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Akhūndzāda (d. 1295/1878), Abd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf
(d. 1329/1910), Mirzā Malkum Khān, Mirzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī (d. 1314/1896),
and Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī, known as al-Afghānī, (d. 1314/1897).26 They
closely followed the intellectual discourses in their host countries and related
them to the Islamic intellectual tradition as well as recent political develop-
ments in the Muslim world. The intellectual commitment of Iranian reform-
ers materialized, broadly speaking, in two sorts of writings: on the one hand,
there were politically engaged essays, which primarily appeared in their exile
journals, and monographs, which were also mainly published abroad but cir-
culated in Iran and some of these writings were not even published but circu-
lated as handwritten copies.27 On the other hand, they produced paraphrases
of specific doctrines using modern European philosophical works. These were
published either in the context of their essayistic writings or separately as con-
tributions to journals and sometimes as translations of essays or even entire
books translated into Persian—these not only influenced the intellectual dis-
course in Iran but also had an impact on Persian as a philosophical language.28
Although it is the writings of the thinkers mentioned above that appear to
have been the most influential, it is important to remember that an enormous
number of intellectual writings by scholars of the Qajar period have yet to be
examined with regard to the early reception of European philosophy.29 In what
follows, however, an overview of the current state of research will be provid-
ed. First, the most relevant protagonists from this first generation involved in
this reception process, together with their works and the first translations of

iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, Ph.D. Dissertation Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-­

Universität, Bonn, 2003.
26  There are a number of studies which deal with these thinkers as important intellectu-
als in the Qajar period. See for instance, Ali Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th
Century (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1998); Farzin Vahdat, God and Juggernaut:
Iran’s Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002);
I. Pasinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951).
27  The question as to which of these writings were circulated in Iran and by whom, and to
what extent they were read remains to be studied in more detail. What is known, however,
is that various circles in Iran organized the distribution of the exile journals. See Hamid
Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism (Berkeley & Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 228–237.
28  The issue of how and to what extent the philosophical language of modern Persian was
influenced by these writings, for instance via the introduction of European loan words or
the creation of new technical terms, is again a question that has yet to be researched in
detail.
29  Examples of sources: correspondence, memoirs, travelogues, textbooks, etc.
322 Seidel

European philosophy will be briefly introduced. Then the phenomenon of

the early encounter of traditional Islamic scholars in Iran with European phi-
losophy will be dealt with. Finally, turning to the expatriate reformists some
major intellectual trends and ideas adopted by them to provide a preliminary
idea of the prevalent picture of European philosophy in the Qajar era will be
discussed.

2 Qajar Intellectuals and the Adaptation of European Philosophy

in Their Works

2.1 Mirzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda

Mirzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda, born in Nukha, a village close to Shakī which is
now in Azerbaijan (Southern Caucasus), can be regarded as probably the first
important figure belonging to the earliest generation of expatriate Iranian in-
tellectuals who initiated the development of modern Iranian intellectual his-
tory/discourse.30 Ākhūndzāda, also known under the name Akhundov, is one
of the founding figures of modern Persian and Azerbaijani literature and liter-
ary criticism;31 he was among the first advocates of a Persian alphabet reform
and an important forerunner of Iranian and Azerbaijani nationalism.
In contrast to many other Iranian intellectuals living outside Iran,
Ākhūndzāda was neither forced to leave the country nor did he deliberately
emigrate.32 It was rather the political aftermath of the Russo-Persian war—
the 1243/1828 treaty of Turkmānchāy—that turned him from an Iranian into
a Russian citizen, since he lived in that region of the Caucasus which Iran,

30  On Ākhūndzāda, his life and thoughts, see, in particular, Firiydūn Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-
yi Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī-i Ākhūndzāda (Tehran: Khwārazmī, 1349 Sh./1970); I. Pasinejad, A History
of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), pp. 39–65; Maryam B. Sanjabi, “Rereading the En-
lightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire,” Iranian Studies 28 1–2 (1995): 39–60; Cyrus
Masroori, “French Romanticism and Persian Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran:
Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,” History of Politi-
cal Thought 28 3 (2007): 542–556; idem, “European Thought in Nineteenth-Century Iran:
David Hume and Others,” Journal of the History of Ideas 61 4 (2000): 657–574; K. Mujtahidī,
Āshināʾī-i Īrānīyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 181–200; Hamid Algar, “Āḵūndzāda,”
EIr, vol. I, pp. 735–740; updated version available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/
articles/akundzada-playwright (accessed 16 June 2015); and Muḥammad ʿAlī Mawlawī,
“Ākhūndzāda,” Dāʾirat al-maʿārif-i buzurg-i Islāmī, vol. 1, pp. 152–157.
31  On that aspect of his thought see particularly I. Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism
in Iran (1866–1951), pp. 39–65.
32  For a short autobiographical account, see Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda, Alifbā-yi jadīd u
maktūbāt (Baku: Azerbajdzhan SSR elmler Akademijasy, 1963), pp. 349–355.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 323

according to the treaty, had to cede to Russia. Ākhūndzāda, who at the age
of twenty entered a religious school in Ganja to pursue a religious education,
soon turned away from religious scholarship, apparently under the influence
of his calligraphy teacher, Mīrzā Shafīʿ Wāḍiḥ (d. 1299/1852), an Azerbaijani
poet who introduced him to modern Western science and learning. He began
to learn Russian and entered a newly established Russian school in Nukha.
In 1250/1834 he moved to Tbilisi where he became an assistant translator of
Oriental languages at the office of the governor of the Caucasus. Apart from
one journey to Tehran (1264/1848) and one to Istanbul (1279/1863) Ākhūndzāda
remained in Tbilisi until his death in 1295/1878. In the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, the city was the social and cultural centre of Transcaucasia and attracted
intellectuals and activists from various major cities, such as Berlin, London,
Paris, Cairo, and Calcutta. It was also the battleground for Caucasian national-
ist movements that were opposed to the rule of Tsarist Russia, and a number
of dissident Russian intellectuals, writers, and social critics lived there. It was
in this environment that Ākhūndzāda learned about contemporary European
ideas and literature. He had contacts with a number of Armenian, Georgian
and Russian intellectuals in Tbilisi with whom he exchanged ideas on issues
such as the reasons for backwardness and progress, reforming literary styles
and the purposes of literature.33 Among his close associates in his early years
in Tbilisi was the Russian Decembrist writer A. A. Bestuzhev (1797–1837),
who then wrote under the nom de plume Marlinskiĭ. As a result, he became
particularly interested in contemporary lyric poetry and playwriting; he was
introduced to some of the works of Gogol, read Shakespeare and Molière in
Russian translation and was a great admirer of Pushkin, to whom he dedicated
a poem.34
Ākhūndzāda started his career as an author by writing plays in Azeri
Turkish—which he later had translated into Persian—with a specific empha-
sis on social criticism.35 Through the implementation of such devices as the
use of everyday speech, these plays had a significant influence on the very

33  On the reception of ideas and writings of the European Enlightenment in Russia, see for
instance Inna Gorbatov, Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlight-
enment. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and Grimm (Bethesda, MD: Academia
Press, 2006).
34  For Ākhūndzāda’s acquaintance with Bestuzhev, see H. Algar, “Āḵūndzāda”; M. B. Sanjabi,
“Rereading the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire,” 45–47; I. Parsinejad, A His-
tory of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), pp. 41–43.
35  His plays were translated by Mīrzā Jaʿfar Qarājadāghī. See Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzāda
and Mīrzā Jaʿfar Qarājadāghī (trans.), Tamthīlāt, ed. ʿA. R. Ḥaydarī (Tehran: Khwārazmī,
1349 Sh./1970).
324 Seidel

foundations of a modern literary idiom in the Azeri language. Beyond that,

the Persian versions of his plays also heavily influenced the emergence of
modern Persian playwriting.36 After he abandoned this genre in 1272/1855, he
became particularly engaged in the project for Persian alphabet reform. He
not only wrote an essay on the issue containing numerous drafts of a modi-
fied Persian/Arabic alphabet but also presented a draft for a new alphabet at
the Ottoman Academy of Sciences (Encümen-i Danış) in Istanbul in 1279/1863
and corresponded extensively on the subject with other intellectuals, such as
Mīrzā Malkum Khān.37 When it turned out that the reform was not likely to
be successful, Ākhūndzāda again turned to literature and literary and cultural
critique. His criticism of religion as a superstition that constitutes an obsta-
cle to progress in Iran was reiterated in his numerous essays and his letters to
associates.
As for his knowledge of modern European philosophy, Ākhūndzāda was
apparently influenced by anti-metaphysical and materialist philosophical
currents that claimed to be entirely based on natural sciences and its results.
He was also extremely interested in the European Enlightenment, its pro-
tagonists, and their writings. In his writings, he explicitly mentions Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mirabeau, Ernest Renan, John Stuart
Mill, Henry Thomas Buckle and David Hume.38 It is not clear, though, if he
had any access to copies of their writings translated into Russian, the only
Western language he was acquainted with,39 but it is most likely that at least

36  For more on Ākhūndzāda’s plays and their significance, see H. Algar, “Āḵūndzāda.” It is in-
teresting to note that the plays were—already at the end of the 19th century—also recog-
nised by European scholars. At least one of these plays “Sargudhasht-i wazīr-i Lankarān”
had early English and German translations. The English one is obviously based on the
Persian version. See Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī Akhūndzāda, The Vazir of Lankurán: a Persian play; a
text-book of modern colloquial Persian for the use of European travellers, residents in Persia,
and students in India, Edited and translated by W. H. D. Haggard and G. Le Strange (Lon-
don: Trübner, 1882). The German translation was based on the Azeri version: Der Vezier
von Lenkoran: türkische Komödie in vier Aufzügen, Übersetzt und für die deutsche Bühne
bearbeitet von D. Löbel. und C. Fr. Wittmann (Leipzig: Reclam, 1893).
37  On Ākhūndzāda and the alphabet reform, see M. F. ʿA. Ākhūndzāda, Alifbā-yi jadīd u
maktūbāt; Hamid Algar, “Malkum Khan, Akhundzada and the Proposed Reform of the
Arabic Alphabet”, Middle Eastern Studies 5 (1969): 116–130.
38  For reference to European thinkers adopted by Ākhūndzāda see C. Masroori, “European
Thought in Nineteenth-Century Iran: David Hume and Others”; M. B. Sanjabi, “Rereading
the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire.”
39  Sanjabi refers to a letter to A. L. M. Nicholas, the French Consul-General in Tehran, in
which Ākhūndzāda admits that he is not familiar with “any European language other
than Russian.” See M. B. Sanjabi, “Rereading the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His
Voltaire,” 39, n. 2. Masroori states that his son Rashīd knew French and translated some
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 325

some of their doctrines came to his attention via the circles of exiled Russian
intellectuals in Tbilisi (Lermontov/Marlinskiĭ), who in turn were heavily influ-
ence by these French authors. Besides his local intellectual network in Tbilisi,
Ākhūndzāda also had wide-ranging intellectual contacts in Iran. He cor-
responded with numerous intellectuals, Qajar state officials, and dissidents,
and it is partly through this extensive correspondence that his ideas had such
an influence on the Iranian discourse on modern thought, which is why they
are of particular value as a source for modern Iranian intellectual history.40
Ākhūndzāda died in Tbilisi in 1295/ 1878.
Besides his many letters41 and his plays in Azeri, his essays on literary and
cultural criticism, including Qiritikā (Criticism), Risala-yi Īrād (A Treatise on
Critique), Fann-i Kirītīka (The Art of Criticism), ʿUṣūl-i nigārish (The Principles
of Writing),42 are significant not only with regard to literary criticism in Persian
but also because of their assertion of the need for cultural and political criti-
cism as a liberal right and a means of progress.43 The main source represent-
ing his reflections on and appropriations of the philosophical doctrines of
the European Enlightenment may be his fictional epistolary debate between
an Indian and an Iranian prince Maktūbāt-i Kamāl al-Dawla, also known
under the title Si maktūb, which he wrote in 1279/1863 and tried, unsuccess-
fully, to publish during his lifetime.44 An interesting reference by Akhundzāda
to a Western philosopher is a short work that he titled Letter from David
Hume to the Muslim Clergy of India and which he later incorporated into the
Maktūbāt. This work seems to be influenced by Hume’s Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion (1779), in which three thinkers dispute the nature of God.45

works written in French for his father; so far, however, we have no reliable list of these
works and no evidence of the actual translations. See C. Masroori, “European Thought in
Nineteenth-Century Iran: David Hume and Others,” 666.
40  Among his correspondents were Mīrzā Malkum Khān, A. L. M. Nicholas, the French Con-
sul-General in Tehran, and Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān Mustashār al-Dawla.
41  For more on Ākhūndzāda’s correspondence, see M. F. ʿA. Ākhūndzāda, Alifbā-yi jadīd u
maktūbāt (this volume besides his major essay on the subject chiefly contains letters he
exchanged with various intellectuals and officials on the topic of the alphabet reform).
42  For a discussion of these writings see Iraj Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran
(1866–1951), pp. 44–65.
43  See below, pp. 353–354.
44  A recent partial German translation of Akhūndzāda’s Makṭūbāt by Mahdi Rezai-Tazik
and Michael Mäder along with a concise introduction to the text is published in Anke
von Kügelgen (ed.), Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion—Debatten um 1900 (Berlin:
Schwarz, 2017), pp. 121–195.
45  I was not able to establish whether there has been a Russian translation of Hume’s Dia-
logues Concerning Natural Religion in Ākhūndzāda’s time. However there has been a mul-
tifaceted reception of Hume already in the early 19th century, see Artemieve, Tatiana V.
326 Seidel

In Ākhūndzāda’s version, which is much shorter than Hume’s treatise, two par-
ties are debating the question of an ultimate being as the necessary cause of
all beings: on the one hand, the “religious scholars” and, on the other, “the phi-
losophers”. Whereas the religious scholars argue that the Necessary Existent
is God, dwelling upon Avicenna’s essence-existence distinction, the philoso-
phers, whom Ākhūndzāda portrays as the winners of the debate, deny the
validity of that distinction and argue that the universe itself is the necessary
existence, which needs no cause to necessitate its existence.46

2.2 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf

ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Shaykh Abī Ṭālib Najjār Tabrīzī, known as Ṭālibuf, was an-
other outstanding Iranian intellectual to emerge from the intellectual context
of the Iranian community in Transcaucasia.47 In contrast to Ākhūndzāda, his
discourse is not dominated by a critique of religion but rather by religious
reform. Apart from that, both thinkers nevertheless have a number of basic
convictions in common, such as the belief in the importance of modern
­science and the necessity of open social critique. He was born into a family
of carpenters in the city of Tabriz. At about the age of sixteen or seventeen,
he moved to Tbilisi, where he pursued a business career and studied “mod-
ern science” and Russian. After some years he then moved to Tīmūr Khān
Shūrā, modern-day Buynaksk in Daghestan, where he was able to set up his
road-building company, accumulate some wealth and settle down to family
life. His career as a writer began quite late, at the age of fifty-five. His first book
Nukhba-yi sipihrī (The Best of the Heavenly Thing), a brief biography of the
Prophet Muḥammad that appeared in Istanbul in 1310/1892, already indicates
the sincere belief in Islam that he maintained throughout his life, although
not without criticizing traditional religious education and religious scholars.
His second book, Kitāb-i Aḥmad yā Safīna-yi Ṭālibī (The Book of Aḥmad or
Ṭālibī’s Vessel), which appeared in Istanbul in two volumes in 1311/1893 and
1312/1894, became his most recognized work. He became a popular figure such

and Mikhail I. Mikeshin, “Hume in Russia,” in Peter Jones (ed.), The Reception of David
Hume in Europe (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), pp. 195–224.
46  For a brief discussion that compares Ākhūndzāda’s version with that of Hume, see
C. ­Masroori, “European Thought in Nineteenth-Century Iran: David Hume and Others,”
665–671. For an English translation of Ākhūndzāda’s rendition of the debate, see ibid.,
672–674.
47  For a biographical account of Ṭālibuf, see Firiydūn Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i
Tabrīzī (Tehran: Nahāwand, 1363 Sh./1984), pp. 1–14; Mehrdad Kia, “Nationalism, Modern-
ism and Islam in the Writings of Talibov-i Tabrizi,” Middle Eastern Studies 30 2 (1994):
201–223 (201–205); and I. Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951),
pp. 121–123.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 327

that the people of Tabriz voted him into the first Majlis—however, for reasons
that remain the subject of dispute, he did not take up his seat in parliament.
Consciously modelled on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile in terms of style and
purpose, this book consists of twenty-two dialogues between the narrator and
his fictional son Aḥmad, which cover various topics, especially focusing on
the natural sciences. Without copying Rousseau’s educational principles, he
aimed to provide a solid basis for a comprehensive education of the youth to
prepare for a life that was at once both modern and pious. The education of the
young and future elites—specifically in natural sciences—would thus become
one of Ṭālibuf’s main concerns in writing and activism. For some time, Kitāb-i
Aḥmad was apparently used as a textbook in modern schools in Tabriz.48 His
interest in disseminating and popularizing modern sciences is also evident in
two translations he undertook from Russian. The first book Fīzīk yā Ḥikmat-i
ṭābīʿī (Physics or Philosophy of Nature), published in Istanbul in 1893, is by
an unknown author, whereas the second, Risāla-yi hayʾat-i jadīd (A Treatise
on Modern Astronomy),49 published in Istanbul in 1312/1894, seems to be a
translation from a Russian version of one of Camille Flammarion’s (1842–1925)
popular works on astronomy. Another translation, attributed to Ṭālibuf, is the
Meditations of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius
(121–180). This translation also appeared in Istanbul in 1893, under the title
Pand-nāma-yi Markūs, qayṣar-i Rūm: Tafakkurāt-i Markū Awrīl, together with
an introduction Ifāḍa-yi makhṣūṣ (special note) on the influence of writing.50
Flammarion’s work probably provided Ṭālibuf with the model for a second
book that was to become both popular and controversial in Iran. Flammarion
had published an annotated French version of Humphrey Davy’s (1778–1829)
Consolations in Travel or The Last Days of a Philosopher, which was very popular.51
The Consolations, a literary piece of philosophical science-fiction, consists of
a series of six intellectual dialogues in which the narrator, after ruminating
on the transitory nature of human life, is taken on an educational journey
through history and the future of human civilization by a superior intelligence
which he calls ‘the Genius’. Ṭālibuf’s Masālik al-muḥsinīn (The Pathways of

48  F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i Tabrīzī, p. 6.

49  Camille Flammarion and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf (trans.), Resāla-yi hayʾat-i jadīd (Istanbul,
1312/1894).
50  See I. Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), p. 124.
51  For the original English version, see Humphry Davy, Consolations in Travel: Or, The Last
Days of a Philosopher (London: J. Murray, 1830). For Flammarion’s French rendition see
Humphry Davy & Camille Flammarion, Les derniers jours d’un philosophe entretiens sur
la nature, les sciences, les métamorphoses de la terre et du ciel, l’humanité, l’âme et la vie
éternelle Humpry Davy (3rd ed., Paris: Didier, 1872).
328 Seidel

the Benevolents) narrates a fictional journey in which a group of scientists is

dispatched by the Iranian government to climb Mount Damavand in order to
conduct a scientific exploration of the dormant volcano. On their way to the
summit, the members of the group engage in various discussions on issues of
politics, culture, and religion and evaluate reasons for the perceived backward-
ness of Iranian society. The corruption and oppressiveness of Qajar state of-
ficials and Shīʿī ʿulamāʾ and their inability to recognize the value of modern
sciences are criticized, which explains the harsh opposition Ṭālibuf met with
from religious scholars and why the book was eventually banned in Iran. In
the discussions, the need for the adaptation of European sciences and political
ideas and institutions is highlighted, while, at the same time, a blind imitation
of European manners and costumes is also regarded as an obstacle to Iranian
progress.52
Three of his later works, all written in the wake of the Constitutional
Revolution and its aftermath, are more focused on the issue of political insti-
tutions, the idea of liberalism and politics in constitutional Iran. Masāʾil al-
ḥayāt (Challenges of Life) appeared in Tbilisi in 1324/1906 and is sometimes
referred to as the third volume of Kitāb-i Aḥmad. In this book, the narrator
is Aḥmad, the former addressee of Kitāb-i Aḥmad and now grown up and an
engineer who explores and discusses various forms of governmental systems,
out of which he favours the “constitutional system”. The book also contains
a translation of the Japanese constitution as an appendix.53 In Īḍāḥāt dar
khuṣūṣ-i āzādī (Explanations on the subject of Freedom), Ṭālibuf offers a more
substantial discussion on political liberty, with references to John Stuart Mill’s
work on the subject, and presents a critique of the political situation after the
Constitutional Revolution and the first Majlis.54 His last book Sīyāsat-i Ṭālibī
(Ṭālibī’s Politics), which appeared posthumously in Tehran in 1329/1911, again
contains an evaluation of Iranian politics and the country’s social crisis em-
bedded in two dialogues, the first between a British and a Russian diplomat in
Iran and the second between two Iranians.55 Besides his intellectual output,
it should be mentioned that Ṭālibuf was also involved in several educational
projects, among them the funding of several schools and public libraries both
in Iran and the Caucasus region.

52  See ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf, Masālik al-muḥsinīn, edited by Bāqir Muʾminī (Tehran:
Kitābhā-yi Jībī, 1347 Sh./1968). This edition is based on the Cairo edition, 1902.
53  ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf, Masʾala-yi ḥayāt (Tbilisi: Maṭbaʿa-yi Ghayrat, 1324/1906).
54  ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf, Īḍāḥāt dar khuṣūṣ-i āzādī (Tehran: Maṭbaʿa-yi Shāhanshāhī,
1325/1907).
55  ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ṭālibuf, Siyāsat-i Ṭālibī (Tehran: ʿIlm, 1329/1911).
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 329

2.3 Mirzā Malkum Khān

Mīrzā Malkum Khān was not only an influential intellectual who critically ana-
lysed and commented upon the social and political circumstances in Iran in
his writings; he also had a more immediate influence on political affairs of Iran,
be it as a state functionary or later as a dissident activist.56 Born in Isfahan’s
Armenian quarter, Julfā, he was sent to Paris when he was only ten by his father
Mīrzā Yaʿqūb Khān, who worked as a translator in the diplomatic service of the
Qajar administration.57 He studied at the Collège Arménien Moorat and, from
1263/1846 on, at the École Polytechnique de Paris, came into contact during his
secondary school education with ideas such as Auguste Comte’s positivism,
liberalism, and Saint-Simonian proto-socialism, which were dominant in nine-
teenth-century France. In 1267/1850, Malkum Khān returned to Iran and took
up a position as a translator in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and converted to
Islam at about the same time. He also joined the faculty of the recently founded
Dār al-Funūn in Tehran as a teacher of “new sciences” and as an interpreter for
the European instructors at the school. What followed was a vigorous career
as a diplomat in the service of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh’s government. After having
accompanied a number of diplomatic missions, Malkum became an employee
at the Iranian embassy in Istanbul and later on in London, where he was ap-
pointed ambassador in 1882. Malkum’s relations with the court had been of an
ambiguous nature. This was true even before his break with Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh
and his dismissal from his office in 1306/1890—a result of a scandal over selling
a lottery concession that the Shah had already annulled. On the one hand, the
Shah seemed to be attracted by some of Malkum’s reformist ideas, while, on

56  On Mīrzā Malkum Khān’s life and political career, see the detailed, though a rather hostile
account, by Hamid Algar: Mirzā Malkum Khān. This monograph is especially valuable
with regard to the various acquaintances and people that Malkum Khān was in contact
with; it does not, however, sufficiently take into account the intellectual currents that
influenced Malkum Khān as a means to elucidate his intellectual development. For more
on his thought, see F. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, pp. 30–36; K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i
Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 155–180.
57  Mīrzā Yaʿqūb himself was influenced by modern European liberal thought. As Masroori
points out, his essay Ṭarḥ-i ʿarīḍa-yi maḥramāna ki bi khāk-i pā-yi mubārak bāyad ʿarḍ sha-
wad (apparently written after 1874) was one of the earliest works by an Iranian intellectual
to advocate a representative government openly. See C. Masroori, “Mirza Yaʿqub Khan’s
Call for Representative Government, Toleration and Islamic Reform in Nineteenth-
Century Iran,” Middle Eastern Studies 37 1 (2001): 89–100 (89). An interesting anecdote in
the context of the relationship of Qajar intellectuals to modern European philosophy is
Yaʿqūb Khān’s claim that his grandmother was the offspring of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
cousin, who had settled in Isfahan in 1707—see H. Algar, “An Introduction to the History
of Freemasonry in Iran,” 5.
330 Seidel

the other, he sometimes felt suspicious of his political activity. A case in point
was Malkum’s initiative to establish Masonic lodges called Farāmūshkhānahā
(House of Forgetfulness), a move that the Shah had approved in the begin-
ning but which he prohibited soon afterwards in 1278/1861. This led to the tem-
porary exile of Malkum and his father Yaʿqūb Khān in Baghdad. Through the
conciliation of Malkum’s associate, the Iranian ambassador in Istanbul, Mīrzā
Ḥusayn Khān Mushīr al-Dawla, later known as Sipāhsālār, both were pardoned
and allowed to take up a position at the Iranian embassy in Istanbul in 1862.58
Malkum Khān went to London in 1290/1873 to join the embassy there. When
the Shah planned his journey to Europe, Malkum was charged with the diplo-
matic arrangements for the visit and after ten years in London became ambas-
sador. After his dismissal from the post of ambassador, he decided to remain
in Europe and to openly promote his criticism of the regime in Tehran. In the
year 1890, he launched the dissident journal Qānūn, which became highly in-
fluential in pre-constitutionalist Iran. He also founded the Jāmiʿa-yi Ādamiyyat
(League of Humanity), a humanist association that, besides helping to distrib-
ute his journal clandestinely in Iran, was meant to establish a humanist intel-
lectual society modelled on Auguste Comte’s Religion de l’Humanité.59 After
the assassination of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh in 1896, he again took up a position in
the diplomatic service under Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh (r. 1313–1324/1896–1907) at
the embassy in Italy. He died in Switzerland in 1908.
Alongside his connections with influential state officials and sovereigns,
Malkum was actively engaged in establishing vigorous intellectual relation-
ships with many of the reform-minded dissidents of his time. For instance, he
corresponded extensively with Ākhūndzāda, especially on the issue of alphabet
reform;60 he also exchanged letters with Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī, who helped
him to set up an Ādamiyyat Lodge in the Ottoman capital and supported him

58  On Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān Mushīr al-Dawla Sipāhsālār and his relations with Malkum Khān,
see See H. Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān, pp. 63–66, 95–107.
59  The real dimension of this association and its actual influence in Iran remains uncertain.
Algar assumes that Malkum Khān exaggerated its influence enormously in order to im-
press the Iranian government and that it was merely an informal network used to distrib-
ute his journal Qānūn. See H. Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān, pp. 228–237. On the intellectual
background of this association, see below, pp. 349–351.
60  For his correspondence with Ākhūndzāda see the respective letters in M. F. ʿA Ākhūndzāda,
Alifbā-yi jadīd u maktubāt. For his writings on the alphabet reform, see the relevant writ-
ings in Mīrzā Malkum Khān, Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓẓām al-Dawla, ed.
Ḥujjat Allāh Aṣīl (Tehran: Nashr-i Nay, 1381 Sh./2002), pp. 371–430.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 331

in distributing his journal among Iranian expatriates in Istanbul.61 As for his

adaptation of European philosophy, the literature on Malkum Khān alludes
to a number of eminent thinkers—usually without providing exact details
about which of his writings he refers to them in and which of their works he
might have studied. But besides Auguste Comte, whose Religion de l’Humanité
apparently influenced him, it is most likely that he was also inspired by
John Stuart Mill.62
Although Malkum Khān’s writings by no means display a coherent philo-
sophical system, one can at least identify some of the major topics and themes
he dealt with and trace some important influences on the ideas that are found
throughout his articles and essays. More or less all of his writings can be re-
garded as littérature engagée since they all attempted to deliver a specific polit-
ical message or offer advice to a concrete audience. This also applies to his first
essay Kitābcha-yi ghaybī yā daftar-i tanẓīmāt (The Disclose Book or Booklet of
the Tanẓīmāt), written between 1274/1858 and 1276/1860, which was inspired by
his regard for the political systems in France and England and the administra-
tive and legal reform project in the Ottoman Empire known as the Tanẓīmāt. In
this work, which was directed at Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh himself, he openly suggests
a number of concrete reform measures in the judicial, ­educational and admin-
istrative systems.63 Evidently, most of the proposals for political and social re-
form in Iran that Malkum advocated during his career had already appeared
in this treatise. Other treatises followed, highlighting the core demands of the
Kitābcha-yi ghaybī and focusing on various aspects of it with some modifica-
tions in style and emphasis.64

61  See Bayat-Philipp (1974a, 18). As Bayat-Philipp (1974a, 18, n. 11) indicates, the entire cor-
respondence can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits Orientaux,
Archive du Prince Malkom Khan, Supplements Persans, 1996, fols. nos. 60–167.
62  Some scholars assume that he translated Mill’s treatise On Liberty into Persian (see below,
pp. 342–344). Other thinkers that are mentioned as a source of inspiration are John Locke,
Francis Bacon, Montesquieu, Antoine de Condorcet, Herbert Spencer, and Voltaire. See
K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 155–180.
63  The major political demands of this essay was a constitutional proposal submitted to the
Prime Minister Mushīr al-Dawla, Mīrzā Jaʿfar Muhandis. Mushīr al-Dawla was one of the
first student sent to England together with Mīrzā Ṣālīh Shīrāzī. For the political setting in
which this essay was written and the way in which it was proposed to the shah, see Hamid
Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān, pp. 26–55.
64  These include the following essays to be found in Mīrzā Malkum Khān, Risālahā-yi Mīrzā
Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla: Rafīq u wazīr, Majlis-i tanẓīmāt, Daftar-i Qānūn, Nidā-yi
ʿadālat.
332 Seidel

2.4 Mirzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī

Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī was a highly talented intellectual and an Iranian dis-
sident in the Qajar era.65 He was thoroughly acquainted with various theolog­
ical and philosophical strands of the Islamic tradition and had considerable
knowledge of a wide range of modern European intellectual currents. In his
writings, he often took up a comparative, and at times syncretistic, perspective
attempting to integrate doctrines of different intellectual origin. In contrast to
many other intellectuals of his time, some of his writings, although still politi-
cally motivated, had a more profound theoretical orientation.
Born in the province of Kerman, he completed a traditional education in
Islamic law, Persian and Arabic literature, and mathematics and ­philosophy—
which included a study of the works of Mullā Ṣadrā and Shaykh Aḥmad al-
Aḥsāʾī which he read with his teacher Sayyid Jawād Karbalāʾī (d. ca. 1299/1882).
Beyond that, he had supposedly acquired some knowledge of Avesta and Old
and Middle Persian and learned some English and French, which he improved
at the Jesuit mission in Isfahan. In matters of religion, he was variously in-
fluenced by different people: his father was a follower of the Ahl-i Ḥaqq, his
teachers were Twelver Shīʿīs and Christians, and he was also interested in the
Zoroastrian religion, the Ismāʿīliyya, and especially the Bābī movement.66 This
may be the reason why he had a pluralistic attitude towards religion that was at
times eclectic and at times even agnostic. As a result of a sharp disagreement
with the governor of Kerman, he had to flee his hometown and finally sought
asylum in Istanbul in 1303/1886, where he joined the Iranian exile community,
remaining there for the last ten years of his life. Even before he got to Istanbul,
he had apparently converted to Bābism and travelled shortly after his arriv­
al in Istanbul to Cyprus, where the Bābī community, led by Mīrzā Yaḥyā Nūrī
Ṣubḥ-i Azal, had been previously sent by the Ottoman authorities in 1285/1868.
In Cyprus, he married one of Ṣubḥ-i Azal’s daughters.

65  For more on Kirmānī’s life and thought see, in particular, the monograph by Firiydūn
Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī (Tehran: Payām, 1357 Sh./1978) as
well as several studies by Mangol Bayat-Philipp/Bayat Philip. See her Mirza Aqa Khan
Kirmani: Nineteenth-Century Persian Revolutionary Thinker, Ph.D. Dissertation University
of C
­ alifornia Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 1971; idem, “Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī: A Nine-
teenth-Century Persian Nationalist,” Middle Eastern Studies 101 (1974): 36–59; idem, “The
Concepts of Religion and Government in the Thought of Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, a
Nineteenth-Century Persian Revolutionary,” International Journal of Middle East Studies
5 4 (1974): 381–400. For a shorter account, see also A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der westlichen
Philosophie durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, pp. 139–155; F. Vahdat, God and
Juggernaut, pp. 36–42.
66  See F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī, p. 14.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 333

In Istanbul, Mīrzā Āqā Khān became acquainted with a number of dissident

intellectuals and was himself an important protagonist of the Iranian com-
munity in the Ottoman capital. He contributed on a regular basis to the exile
journal Akhtar and corresponded with Mīrzā Malkum Khān in London, act-
ing as a kind of representative of Malkum’s journal Qānūn in Istanbul. Apart
from the fees he got for the articles he wrote for Akhtar, he earned a living by
teaching Persian and Arabic and by copying manuscripts for various scholars,
among them, the British Iranologist, Edward G. Browne (d. 1926), who also ob-
tained at least one work by Kirmānī himself.67 Beyond that, he also supported
Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī Afghānī’s pan-Islamic ambitions. While he
was in Istanbul, he devoted considerable energy to studying various trends in
European intellectual and philosophical thought, although it is difficult to say
which books he had at his disposal. We know for certain that he read François
de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon’s (d. 1715) Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils
d’Ulysse and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s (1737–1814) Le Café de
Surat (1790) and La Chaumière indienne, since he rendered them into Persian.68
It is also apparent that he was at least influenced by the ideas of Descartes,
Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Spencer, and Darwin and that he also ac-
quired some knowledge of socialist, Marxist and anarchist ideas. He composed
a large number of essays, some of which appeared in the journal Akhtar, al-
though others were not published during his lifetime. These essays presented
his view of some of these doctrines. When in 1313/1896 Mīrzā Riḍā Kirmānī,
who sympathized with the Bābī movement, shot Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, Mīrzā Āqā
Khān was charged with being involved in the assassination and was subse-
quently extradited to Iran, where he was executed the same year.
Almost all Kirmānī’s oeuvre was written during the ten-year period he
spent in Istanbul before he was executed.69 In this short period, he turned out
to be a prolific writer, who appropriated a huge variety of intellectual influ-
ences of European as well as Islamic origin. His first and his last works are

67  Kirmānī co-authored Hasht Bihisht with Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī. See E. G. Browne, A Descrip-
tive Catalogue of the Oriental Mss. Belonging to the Late E. G. Browne, ed. Reynold A. Nichol-
son (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 76; for a more detailed description
of this manuscript see Edward G. Browne, “Catalogue and Description of 27 Bábí Manu-
scripts,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Oct. 1892): 433–499,
637–710 (680–697). Browne indicates that he has obtained the manuscript from a certain
Shaykh A. (most likely Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī). Moreover, he states that Hasht Bihisht was
originally a transcription of the teachings of Sayyid Jawād Karbalāʾī. See ibid., 683–684.
68  See below, p. 343.
69  For a useful descriptive inventory of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī’s works, see F. Ādamiyyat,
Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī, pp. 49–70. Unfortunately, Ādamiyyat only pro-
vides rudimentary bibliographical evidence for the works he discusses.
334 Seidel

dedicated to Persian literature. Whereas the first, Kitāb-i Riḍwān (The Book
of Heaven), deals with classical Persian poetry, the last and unfinished work,
Kitāb-i Rayhān-i Būstān-afrūz (The Book of the Garden-Enlightening Herb),
which he began to write only a few months before his death, was meant to be
a sharp criticism of the classical Persian literary tradition.70 A large number of
his writings are devoted primarily to various periods of Iranian history: Nāma-
yi bāstān (The Book of Ancient Times), Āʾīna-yi Sikandarī yā Īrān-i bāstān
(The Alexandrian Mirror or Ancient Iran), Tārīkh-i Īrān az Islām tā Saljūqiyān
(History of Iran from Islam to the Seljuqs), Tārīkh-i shānzhmān-i Īrān (History
of Iran’s Development) and Tārīkh-i Qājāriyya u sabab-i taraqqī u tanazzul-i ān
(History of the Qajars and the Reasons for Their Progress and Decline). One
crucial issue Kirmānī raised in these writings was the idea of a glorious an-
cient Iran, upon which, according to his proto-nationalist discourse, a mod-
ern Iranian nation should be modelled.71 His works Si maktūb u ṣad khaṭāba
(Three Letters and a Hundred Lectures) and Inshāʾ Allāh, Mashāʾ Allāh (God
Willing, God Blessing) are both highly polemical essays devoted to a social cri-
tique of Iranian society. The first work is obviously inspired by Ākhūndzāda’s
Si Maktūb yā Maktūbāt-i Kamāl al-Dawla, to such a degree, indeed, that some
scholars assumed it was merely a slightly modified copy of Ākhūndzāda’s work.
Firiydūn Ādamiyyat, however, argued that, although undoubtedly inspired by
Ākhūndzāda, Kirmānī’s work was much more elaborate and twice as long as
the original.72 Inshāʾ Allāh, Mashāʾ Allāh is a polemic against the dogmatism
and hypocrisy of Sunnī as well as Shīʿī religious scholars of his time.73 The
works that are probably his most significant writings in terms of philosoph­
ical argumentation are Ḥikmat-i naẓarī (Theoretical Philosophy) and Hasht
Bihisht (Eight Paradises) (both co-authored with Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī) as well
as Haftād u du millat (Seventy-Two Sects) and Takwīn u Tashrīʿ (Creation and
Lawgiving). The latter is an essay that argues for the epistemological primacy
of natural sciences and positive philosophy over metaphysical or religious rea-
sonings. The other three are, it would appear, less hostile towards religion and
instead engaged in a sort of philosophy of religion. Ḥikmat-i naẓarī and Hasht

70  For a concise discussion of some aspects of this work, see I. Parsinejad, A History of Liter-
ary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), pp. 71–4.
71  On Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī’s nationalist discourse, see below, pp. 358–360 and M. Bayat
Philipp, “Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī: A Nineteenth-Century Persian Nationalist.”
72  See F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī, pp. 56–58.
73  A recent partial German translation of Inshāʾ Allāh, Mashāʾ Allāh conducted by Mahdi
Rezai-Tazik and Michael Mäder along with a concise introduction to the text is published
in Anke von Kügelgen (ed.), Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion—Debatten um 1900
(Berlin: Schwarz, 2017), pp. 196–228.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 335

Bihisht are both religio-philosophical treatises arguing from a perspective of

Bābism while engaging with questions concerning knowledge, metaphysics,
and ethics with reference to both classical and modern as well as Western and
Islamic traditions. Haftād u du millat, which is a modified and expanded ver-
sion of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s story Le Café de Surat and La Chaumière
indienne, deals with the question of religious pluralism.74 Most of his writings
only circulated as handwritten copies during his lifetime.

2.5 Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī Afghānī

Afghānī is certainly one of the most outstanding and influential intellectuals,
ideologists and political activists of the nineteenth-century Muslim world.
Although it is also true of the four thinkers mentioned above that their in-
fluence, intellectual networks, and significance go beyond local Iranian exile
communities and that they corresponded with a wide range of scholars and
politicians throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, Afghānī’s
networks, his political activities and his impact on modern Muslim reform dis-
course is far more wide-ranging. He can, therefore, be regarded as a “global
player” in the intellectual and political discourse that evolved in the context
of nineteenth-century Middle Eastern—European relations. Not only did his
ideas travel across the Muslim world, but Afghānī himself also moved from
country to country throughout the region, often being expelled by local politi-
cal leaders because of oppositional tendencies Afghānī had encouraged dur-
ing his stay in a particular country or province. However, he was not merely
interested in playing the role of dissident intellectual but also attempted to
influence various state leaders directly by trying to become an advisor at their
respective courts.
Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī was born in the village of Asadābād near Hamadan,
which is why, in the Iranian context, he is usually referred to by his nisba
Asadābādī. However, outside Iran he was at pains not to disclose his Iranian
­origin—probably so as not to be seen as a Shīʿī Muslim—and therefore he
chose the name Afghānī.75 His first trip abroad led him to India, where he ex-
perienced the Indian Rebellion of 1273/1857, which may have influenced his po-
litical and anti-imperialist ideas. Another important episode in his intellectual

74  For more on that work by Kirmānī, see below, p. 353. Cf. C. Masroori, “French Roman-
ticism and Persian Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran: Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani
and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre”, History of Political Thought 28 3 (2007),
542–556.
75  For a biographical account of Afghānī, see Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Im-
perialism. Political and Religious Writings of Jamāl ad-Dīn “al-Afghānī,” (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 3–35.
336 Seidel

career was his first stay in Istanbul in the years 1286/1869–70 and 1287/1870,
where he was active among the reformist Tanẓīmāt circles and became a
member of the Council of Education, which was also responsible for the re-
cently established Polytechnic or Darülfünun. One of his lectures at there,
which drew a comparison between philosophy and prophecy, was regarded
as blasphemous by Ottoman ʿulamāʾ, who were hostile to the Darülfünun
and who urged the government to dismiss the head of the school and expel
Afghānī from Istanbul. He then went to Cairo where he stayed from 1288/1871
to 1296/1879 and gathered a number of disciples around him, the most impor-
tant of whom was Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). During this period, he was
strongly engaged in anti-British agitation and political activism. He openly
advocated his ideological and political ideas, accusing the Khedive Ismāʿīl (r.
1279–1296/1863–1879), of cooperating with the imperialist agents of the British
and the French and of selling Egypt to Western interests. He is also said to
have been a founding figure of the Masonic lodge, “The Eastern Star”, in Egypt.
In 1296/1879, Ismāʿīl’s successor Tawfīq (r. 1296–1309/1879–1892) expelled him
from Egypt, and he travelled to India again where he stayed in the Muslim prin-
cipality of Hyderabad. There he became acquainted with Sayyid Aḥmad Khān
(d. 1898), whose idea of modernizing Islam appealed to him, even though they
were harshly at odds on the question of cooperating with the British.76 In that
period, he wrote a series of influential Persian articles, among them his long-
est treatise Ḥaqīqat-i madhhab-i naycharī wa bayān-i ḥāl-i naychirīyān. (The
Truth about the School of Naturalism and an Explanation of the Positions of
Naturalists).77 His next destination was Europe, where he stayed until the mid-
1880s. In London and Paris, he wrote a number of newspaper articles criticiz-
ing the British occupation of Egypt and promoting his pan-Islamist ideology,
which he thereafter regarded as the only useful defence against the imperialist
threat to the Middle East. Only a modern Islamic ideology, he was convinced,
could unite the people of the Muslim world against this threat. It was in these
years in Paris that he wrote his famous “Response to Ernest Renan”, the latter
having claimed that the backwardness of the Muslim people was essentially
linked to the basic nature of Islam.78 He also established the newspaper al-

76  On Afghānī’s relation to Sayyid Aḥmad Khān and his thought, see N. R. Keddie, An Islamic
Response to Imperialism, pp. 21–23.
77  Published first in lithography in Hyderabad 1298/1881. For an English translation see
N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, pp. 130–174. The text is usually referred
to as “The Refutation of the Materialists” following the title of the Arabic translation al-
Radd ʿalā Dahriyyīn which was prepared by Afghānī’s disciple Muḥammad ʿAbduh.
78  For the Renan-Afghānī debate, see A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der westlichen Philosophie
durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, pp. 122–139. It is interesting to note that
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 337

ʿUrwā al-wuthqā together with Muḥammad ʿAbduh, who had joined him in
Paris to promote his pan-Islamism.
After another short stay in London—where he was invited by Wilfrid Blunt
to assist him in his endeavour to persuade the British government to partly
withdraw from Egypt—Afghānī set out for Iran again, where he was invited
to Tehran by Iranian Minister of Press Iʿtimād al-Salṭana. There he met Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh, whom he advised on political affairs, yet he soon fell from favour
and severed ties with the Shah, whom he regarded as a major obstacle to his
pan-Islamist ideology because of his granting of concessions to European com-
panies. This criticism eventually led to his support of the so-called Tobacco
Protest, in which a mass movement (1308–1309/1891) led by the mujtahid Mirzā
Ḥasan Shīrāzī (d. 1312/1896) succeeded in bringing about the cancellation of
the concession on tobacco from Iran which had been given to a British citi-
zen. In 1308–1309/1891–92, Afghānī spent some months in London, where he
joined Malkum Khān in his propaganda against the shah. Later he moved to
Istanbul again, where he hoped that he could exert influence on the Ottoman
Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1293–1327/1876–1909). There he met Mīrzā Āqā Khān
Kirmānī and Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī. When a disciple of Afghānī killed Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh in 1313/1896, the Iranian government demanded his extradition.
Fearing that Afghānī might reveal court secrets, this demand was declined on
the pretext that he was not an Iranian but an Afghan citizen. Afghānī died of
cancer a year later in Istanbul.
Afghānī never wrote a fully-fledged monograph. Nevertheless, there are a
number of articles that appeared in various journals which have been highly
influential in the context of reformist Islamic discourse.79 The earliest avail-
able ones are articles that he published in the newspaper Miṣr when he was
in Cairo. In these he argued for patriotism, liberalism, and opposition to des-
potism, alluding to both traditional Islamic philosophy and modern European
political theory. The relationship between “modern European thought” and
“Islamic philosophy” is again discussed in some of his influential Persian arti-
cles, such as Fawāʾid-i falsafa (The Benefits of Philosophy),80 Likchir dar taʿlīm
u taʿallum (A Lecture on Teaching and Learning)81 and “The Refutation of the
Materialists”, which were written while he was in India. His articles in al-ʿUrwa

Muḥammad ʿAbduh had tried to keep Afghānī’s response from being translated into
Arabic.
79  For a collection of his articles see Jamāl al-Dīn Asadābādī, Maqālāt-i Jamāliyya (Tehran:
Khāwar, 1312 Sh./1933).
80  J. Asadābādī, Maqālāt-i Jamāliyya, pp. 134–148. Originally published in the Indian journal
Majalla-yi muʿallim-ī shafīq 10 (1881).
81  J. Asadābādī, Maqālāt-i Jamāliyya, pp. 88–96.
338 Seidel

al-wuthqā are important because in these he promoted the idea of pan-Isla­

mism, which he had not done before. In his “Response to Rénan” Afghānī again
discusses the relationship between philosophy and religion. However here, as
did Malkum Khān in some of his writings, he portrays religion as a useful and
flexible tool for bringing the working classes together and ensuring their obe-
dience. As regards the influence of modern European philosophers, Afghānī’s
writings may not be pertinent in the same way as those of the intellectuals
mentioned earlier. Apart from his reference to Darwin in his “Refutation of the
Materialists”, he does not explicitly discuss the doctrines of modern Western
philosophers or political theorists. However, as his writings on philosophy and
religion show, it is apparent that he was at least influenced by European posi-
tivist ideas.

3 Early Translations of European Philosophical Works

The first complete translation of a major modern European philosophical text,

Descartes’s Discours de la méthode, emerged out of an intellectual milieu differ-
ent to the ones just described.82 It was initiated by Arthur Comte de Gobineau,
a French diplomat, and scholar who lived in Tehran in the years 1855–58, and
again as the French ambassador from 1861 to 1864.83 Gobineau showed a spe-
cific interest in the philosophical tradition of Iran and was acquainted with
some of the leading Persian philosophers of the time. Among them was Āqā
ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī (d. 1307/1888), whom he asked to write a history of Iranian
philosophers after Mullā Ṣadrā.84 Gobineau also presented his account of this
tradition, presumably drawing, at least in part, on a draft of the above-men-
tioned work by Ṭihrānī in his work Les Religiones et les philosophies dans l’Asie
centrale.85 Beyond that, he was not only interested in observing and describing

82  For a more detailed discussion of the phenomenon of Early Translations of Modern Euro-
pean Philosophy into Persian see Roman Seidel, “Early Translations of Modern European
Philosophy. On the Significance of an under-researched Phenomenon for the Study of
Modern Iranian Intellectual History,” in Ali Ansari (ed.), Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of
1906 (London: Haus Publishing, 2016), pp. 207–229.
83  For Gobineau and its significance for Iranian intellectual history see Calmard, Jean,
“Gobineau, Joseph Arthur de,” EIr, vol. XI, pp. 20–24.
84  An edition of the first part of this work dealing with scholars from Mīr Sayyed Sharīf al-
Jurjānī to Mullā Ṣadrā can be found under the title Risāla-yi tārīkh-i ḥukamāʾ in Mudarris
Ṭihrānī, 1378 Sh./1999, Vol. 3, pp. 125–141. The second part which deals with the subse-
quent generations of scholars up until Ṭihrānī himself is unedited.
85  Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale
(Paris: Didier, 1865).
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 339

the philosophical discourse in Tehran but also intended to contribute to it by

giving introductory private lessons on European philosophy to enhance, in his
understanding, the development of philosophy in Iran. Another step in his at-
tempt to foster intellectual development was his idea to initiate a translation
of Descartes’s Discours de la méthode into Persian. In his aforementioned work,
he alludes to the fact that he has discussed some chapters of Descartes’s work
in some of his private lessons and that he is convinced that the idea of “Cogito,
ergo sum.” which he considered a European notion, could have a positive im-
pact on the minds of Iranian thinkers. In a private letter, he also mentions that
he was explicitly asked by some Iranians to translate the Discours into Persian.86
He therefore deliberately chose this work for translation, since he thought that
its way of reasoning was new to the Iranian mentality and would be a better
complement to it than, for instance, Hegel or Spinoza, whom he viewed as
closer to the “Asian” way of thinking.87
Gobineau commissioned the Jewish scholar, Mullā Lālazār Hamadānī
to carry out the translation with the support of the French diplomat Emile
Berney. A lithographed version was finally published under the title Ḥikmat-i
Nāṣirī (i.e., dedicated to Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh) in Tehran in 1279/1862.88 The text

86  This is mentioned in a letter to Anton Graf Prokesch von Osten (1795–1876), an Austrian
diplomat who served in Cairo and Istanbul and with whom Gobineau corresponded over
many years. But in the letter, he does not say who these Iranians were. See K. Mujtahidī,
Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 133–134.
87  In his Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale, Gobineau says: «Mais, toute-
fois, les deux hommes que les philosophes de ma connaissance ont la plus grande soif
de connaître, c’est Spinosa [sic!] et Hegel; on le comprend sans peine. Ces deux esprits
sont des esprits asiatiques et leurs théories touchent par tous les points aux doctrines
connues et goûtées dans le pays du soleil. Il est vrai que, pour cette raison même, elles
ne sauraient introduire là des éléments vraiment nouveaux.» (139). See also Roman Sei-
del, Kant in Teheran. Anfänge, Ansätze und Kontexte der Kantrezeption in Iran (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2014), p. 45. On Gobineau’s intentions behind this translation project, see
also ʿAlī Riḍā Manāfzāda. “Nakhustīn matn-i falsafa-yi jadīd-i gharbī bi zabān-i Fārsī,”
Īrānnāma 33 (1369 Sh./1991): 98–108. Despite the fact that Manāfzāda makes no refer-
ence to it, more or less follows Mujtahidī’s account, which originally appeared in 1354
Sh./1975 (“Dhikr-i falāsafa-yi buzurg-i gharb dar kitāb-i Badāʾiʿ al-ḥikam,” Rāhnamā-yi
kitāb 18 10–12: 827–834). Manāfzāda adds some more quotations from Gobineau’s Trois
ans en Asie and Religions et philosophies dans l’Asie centrale concerning his intention to
initiate this translation (98–105) and some quotations from the translator’s introduction
(105–107).
88  According to Dānishpazhūh, it was published by Āqā Muḥammad Ḥusayn as a lithograph
in a nastaʿlīq ductus. See M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd
dar Īrān,” 89. A copy of the lithographed version printed in 1862 is kept in the National Li-
brary in Teheran. The text has just recently been edited by Farāmarz Muʿtamid Dizfūlī, see
René Descartes, Lālazār Hamadānī and Emile Berney (trans.), Ḥikmat-i Nāṣiriyya: Kitāb-i
340 Seidel

is about 164 pages long and contains a preface of about fifteen pages, in which
the translator highlights the benefits of translations of modern European phil-
osophical works into Persian.89 Lālazār, however, seems to have had only some
rudimentary philosophical knowledge and he obviously was not very familiar
with philosophical terminology either in French or in Arabic and Persian. As
a result his Persian equivalents, especially of Descartes’s technical terms, were
rather incomprehensible, even to a philosophically trained readership, and the
translation as a whole failed to convey a consistent philosophical argument.90
This might be one reason why this translation did not achieve what Gobineau
had hoped, even if we know nothing at all about its reception by Iranian schol-
ars at the time. Furthermore, there is some evidence that most of the copies of
the translation were burned. Although this incident is, as far as we know, not
documented, it is not unlikely, since only very few copies of it have survived.91
Although this translation and the intention to use it to influence the phil­
osophical discourse in Qajar Iran was seemingly unsuccessful, Gobineau was
not the only person at the time who came to the conclusion that this particular
text would be an appropriate way to introduce modern European philosophy
into the Iranian discourse. In 1321/1904 a second translation was produced by
Afḍal al-Mulk Kirmānī (who was the brother of Shaykh Aḥmad Rūḥī Kirmānī
and an associate of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī) from an unknown Turkish

Diyākart, Nakhustīn tarjuma-yi “Guftār dar rawish”-i Dikārt dar ʿaṣr-i Qājār, ed. Muʿtamid
Dizfūlī (Tehran: Nashr-i Tārīkh-i Īrān, 1393 Sh./2014). The edition, however, is not a criti-
cal one, it only contains a short introduction by the editor (pp. 9–18) which merely gives
some very general information about the original text by Descartes, its significance and
the circumstances of its translation into Persian. The edited text itself contains only a very
few editorial remarks, no references are given. However, the editor is to be credited for
making the text available in print.
89  For this introduction, see K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb,
pp. 131–141.
90  This is the evaluation of K. Mujtahidī (Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb,
pp. 139–141) and M. T. Dānishpazhūh (“Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar
Īrān,” 89).
91  Mujtahidī also refers to rumours that the 1279/1862 edition was indeed the second edi-
tion and that it was actually the first edition of 1270/1853–54, which was entirely burned
by a group of unspecified radicals (ʿidda‌ʾī mutaʿaṣṣib). But, as Mujtahidī argues, there is
no evidence of an earlier edition. Indeed, the 1279/1862 dating fits better with the p ­ eriod
of Gobineau’s stay in Iran. See Mujtahidī (Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i
gharb, p. 137). Dānishpazhūh states that on the back of a folio version he has consulted
on microfilm there is a note saying that copies of it were burned during the reign of Nāṣir
al-Dīn Shāh. See M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar
Īrān,” 89.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 341

version of the book.92 Afḍal al-Mulk, who belonged to the circle of Iranian ex-
iles around Mīrzā Āqā Khān, whose influence on him can be discerned in it,
undertook the translation shortly before his death when he was already back
in Iran. This took place after he had gone into hiding for some time, probably
to avoid meeting the same fate as his brother (see above). The translation,
which has a preface by the translator (12 pages) and commentary (56 pages)
presumably compiled by the Turkish translator following the original text by
Descartes (81 pages), is written, in contrast to the first translation, in fluent
Persian. It is apparent that the author was well acquainted with Descartes’s
thinking. Even if the text sometimes reads rather like a paraphrase of the orig­
inal French version, it contains various explanations addressed to the Iranian
reader that are not indicated as such in the text. In the preface, Afḍal al-Mulk,
who was influenced by positivist thought, highlights the importance of phi-
losophy and its complementary relationship with natural science. He argues
that this work of Descartes is a cornerstone of modern philosophy (ḥikmat-i
tāza) in Europe, which has influenced the course of European philosophy sig-
nificantly and could hence have a similar effect on Iranian philosophy. All this
information was missing in the introduction to the first translation. Even this
translation was destined not to achieve its purpose since it was never pub-
lished and there is no evidence that it was ever circulated. It was not until the
third translation produced by Muḥammad ʿAlī Furūghī (d. 1321 Sh./1942) in the
1930s that Descartes’s Discours was widely recognized in Iran as an important
European philosophical work.93 However, Afḍal al-Mulk’s version is neverthe-
less significant, since this translation was written by one of the expatriate in-
tellectuals who were the main protagonists of the early reception of European
philosophy in Iran. A closer examination of this translation and a comparison

92  However, it is still not clear why Afḍal al-Mulk choose to translate the work from a Turk-
ish version since it is said that he knew French; it may be simply for the reason that he
had no French original at hand, see Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i
gharb, p. 210. A manuscript of Afḍal al-Mulk’s translation, preserved at Malik Library in
Tehran, MS Malik 6172 (film no. 4677), contained in a volume with a manuscript of Mīrzā
Āqā Khān’s Haftād u du Millat. On this translation, see K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān
bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 201–212. Mujtahidī originally published this study in
Rāhnamā-yi kitāb, 18 (1354), 4–6; M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u
ʿulūm-i jadīd dar Īrān.” 89–90. The above description of this translation follows these two
sources.
93  Muḥammad ʿAlī Furūghī, Sayr-i ḥikmat dar Urūpā, 3 vols. (Tehran: Maṭbaʿa-yi Majlis,
1310–20 Sh./1931–41). On Furūghī and the significance of his translation and his work on
European philosophy, see K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb,
pp. 309–340.
342 Seidel

with other writings by these intellectuals might, therefore, help elucidate the
language, terminology, and style that was developing among these intellectu-
als. Moreover, the fact that this translation was done by proxy from a Turkish
version was not exceptional but rather a specific characteristic of the transla-
tion movement in the Qajar era.94
Although the number of translations of European writings in general—and
especially textbooks on technical subjects, medicine, geography, and histo­
ry, as well as travel literature and historical novels—increased significantly
­during the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, the translation of major philosophical
works was not the focus of this movement. Nonetheless, there are a number
of other philosophical writings that were reportedly translated into Persian at
that time.95 Among them, there are at least two further philosophical treatis­
es: the first is John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which is referred to both under
the title Manāfiʿ-i ḥurriyyat96 and Manāfiʿ-i āzādī;97 the other is a philosoph­
ical work by Jules Simon that was translated as Zamān u makān, apparently

94  This is a phenomenon that needs to be researched in more detail with regard to the mul-
tifaceted reception process, for instance, the impact of the Turkish reception of European
thought on Iranian intellectuals residing in Istanbul See R. Seidel, “Early Translations of
Modern European Philosophy. On the Significance of an under-researched Phenomenon
for the Study of Modern Iranian Intellectual History,” pp. 200–222.
95  See S. A. Hāshimī, “Tarjuma 4) Tarjuma-yi Fārsī dar Dawra-yi Muʿāṣir”; I. Afshār, “Book
Translations as a Cultural Activity in Iran 1806–1896”; M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn
kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar Īrān”; J. Kiyānfar, “Tarjuma dar ʿahd-i Qājār”.
96  See I. Afshār, “Book Translations as a Cultural Activity in Iran 1806–1896,” 284. He gives no
further references.
97  This translation, which is only a summary of Mill’s treatise, has been attributed to Malkum
Khān. See “Manafiʿ-i āzādī” in his Majmūʿa-yi āthār-i Mīrzā Malkum Khān (pp. 177–178) as
well as M. F. Ākhūndzāda (Akhundov), Äsärläri (Baku, 1961, 3: 259–61). The true author of
this “translation” has yet to be established. Both thinkers were at least influenced by the
thought of John Stuart Mill. If the translation is Ākhūndzāda’s, it must have been done
from a Turkish or more likely a Russian version. Algar is convinced that it was indeed
done by Ākhūndzāda, while Parsinejad mentions Malkum Khān as the “translator”. See
H. Algar, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), p. 97; I. Parsinejad, A History
of Literary Criticism in Iran (1866–1951), p. 97. Neither, however, provides clear evidence
for their claims. Masroori, referring to ʿAlī Pūrṣafar, Kitābshināsī-i inqilāb-i mashrūṭiyyat-i
Īrān (Tehran: Markaz-i Nashr-i Dānishgāhī, 1373 Sh./1994), p. 224, asserts that Ākhūndzāda
had written a brief essay on Mill’s treatise. This essay along with Ākhūndzāda’s transla-
tion of a speech by Mirabeau on the topic of freedom, circulated in handwritten copies
in the early 1880s under the title Guftār dar āzādī. At least one manuscript that may be an
instance of this text can be found in the National Library in Tehran (MS Millī F/13/149). It
is part of a Majmūʿa that primarily contains writings attributed to Malkum Khān and also
one attributed to Ākhundzāda. The essay in question in the catalogue is attributed to Mill
and Mirabeau, no particular translator is mentioned.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 343

by Khalīl Khān Thaqafī (d. 1323 Sh./1944).98 Most of the translated intellectu-
al writings, however, belong to the genres of fiction and historical literature
that also dealt with philosophical questions, especially those connected with
the issues of good governance and ethics. Noteworthy here are a number of
works by Voltaire and Mirabeau.99 Mention should be made, for instance,
of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kīrmānī’s rendition of François Fénelon’s (1651–1715) Les
Aventures de Télémaque. It is a didactic novel narrating the educational travels
of Telemachus, son of Ulysses, accompanied by his tutor, Mentor, who at the
end of the story is revealed to be the goddess of wisdom, Minerva, in disguise.
This novel has been highly popular from 18th until the early 20th century in
France and Britain. It is said to have influenced Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The
novel reflects a number of political ideas in a philosophical vein and advo-
cates, for instance, a parliamentary governmental system and a kind of fed-
eration of nations intended to resolve disputes between nations in a peaceful
way.100 Another translation of this kind was Mīrzā Āqā Khān’s adaptation of
two short stories by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who was influ-
enced by Rousseau. Both of these stories—La Chaumière indienne and Le Café
de Surate—appeared in 1790 and dealt with questions such as the nature of
wisdom, God, and religion. Mīrzā Āqā Khān merged both stories into one,
which he then modified and extended.101 Besides this kind of intellectual
fiction and the above-mentioned treatises by Descartes and Mill, it appears
that no major philosophical works were translated into Persian during that
period, although there is some evidence that a number of minor textbooks

98  See M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar Īrān,” 92. Afshar
gives a different Persian title, Zamīn u Zamān, but does not provide bibliographical refer-
ences. See Afshar, Book Translations as a Cultural Activity in Iran 1806–1896, p. 284. For
Jules Simon see Léon Séché, Jules Simon, sa vie et son œuvre (Paris: Dupret, 1887).
99  References to translated works by Voltaire and Mirabeau can be found in J. Kīyānfar,
“Tarjuma dar ʿahd-i Qājār”. An interesting case in point is L’Orphelin de la Chine, translated
by Āwānis Khān Musāʿid al-Salṭana. It is a theatre play by Voltaire inspired by the transla-
tion of the 13th-century Chinese play, The Orphan of Zhao (Chinese: 趙氏孤兒; pinyin:
­Zhaoshi gu’er). It is the first Chinese play to have been translated into any European lan-
guage on the Chinese original and its significance see S. H. West and W. L. Idema (ed.), The
Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known Versions (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press 2014).
100  M. Fenelon, Les aventures de télémaque, fils d’Ulysee (New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1854);
Diane Berrett Brown, “Emile’s Missing Text: Les Aventures De Télémaque,” Symposium: A
Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 63 1 (2009), 51–71.
101  For a discussion of this adaptation, see C. Masroori, “French Romanticism and Persian
Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran”.
344 Seidel

on philosophy were translated.102 An interesting case in point is a work titled

Mafātiḥ al-funūn, which seems to be a selective translation of various writings
by the Italian philosopher, Pasquale Gallupie (1770–1846). Despite maintaining
the doctrine of the objective reality of human knowledge, Gallupie adopted
aspects of Descartes and, in particular, Kant’s subjectivist theory of knowledge
for his epistemology. The translation, produced from an Ottoman Turkish ver-
sion, which was itself already a selective compilation, was carried out by Mīrzā
Maḥmūd Khān Afshār Kangāwarī and dedicated to Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh. It
seems to have been produced as a textbook introducing modern logic (manṭiq-i
nuwīn), although it is not known whether it was used as such.103 Altogether, it
appears that it was not primarily by way of translations that European philos­
ophy was introduced to Iran.

4 Reception of European Philosophy by Protagonists of the

Traditional Philosophical Discourse in Qajar Iran

Hardly anything is known about the influence of these translations or any

other kind of writings produced by expatriate intellectuals on the tradition­
al philosophical discourse in Qajar Iran. However, at least one significant in-
cident in the effort to introduce European philosophy into that discourse is
reported in the scholarly literature. This is the case of the Qajar prince Badīʿ
al-Mulk Mīrzā (d. after 1324/1906), who as a scholar is known for his Persian
translation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Kitāb al-mashāʾir.104 Beyond his interest in Sadrian
philosophy, he showed a specific interest in accumulating knowledge of cer-
tain philosophical trends in Europe. This becomes evident in two attempts
made by Badīʿ al-Mulk to deal with European philosophy. The first example
is of him asking two leading philosophers of his time, ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris
Ḥikmī Yazdī (d. 1304/1886) and Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris Ṭihrānī, for their opinion
on various strands of European philosophy. The second is a request he made

102  See M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar Īrān,” 90–92.
Besides the translation of Descartes’s Discours, he mentions four further translations of
philosophical works.
103  Dānishpazhūh reports that the Turkish version printed in 1853 consisted of 162 + 20
pages; he assumes that it must be a selected translation of Gallupie’s Lezioni di Logica
e Metafisica. See M. T. Dānishpazhūh, “Nakhustīn kitābhā-yi falsafa u ʿulūm-i jadīd dar
Īrān,” 91–92.
104  See Henry Corbin’s introduction to Mullā Ṣadrā’s Le Livre des Pénétartions métaphysiques
(kitāb al-Mašāʿir), edited, translated and annotated by Henry Corbin (Tehran: Départe-
ment d’iranologie de l’institut franco-iranien, 1964), pp. 1–86.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 345

to an associate of his who stayed in France to bring him a particular book by

a French philosopher.105 The first example can be traced in Ṭihrānī’s Badāʾīʿ
al-ḥikam, in which he answers seven philosophical questions posed by Badīʿ
al-Mulk.106 In the seventh question, Badīʿ al-Mulk makes a brief allusion to
the tradition of modern European philosophers (ḥukamāʾ-i farang), which he
divides into three groups. The first group he tends to compare with “Iranian
Theologians” (mutakallimīn-i īn mamlakat/mutakallimīn-i Īrān), although
without mentioning any specific person or school. However, he lists a number
of core doctrines that he relates to this tradition, such as believing in an eternal
and omniscient creator of the world (khāliqī qadīm u ʿalīm u abadī u azalī), the
perfection of His Attributes (mujtamiʿ-i jamīʿ-i ṣifāt-i kamāliyya), the identity of
His Attributes with His Essence (ṣifāt ʿayn-i dhāt mīdānand), the responsibil-
ity of the human for his deeds (masʾūl dar aʿmāl) and the idea that the actual
world is the best of all possible worlds (bihtarīn-i aqsām-i mumkin al-ījād). With
this group of Western thinkers, he associates René Descartes, Francis Bacon,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, François Fénelon and Jacques Bénigne Bossuet
(1627–1704). The second group, according to Badīʿ al-Mulk, did not believe
in an eternal God but in the principles of force or energy (quwwa) and mat-
ter (mādda), which are inseparable from and dependent on one another and
­together are the sole factors constituting the structure of the world. He men-
tions Kant and Fichte as proponents of this group. The third group believes in
the Unity of Existence, which is actualized in various particular manifestations
of this one Being. He does not give any name to this group but merely states
that its adherents are rather few.107 Badīʿ al-Mulk offered no further clarifica-
tion of his rationale for this particular classification and the association of the
thinkers he mentions with the groups. However, it seems to be the first ex-
ample of a work by a traditional Islamic philosopher in which the names of

105  Both incidents are reported by K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrānīyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i
gharb, pp. 237–244, 253–264.
106  See chapter 5 in this volume, pp. 239–240.
107  This seventh question of Badīʿ al-Mulk’s, together with the answer given by Āqā ʿAlī
Mudarris Ṭihrānī, appeared first in the lithographic edition of Ṭihrānī’s Badāyiʿ al-ḥikam
in 1314/1896–1897; it is cited in full in K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrānīyān bā falsafahā-yi
jadīd-i gharb, p. 240 and “Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā Kānt,” Dard-i falsafa, dars-i falsafa: Jashn-
nāma-yi ustād Karīm-i Mujtahidī, ed. Moḥammad Ra‌ʾīszāda, Bābak ʿAbbāsī, Mūhammad
Manṣūr Hāshimī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Kawīr, 1384 Sh./2005), pp. 551–578 (557–557). For
a German translation of this question and discussion, see Heydari (2003, 58–60 [Q&A],
56–68 [discussion]). For an English translation by Nicholas Boylston and Mohsen Kadi-
var, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr & Mehdi Aminrazavi, An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia:
Volume 5, From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century (London & New York: I. B.
Tauris, 2015), pp. 486–488.
346 Seidel

Western philosophers are mentioned in Persian. From his short description

of the three groups, it becomes apparent that Badīʿ al-Mulk’s knowledge of
European philosophy was rather limited. For instance, he erroneously associ-
ates Kant and Fichte with a group of atheist thinkers, while his short depiction
of this group corresponds more to the doctrines espoused by materialist and
naturalist thinkers such as Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51), Claude Adrien
Helvétius, Ludwig Büchner or positivist thinkers such as Auguste Comte. It is
this strand of European thought that began to attract so many reform-minded
modernist intellectuals inside and outside Iran. Which European thinkers he
had in mind with the third group we do not know. It is possible, however, that
he was alluding to Hegel and Spinoza, the two philosophers Gobineau found
to be close to the “Asian mind”.108
Although Badīʿ al-Mulk’s question is not philosophically speaking very pro-
found, it nevertheless shows that he had at least a vague idea of a number of
eminent European thinkers. We do not have any secure information about the
sources of his knowledge of European philosophy, but it is not unlikely that
he was one of the Iranian scholars who attended Gobineau’s private classes.109
What is interesting, though, about Badīʿ al-Mulk’s approach to European phi-
losophy is the fact that, in contrast to some reformist intellectuals, he obvi-
ously did not regard it as entirely opposed to or essentially different from the
Islamic philosophical tradition he was acquainted with. On the contrary, he set
out to differentiate the two and was also interested in looking for similarities
between the Islamic and the European traditions of thought.
This observation seems to be affirmed by the second example of his en-
counter with European philosophy. Two years prior to the questions he posed
to Ṭihrānī and Ḥikmī in a series of letters, he asked Ḥājj Muḥammad Ḥasan
Iṣfahānī, known as Amīn al-Ḍarb (d. 1316/1898),110 who had been the head of
the royal mint (1290/1873–1314/1897 and 1315/1898–1316/1898) and who was in
France for business reasons at that time, to purchase a book written by the
French philosopher Francoise Jean-Marie Evellin (1835–1910) for him. The
book, titled Infini et quantité, étude sur le concept de l’infini en philosophie et
dans les sciences, is an attempt to reassess Kant’s discussion of the antinomies
with the premise that human reason is at the end capable of choosing one of
the two options within an antinomy.111 We have no evidence as to whether he

108  This is also the assumption made by A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der westlichen Philosophie
durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, p. 61.
109  Kadīwar comes to the same conclusion. See Muḥsin Kadīwar “Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā Kānt”.
110  On Amīn al-Ḍarb, see Shireen Mahdavi, “Haj Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb: His
World and His Philosophy of Life,” Middle Eastern Studies 47 2 (2011): 379–393.
111  See K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 238–244.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 347

was eventually able to get hold of the book and whether he had any knowl-
edge of Evellin’s discourse, but it seems unlikely given his rather shallow and
incorrect reference to Kant. It is nonetheless remarkable that he was inter-
ested in this particular work by this particular author, who is not very well
known today. One reason for this choice might have been that Badīʿ al-Mulk
was in one way or another informed about the fact that Evellin was part of
a French anti-positivist current, criticizing Auguste Comte, whose anti-met-
aphysical materialistic doctrine was not reconcilable with the philosophical
tradition Badīʿ al-Mulk belonged to. It is this positivist doctrine that better fits
the characterization of the second group of European philosophers he men-
tioned in his seventh question, and it is this current that was most prominent
amongst those Iranian intellectuals calling for a reform or even a dismissal of
the Islamic intellectual tradition. It is striking that Badīʿ al-Mulk, in contrast to
these reform-minded intellectuals, was interested in a proponent of European
philosophy who was opposed to positivism.112
Another noteworthy case of a serious engagement with European thought
by a scholar of the period is a refutation of Darwinism written by Shaykh
Muḥammad Riḍā Najafī Isfahānī (d. 1362/1943) known under the title Naqd
falsafat Dārwin.113 It is of a more critical, even apologetic, and at the same time
a more sophisticated, nature. It also a significant example that demonstrates
how the reception processes of European thought was mediated across various
local contexts. This is because it does not directly respond to the writings of
Darwin himself but to a particular reception by an Arab thinker of a specific in-
terpretation of Darwinist thought. More precisely it is the refutation of a num-
ber of essays in which the Egyptian intellectual and physician Shiblī Shumayyil
(d. 1335/1917) summarized his account of Darwinism and evolutionary theory.
Shumayyil, who was also sympathetic to communist ideas, came into contact
with Darwinism as well as with the ideas of Herbert Spencer whilst he was in
Paris studying medicine. There he became aware of Ludwig Büchner’s Book,
Kraft und Stoff which was extremely popular in late 19th-century Europe.114 He
apparently translated the book as well as a collection of essays on Darwin by

112  See R. Seidel, Kant in Teheran, pp. 86–88.

113  An edition of the text has been published by Ḥāmid Nājī Isfahānī in 1390s Sh./2011. The
information given above rely on the preface of this edition. See Abū l-Majd Shaykh
Muḥammad Riḍā Najafī Iṣfahānī, Naqd falsafat Dārwin, ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Isfahānī
(Tehrān: Kitābkhāna, Mūzi u Markaz-i Asnād-i Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, 1389 Sh./2010),
pp. IX–LIII.
114  Ludwig Büchner, Kraft und Stoff: Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien. In allgemein-
verständlicher Darstellung (Frankfurt am Main: Meidinger, 1855).
348 Seidel

Büchner into Arabic.115 Furthermore, he wrote some essays on the ideas of

evolution and natural selection.116 Najafī’s book is meant to be a response to
Shumayyil’s ideas on Darwinism which he regarded as not only against Islam
but also philosophically inconsistent. In his Naqd falsafat Dārwīn he sets out to
show this in a detailed discussion, in which as he said in the Preface he delib-
erately used a rather colloquial form of language and refrained from engaging
in a comparative discourse on the basis of Mulla Ṣadrā’s philosophy in order
to reach a wider public. As the editor, Nājī Isfahānī says in his preface to the
edition the book was for some time used as a textbook in the classes given by
the author, and he mentions Rūḥ Allāh Khumaynī (d. 1368 Sh./1989) among
his students.117

5 Major Currents of European Thought Appropriated by Qajar

Intellectuals

Although it is not easy to trace the actual European sources the expatriate in-
tellectuals used in order to adopt and discuss European philosophy, their ac-
cess to the intellectual discourse in Europe was more immediate than that of
for instance Badīʿ al-Mulk. However, their adaptation of these sources was—as
was their whole corpus of writings in general—was not carried out in terms
of a consistently elaborate philosophical system. Therefore, one should be
cautious when speaking of their doctrines with regard to their references to
European Philosophy.
Nevertheless, one may preliminarily identify at least four broader intellec-
tual currents that were adopted and aspects of which were discussed in the
writings of these intellectuals: 1) various philosophical trends that may be sub-
sumed under the heading positivism; 2) notions of political liberalism; 3) na-
tionalism based on categories of culture or ethnic unity and race; 4) a variety

115  S echs Vorlesungen über die Darwin’sche Theorie von der Verwandlung der Arten und die
erste Entstehung der Organismenwelt (Thomas, Leipzig 1868).
116  For Shumayyil and his account of Darwinism see Marwa Elshakry, “Early Arabic Views on
Darwin,” in David Marshal (ed.), Science and Religion. Christian and Muslim Perspectives
(Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2012), pp. 128–133. For a detailed study on the
Arab reception of Darwinism see idem, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
117  Muḥammad Riḍā al-Najafī al-Iṣfahānī, Naqd falsafat Dārwin, p. L; the preface also con-
tains a summary of the main arguments of the study (pp. XXIX–XLVIII).
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 349

of strands, such as socialism, Marxism, historical materialism, and anarchism,

that are all in one way or another associated with the idea of egalitarianism.

5.1 Positivism (materialism, empiricism, naturalism, Darwinism)

Of significant importance were empiricist and positivist philosophical doc-
trines (as those of Bacon, Mill, Hume, Berkeley, Locke, Comte, Spencer), which
were dominant at that time in France and England. The appeal of this strand
of thought was probably grounded in its almost complete reliance on insights
drawn from the natural sciences, which were on the rise at that time in Europe
and which had impressed intellectuals both inside and outside Europe.
Two aspects of positivism were of particular concern among Iranian intel-
lectuals. On the one hand, there is the anti-metaphysical doctrine that only
positive sciences could provide an authentic account of reality and that by
describing and explaining the natural order of things observed in the outside
world, one could also model a well-ordered society. Hence, following that doc-
trine, social reform was only to be achieved via positive science. On the other
hand, we encounter the idea that this positivist approach to reality could serve
as a necessary supplement or even substitute for religion.
In their writings, we find explicit or implicit references to thinkers such
as Auguste Comte, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. In Mīrzā Malkum
Khān’s works, such as Daftar-i tanẓimāt or Dastgāh-i divān, we find allusions
to Comte’s “Law of Three Stages.” which states that society as a whole devel-
ops through three mentally conceived stages: (1) the theological stage, (2) the
metaphysical stage, and (3) the positive or scientific stage. This final stage, he
was convinced, can also be achieved in the Iranian context but only via fun-
damental reform of the educational and administrative system. In an analogy
to the development of a grown-up person who has previously passed through
the stages of infancy and youth, a society can only blossom and reach stability
if it is organized and administered in accordance with the principles of natu-
ral order. In almost all his writings, therefore, he argues for concrete political
measures relying on this idea of development via order and progress.118
Afghānī likewise links his positivist ideas to activist political measures. His
writings, speeches, and letters usually have a concrete addressee—fictional or
real—whom he seeks to persuade to join him in his project of Islamic reform.119
One important conviction is the idea that philosophy and its history should be

118  See, for instance, M. Malkum Khān, Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla,
pp. 23–59, 87–101.
119  Addressees and rulers: Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh, Abdülhamid II, and Tawfīq Pashā.
350 Seidel

reconsidered in the light of the results and achievements of positivist thought,

i.e., the natural sciences. In his influential essay Fawāʾid-i falsafa (The Benefits
of Philosophy),120 Afghānī acknowledges the importance of eminent thinkers
from the Islamic intellectual tradition such as Avicenna. However, he accuses
contemporary Muslim philosophers of lazily repeating centuries-old debates
on abstract epistemological and ontological problems, instead of taking the
new insights of the natural sciences and technological developments into
account, in order to serve society by finding solutions to questions affecting
­people’s everyday lives.
Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī also stressed the need to ground philosophy on
the achievements of the natural sciences and thereby took an empiricist and
positivist stance. Particularly in his works Hasht Bihisht, Ḥikmat-i naẓarī, and
Takwīn u tashrīʿ, similar to Afghānī, but in more detail, Kirmānī engaged with
the metaphysical discourses of Islamic philosophy. In particular, he highlight-
ed Mullā Ṣadrā’s principle of “Transubstantial Motion” (ḥaraka jawhariyya)
and interprets the idea of constant change entailed in this principle in a mate-
rialist and empiricist manner with reference to positivist ideas.121
As for the question of the relationship between philosophy and religion, it is
interesting to note that all the above-mentioned thinkers in one way or anoth-
er agreed upon the need to reform philosophy in the light of the natural scienc-
es. However, they differed in their account and evaluation of the role religion
has or should play in the course of a society’s development. Mīrzā Malkum
Khān, for instance, represents a pragmatic approach to religion in general
and—in the specific context of social reform in Iran—to Islam in particular.
He acknowledged the significance of Islam as an important and deeply rooted
aspect of Iranian society. Opposing the idea of blaming religion or Islam per
se for the lack of progress in Iran or the Middle East, instead, he advocated
the strategy that anyone attempting to launch a reform project should adopt
which involves arguing that its implementation is a religious duty. Islam, he
argued in a speech before British diplomats, is very flexible and its rich tradi-
tion can be used to back almost every reformist idea. It is evident that Malkum
Khān had no intrinsic interest in Islam, his approach to religion was rather a
rhetorical tool intended to implement a positivist worldview in a religious so-
ciety gradually. Advocating a Comtian kind of Religion de l’Humanité he found-
ed the Jāmiʿa-yi Ādamiyyat (League of Humanity) with the aim of creating a
community in which positivist ideas of social progress and humanism could
be venerated. Malkum Khān’s positivist perception of the world is, therefore,
more than a mere epistemological principle for understanding sociological

120  J. Asadābādī, Maqālāt-i Jamāliyya, pp. 134–148.

121  See Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī, pp. 67–104.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 351

events as natural ones—it is also to be seen as a practical approach, by means

of which society can be enhanced as well as simply described.122
Ākhūndzāda’s understanding of how to implement positivism was unam-
biguously anti-religious. He also regarded religion as an important social factor,
but one to be overcome. It can only be a transitional phase in the develop-
ment of a society, which ultimately has to reach the stage of positive science.
He regarded all religious worldviews as superstition since they try to explain
natural processes that can be observed in the world through the influence of
supernatural powers. The idea of transcendence leads, he was convinced, to an
epistemologically irresolvable dualism between a natural and a supernatural
world, which calls all knowledge that we gain via natural science into question.
The whole cosmos for him was rather constituted of this-worldly particulars
that are related to one another according to the law of nature. Religion as su-
perstition is, therefore, an obstacle to the accomplishment of the highest, i.e.,
the positivist, stage in the development of a society.123
In contrast to Ākhūndzāda’s position, Ṭālibuf and Afghānī explicitly at-
tempted to implement their adaptation of positivist thought and their em-
phasis on the need to spread the insights from natural science not merely to
promote social reform but also to remodel the idea of religion and to improve
religious learning in Islam. In his essay Fawāʾid-i falsafa, for instance, Afghānī
understands the perpetual quest for knowledge as a religious duty, which
for him specifically entails the necessity to also engage with modern natural
sciences in order to gain knowledge about the world. He felt that such an ap-
proach to knowledge about this-worldly phenomena is supported by the fre-
quent Qurʾānic appeal to believers to accurately observe natural phenomena.
Thus, in this text at least, he explicitly brought religion and positive science
into a complementary relationship.124

122  For Malkum’s idea of humanity was articulated in a way reminiscent of a religious con-
fession as well as guidelines of conduct for members of a quasi-religious society see his
“ʿUṣūl-ī ādamiyyat,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 326–341. On
Malkum Khān’s attitude towards religion, see also A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der westlichen
Philosophie durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, pp. 107–112.
123  For Ākhūndzāda on the relationship between science and religion, see his book
Maktūbāt: Nāmahā-yi Shāhzāda Kamāl al-Dawla bi Shāhzāda Jalāl al-Dawla. See also
F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī-i Ākhūndzāda, pp. 172–273. A. A. Heydari,
Rezeption der westlichen Philosophie durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit,
pp. 158–167. Hilda Tanik, Der aserbaidschanische Autor M. F. Achundov: Leben, Weltbild,
Werk. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Theaterstücke (Diplomarbeit Universität
Wien, Vienna, 2013), pp. 28–40.
124  See his “Fawāʾid-i falsafa” (The Benefits of Philosophy), in J. Asadābādī, Maqālāt-i
Jamāliyya, pp. 147–148. For the English translation see N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to
Imperialism, pp. 109–122.
352 Seidel

Ṭālibuf’s approach to the question of religion in general and to Islam in par-

ticular likewise maintained that the application of modern natural sciences
and their implementation in religious discourse is required for the sake of re-
ligion itself. This is because, as far as he was concerned, it is the only way to
adjust this discourse to the demands of the ever-changing circumstances of
everyday life and thereby keep religion alive and relevant to the needs of the
people. To achieve this goal, a sincere and continual reformulation of religious
law is therefore necessary. This again can only be accomplished via a reform
of the educational system. The issue of education, the way in which modern
youth should acquire knowledge, is, therefore, the main topic of one of his
major works, Kitāb-i Aḥmad, modelled on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile. In
this work, Ṭālibuf presented a dialogue between the narrator and his fictitious
son Aḥmad designed to raise the latter up to become both a modern citizen
and a Muslim, pious and at the same time with a firm grounding in modern
science.125
Whereas the goal of Ṭalibuf and Afghānī was, among other things, to reform
Islamic education, Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī’s attitude towards religion was
a more ambiguous one. In Hasht Bihisht, for instance, he juxtaposes the dis-
course of issues related to moral philosophy with a defence of the legitimacy
of the Azalī branch of Babism. Thus he clearly took the side of a particular
religious community, though not an orthodox one, while in Takwīn u tashrīʿ
he appears to be more hostile towards religious discourse in general—even
though the main targets are Sunnī and Shīʿī religious doctrines. Apart from
that, Kirmānī also reflects upon the phenomenon of religiosity (diyānat) in
general, from a more sociological perspective. He describes the development
of human religiosity following a pattern reminiscent of Herbert Spencer’s doc-
trine of the evolutionary process in human societies, which he also applies to
the history of religion as an attempt by human beings to understand the inex-
plicable. In primitive societies, people wanted to make sense of natural phe-
nomena they did not understand and were afraid of. The belief in supernatural
entities such as demons made these phenomena explicable and ways to seek to
influence them through worship and cultic acts evolved. This religiosity then
developed further into higher and more sophisticated systems of belief until it
reached monotheism, in which the supernatural is transferred to a transcend-
ent sphere. This idea of God serves the purpose of explaining things that are
beyond human comprehension and has at least the potential to fill human life

125  See ʿA Ṭālibuf, Kitāb-i Aḥmad yā Safīna-yi Ṭālibī, pp. 11–137. For a discussion of his pos­
itivist thought see F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i Tabrīzī, pp. 15–27, for his social
criticism ibid., pp. 79–87.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 353

with meaning and hope. This, according to Kirmānī, is a goal that all religions
share and that could even play a positive role in the enhancement of society
and the peaceful coexistence of different societies as long as the principle of
tolerance is regarded as an integral part of it. However, the fact that religious
communities tend to claim exclusive access to the truth in the end results in
violence and despotism. Kirmānī discussed this topic of religious pluralism in
his essay Haftād u du millat, in which he described a fictitious dispute between
representatives of various religious communities and Weltanschauung about
the nature of God and its perceptibility. This essay is not only an interesting in-
stance of Kirmānī’s discourse on religion, but it also gives us a good example of
his method of creatively adopting the writings of other intellectuals and think-
ers. Instead of literally translating or accurately paraphrasing these texts, he re-
arranged and rewrote them by adding some of his own thoughts to them and,
at times, even changing the actual direction of the original argument. For in-
stance, he introduced a new character in his adaptation of the two short stories
of Bernardin de Saint Pierre who, in the end, praises enlightened Europeans for
their reliance on reason and natural sciences. However, it was precisely these
that were the objects of critique in Bernardin’s La chaumiére indienne and Le
café de Surat. Unlike Bernardin, Kirmānī’s interest in the narration was not the
romantic reorientation towards nature, as a counter-enlightenment move or
the personal belief in God. What motivated Kirmanī to produce an amend-
ed version of it was to promote the idea of a peaceful coexistence achieved
through the use of reason and civil rights in the face of religious unrest be-
tween various religio-political groups in Iran.126

5.2 Liberalism
The adaptation of various approaches to the idea of liberalism was also ex­
ceedingly attractive to dissident Iranian intellectuals. The discourse on the
freedom of the individual and Europe’s record of technological progress had al-
ready appealed to Iranian travellers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.127 Likewise, the intellectuals discussed in this chapter particularly

126  For an edition of “Haftād u du millat” see Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī, Haftād u du mil-
lat (Berlin: Intishārāt-i Īrānshahr, 1343/1924), pp. 67–122. For a detailed discussion of
Kirmānī’s approach to religion see F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī,
pp. 131–148. For a discussion of Kirmanī’s appropriation of Bernardin de Saint Pierre see
C. Masroori, “French Romanticism and Persian Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran,”
551–556.
127  A case in point is Mīr ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Khān Mūsawī Shūshtarī (1758–1806) who lived in co-
lonial India in the late 18th century and wrote about his perception of British influence
there as a source of reform in his Tuḥfat al-ʿālam. See, Mīr ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Khān Shūshtarī,
354 Seidel

highlighted liberal ideas and the political principles derived from them, such
as those related to the sovereignty of the people and to constitutionalism. The
idea of freedom of the individual and the right to express critical thinking that
this implies was therefore regarded sometimes as a general precondition for
progress in the first place.128
One of Ākhūndzāda’s influential essays, Qirītīqā, is devoted to the topic of
critique as a means for independent thinking and hence a precondition for
progress. Also in his Maktūbāt, Ākhūndzāda advocated the principles of tol-
erance, free speech, and engagement in open philosophical debates with fre-
quent reference to Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, as well as to David
Hume and the historian, Henry Thomas Buckle. He also makes allusions to J. S.
Mill’s On Liberty, first published in 1859, whose liberal and positivist ideas he
shared. The purpose of all these writings by Ākhūndzāda was first and fore-
most to criticize religious dogma as a form of superstition that constituted, in
his view, the main reason for the lack of freethinking—and hence social pro-
gress—in Iran. He argued that religious belief is not only opposed to science
but also contradicts the very idea of human freedom since the relationship be-
tween a believer and God is equivalent to that of master and servant. Because
the monotheistic veneration of an almighty God, who represents the idea of
tyranny, is deeply rooted in Middle Eastern culture, Orientals naturally have
difficulties in emancipating themselves from the master-servant pattern and
understanding the meaning of human autonomy. The only remedy to this situ-
ation and the way to lead Iranians to the idea of autonomy and freedom was
to develop an open and public critique of religious dogma. With this argument
Ākhūndzāda idealized the state of critical discourse in Europe, saying that the
Europeans had already reached this degree of critique.129
Ṭālibuf was likewise influenced by the authors of the European enlighten-
ment mentioned earlier. In his Kitāb-i Aḥmad, as well as in other works, he also
emphasized the notion of liberty (āzādī), again with some reference to Mill.
Liberty, he argued, is a natural attribute of human beings which is based on
the idea of subjectivity, for which he coined the Persian term, manī. Out of this

Tuḥfat al-ʿālam wa-dhayl al-Tuḥfa: Safarnāma u Khāṭirāt, ed. Ṣamad Muwaḥḥid (Tehran:
Ṭahūrī, 1363 Sh./1984–85). For a brief discussion see A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der ­westlichen
Philosophie durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, pp. 44–49. Another example,
Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ, has already been mentioned.
128  For an overview to the discussion on freedom by intellectuals and reformers of Qajar Iran
see S. Ahmad Hashemi, “Freedom as a Remedy for Decline: The Horizon of Freedom in
Nineteenth-Century Iran,” Iran Nameh 30 4 (2016), pp. 102–124.
129  See M. Sanjabi, “Rereading the Enlightenment: Akhundzada and His Voltaire,” 48–49;
F. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, pp. 42–48.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 355

attribute, he derived three spheres of freedom (life, opinion, and speech) that
ought to be recognized as natural rights.130
Programmatic emphasis on the notion of secular legislation (qānūn) is par-
ticularly present in the discourse of Malkum Khān. Not only did he choose
Qānūn as the title of his exile journal but he was also probably the first to intro-
duce this term into Persian intellectual discourse. In this way, he highlighted
the idea of positive and this-worldly law—in contrast to divine law (sharīʿa)—a
meaning of the term that was already in use in the Ottoman context.131 Qānūn,
as he understood it, meant legislation issued by a legitimate government to
guarantee welfare and justice for the individuals of a given society.132 The idea
of a well-ordered and properly administered society is only to be achieved by
means of a legal apparatus (dastgāh-i qānūn) that is constantly adjusted to the
changing social circumstances and developments occurring in it.133 He regard-
ed the Ottoman reform of the administrative and legal systems—known as the
Tanẓīmāt, to which he constantly refers in his writings134—as an excellent ex-
ample of the implementation of the idea of qānūn as a concept. He argued that
a clear distinction between sharīʿa and qānūn was a necessary p ­ recondition to
ensuring that the government is the real sovereign of the legislative process.
However, he did not regard the two legal systems as mutually exclusive.135 In
some of his writings, especially in various articles in his journal, he even ar-
gued that the basic idea of the sharīʿa as a legal principle explicitly points to
the need for worldly legislation. He also emphasized the conceptual distinc-
tion between a particular qānūn, meaning a bill passed by a legislative insti­
tution, and ḥukm, a decree voluntarily issued by a ruler—a distinction that he
was convinced had not been recognized in Qajar Iran. Malkum Khān’s notion

130  For a brief discussion of Ṭālibuf’s liberal discourse see F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i
Tabrīzī, pp. 31–64.
131  See H. Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān, p. 29.
132  See Malkum Khān’s “Kitābcha-yi ghaybī yā Daftar-i tanẓīmāt,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Mal-
kum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 23–59; H. Algar, Mirzā Malkum Khān, p. 29.
133  See, Malkum Khān’s “Dastgāh-i dīvān,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-
Dawla, pp. 87–101 here for instance 93f.
134  See, for instance, “Kitābcha-yi ghaybī yā daftar-i tanẓīmāt,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum
Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 23–59. For more on the influence of the Tanẓīmāt on Malkum
Khān, see Pistor-Hatam (1992, 62–70).
135  See, for instance, his article, “Yikī az ḥarfhā-yi tāza-yi mā,” Qānūn 1 (1 Rajab 1307/28 Feb.
1890): 4; S. A. Hashemi, “Freedom as a Remedy for Decline,” p. 111. See also his essay dis-
cussing the necessity of a parliamentary system, “Nidā-yi ʿadālat,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā
Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 136–157 (for the conformity of a parliament with reli-
gion, ibid., p. 143) and his essay advertising the idea of Humanity and its compliance with
the principles of Islam, “Ḥujjat”, in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla,
pp. 342–346.
356 Seidel

of liberalism comes into play when the mutual dependence of the concepts of
freedom (āzādī) and qānūn was emphasized because a sound legislative sys-
tem based on the principle of qānūn cannot be achieved unless freedom of
expression is granted. This freedom, however, was not an unlimited one; rath­
er, certain restrictions to this freedom were—within legal boundaries—some-
times necessary for the sake of political and legislative order.136 Nonetheless,
the idea of human freedom was, in his opinion, an essential aspect of the con-
cept of an autonomous agent (fāʿil-i mukhtār) and therefore constitutive of the
idea of humanness or humanity (ādamiyyat) as the bearer of natural rights.137
Another important aspect of his adaptation of liberal thought is his advoca-
cy of economic liberalism (āzādī-i riqābat-i iqtiṣādī). For one thing, it is based
on the idea of the freedom of the individual and its limits, inspired by John
Stuart Mill, and, for another, it displays some resemblance to the theories of
free-market economics articulated by classical liberalists such as Adam Smith
and Jean-Baptiste Say.138 He did not discuss the theories of these thinkers di-
rectly in his writings, and to date, we have no evidence that he studied their
original works, but he appears to have had a general knowledge of some of
their basic doctrines and concepts.139 For instance, he judged the economic
self-interest (manāfiʿ-i tijārī) of European nations (duwal-i farangistān) to be
rational and even beneficial for Oriental nations such as Iran. He openly ad-
vocated the opening up of the Iranian market to European companies as a
means to further technological and social development, which without foreign
­investments could not be secured.140

136  See, for instance, his essay discussing a proposal for criminal legislation “Daftar-i qānūn”,
in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 102–135 (see especially the intro-
duction pp. 102–109); ibid., “Nidā-yi ʿadālat,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām
al-Dawla, p. 146.
137  See Malkum Khān’s “ʿUṣūl-i ādamiyyat,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-
Dawla, pp. 326–341; ibid., “Ḥujjat,” in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla,
pp. 342–346. See also F. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, p. 34.
138  See his “ʿUṣūl-i taraqqī” (which is an essay on the necessary conditions for a prosperous
economy in Iran, written in 1301/1884 in London and submitted to Mīrzā ʿAlī Khān Amīn
al-Dawla), in Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla, pp. 169–210.
139  This corresponds to the assessment made by K. Mujtahidī, Āshināʾī-i Īrāniyān bā falsafahā-
yi jadīd-i gharb, pp. 174–177.
140  It should be mentioned that it was his ideas of free-market economics that became sub-
ject to harsh criticism. Given his attempts to benefit from the selling of Iranian conces-
sions to European companies, it is no wonder that his advocacy of the free-market econ-
omy in his writings has been seen as hypocritical.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 357

5.3 Nationalism (racism)

Another concept that had an enormous influence on Iranian intellectuals and
was adopted by them in different ways and with emphasis on various aspects
or justifications of it was that of nationalism, one which was on the rise in
nineteenth-century Europe. Although the discourse on nationalism may not
be regarded as an intrinsically philosophical one, it nonetheless is worth men-
tioning here for two reasons. Firstly, since the intellectuals who first adopted
modern European philosophical ideas were not systematic philosophers but
politically engaged writers, they made no distinction between strictly philo-
sophical (metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, etc.) lines of argument and
those that were rather political and ideological. As far as they were concerned
both types belonged to the sphere of modern European intellectual discourse
with which they were engaged. Moreover, since the idea of nationalism was an
essential part of this discourse in nineteenth-century Europe and the intellec­
tuals covered in this chapter were all in one way or another specifically con-
cerned with Iran’s political and cultural future, nationalism seemed to them to
be an appropriate doctrine for addressing their concerns. In doing so, they laid
the groundwork for what in the twentieth century, especially under Pahlavi
rule, would develop into a discourse on Iranian national identity. Secondly, in
discussing and determining what was specific about “being Iranian.” they also
touched upon broader concepts with a greater philosophical weight, such as
(collective) identity, the self, the other, etc., which all also had a mediated im-
pact on the development of a Persian terminology of this conceptual context.
Nationalism based on the idea of national identity or unity was justified, broad-
ly speaking, either through pragmatic or essentialist arguments. Adherents of
the pragmatic approach argued for the idea of a nation-state—usually refer-
ring to a pre-existing territorial entity ruled by a particular ­government—in
order to stress the unity of this political entity. In this approach, the idea of
the nation served the purpose of uniting the existing political entity. In the
essentialist approach, the nation-state should be shaped in accordance with
ethnic entities.141

141  This is, of course, only a very rough ideal-typical division. There are many more types
of nationalism that can be identified and are discussed and analysed in scholarly litera-
ture on the history of nationalism. For more on this, see John Alexander Armstrong, Na-
tions before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Eric J.
­Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger (eds.), The In-
vention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Anthony D. Smith,
Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
358 Seidel

Malkum Khān—in keeping with his pragmatic perspective on culture—

rather followed the first approach to the idea of nationalism. Although he also
explicitly talked of clear differences between various civilizations—especially
the civilizations of Europe (farangistān) and the Orient—with regard to race
(nijād) and religion (dīn), he regarded these as historical facts that can be
changed using the correct measures. He did not build his argument for the
need for an Iranian national identity on an essentialist or racist discourse. He
regarded neither Islam nor Iranian culture as insuperable obstacles for pro-
gress in Iran nor did he argue that belonging to the Aryan race entails any es-
sential supremacy of Iranians over other people. Instead, he suggested that
national unity is guaranteed by a properly functioning modern state system
that governs a community of people within a distinct territorial realm and ac-
cording to the judicial and administrative standards he outlined in his various
reform proposals. As far as he was concerned what constituted the nation were
not essential features of ethnicity, shared history and cultural practices that
can be identified as ontological entities but rather the way in which a particu-
lar ruling class pragmatically uses these features to construct the unity of the
people under its rule.142
Ākhūndzāda, Kirmānī, and Ṭālibuf were, unlike Malkum Khān, among the
first protagonists of an Iranian nationalist discourse based on models of the
cultural, historical and ethnic unity of the Iranian people, which was com-
bined with explicit racist arguments. Ākhūndzāda identified Islam as an alien
cultural phenomenon imposed on the Iranians by the Arabs, which caused the
cultural decline of the Iranian people and thus the loss of their political power
and integrity. He glorified the pre-Islamic Iranian past and the rule of the an-
cient kings as an idyllic age in which injustice and poverty were almost absent
and which therefore should serve as a model for the ideal Iranian community.
Advocating this line of reasoning, Ākhūndzāda employed two main principles
of the Iranian nationalist discourse: 1) a glorification of the ancient Iranian
past, and 2) a strong antipathy towards Arabs and Arabic culture.143
Kirmānī, who had read and adopted the writings of Ākhūndzāda, especially
his Maktūbāt, followed this line of argument in his nationalist discourse and
even went one step further. He argued that the difference between Arabs and
Iranians is of a fundamental nature, since the two peoples are of different types,

142  See his “Persian Civilisation,” Contemporary Review 59 (1891): 238–244. A Persian transla-
tion of it can be found in M. Malkum Khān, Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-
Dawla, pp. 158–165.
143  F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī-i Ākhūndzāda, pp. 109–135. See also Reza
­Zia-Ebrahimi, “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the “Aryan”
Discourse in Iran,” Iranian Studies 44 4 (2011): 445–472.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 359

the Arabs belonging to the Semitic (inferior) race and the Iranians to the Aryan
(superior) race—a distinction that he attempted to underline by referring to
phrenological “evidence” in order to prove the difference “scientifically”.144 It
was thus Kirmānī who introduced the “Aryan myth” into the Iranian national
discourse. He interpreted the phenomenon of the miscegenation of these two
races after the Islamic conquest of Iran as the beginning of the decline of the
Aryan race and the cause of the cultural degeneration of the Iranians. This per-
spective allowed him to explain their perceived backwardness vis-à-vis Europe
and to suggest a way out of this cultural crisis. The solution, Kirmānī argued,
was a return to the pre-Islamic history and culture of Iran and to the ancient
religion, Zoroastrianism. Consequently, he asserted the need to develop a his-
torical consciousness as a precondition for the development of national iden-
tity and hence a strong and independent nation. Kirmānī was convinced that
remembering the “glorious” pre-Islamic history of Iran would be one means by
which to achieve this goal. Kirmānī, therefore, can be regarded as an Iranian
proto-nationalist and the founding figure of a racist discourse that dwelt on
the idea of an allegedly superior Aryan race that purportedly could be traced
back to the earliest Persian sources, in which the ancient kings had called
themselves Kings of the Aryans.
It seems clear that Kirmānī in his nationalist discourse and his use of the
idea of the “Aryan” origin of the Iranians drew heavily on the racist discourse
that was on the rise in late nineteenth-century Europe.145 The emergence of
the Aryan myth first began as a linguistic argument that identified common
roots for Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Persian. This discovery is usually associ-
ated with the British Orientalist Sir William Jones (d. 1794), whereas the term
Aryan itself is said to have been coined by the French Orientalist Abraham-
Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (d. 1806).146 First used in reference to a linguis-
tic family, the idea of an Aryan origin gradually turned from a linguistic into
an ethnic or racial category, advocated, though with different emphases, by
European thinkers such as Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Friedrich Max Müller
(1823–1900), George Rawlinson (1812–1902), and Ernest Renan (1823–1892). Out
of this notion of an Aryan race there developed a whole discipline of racial
anthropology that was accompanied by (pseudo) methods of natural science
such as the construction of biological taxonomies of the human race. This idea

144  See F. Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, p. 39.

145  For a detailed discussion of the emergence of the Aryan myth and its appropriation by
Iranian thinkers, see R. Zia-Ebrahimi, “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation”; R. Zia-Ebra-
himi, “ ‘Arab Invasion’ and decline, or the import of European racial thought by Iranian
nationalists,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 6 (2014): 1043–1061 [first published online 2012].
146  See R. Zia-Ebrahimi, “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation,” 448.
360 Seidel

also served to interpret the history of mankind as a history of miscegenation

and cultural decline. In a further step, the idea of racial purification and eu-
genics was also introduced as a means to re-establish the ‘glorious’ origin of
the pure Aryan race, an idea that eventually culminated in the extremist rac-
ist ideology of national socialism. Kirmānī was apparently the first Iranian to
adopt this nineteenth-century racist discourse and in a way ‘reimported’ the
term, and with it the notion of the ‘Aryan’, into modern Persian.147 It is not
clear, though, whether the later Persian ‘Aryan’ discourse of the twentieth cen-
tury was directly influenced by Kirmānī or developed through the adoption of
European models.148 What is known, however, is that it was further elaborated
in the Pahlavi era by authors such as Ḥasan Pīrniyā149 and therefore constitut­
ed an essential component of the invented tradition of the Pahlavi dynasty
that traced its lineage back to the ancient kings.
Ṭālibuf likewise argued for the unity of the Iranian nation by dwelling on pe-
jorative demarcations between Iranians and Arabs. He maintained that it was
not the influence of Islam—as in Ākhūndzāda’s discourse—but the impact
of Arabic culture that was the major obstacle for the advancement of Iranian
civilization. At the same time, Ṭālibuf argued that, notwithstanding the un-
deniable benefits of the ideas of the European enlightenment, the increasing
influence and colonial interests of European states in Iran constituted a threat
to the integrity of the Iranian nation. With his committed stand against both
Arab and colonial influence on Iranian culture, he contributed to a kind of pa-
triotic nationalist discourse by coining a number of Persian word as technical
terms for concepts related to nationalism, such as millat (in the modern sense

147  That it was indeed reimportation is indicated by Zia-Ebrahimi, who points out that
Kirmānī transliterated the term āriyān as an equivalent of the English aryan or French
arien. In the same way, for the Semitic languages, he wrote semetīk instead of sāmī. See
R. Zia-Ebrahimi, “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation,” 454. He does not, however, iden-
tify any specific sources Kirmānī might have used.
148  Zia-Ebrahimi does not clarify this issue. He merely says that “it took some time for other
Iranian authors to catch up with Kirmānī’s racialist enthusiasm”. See R. Zia-Ebrahimi,
“Self-Orientalization and Dislocation,” 455. However, this lack of information is not sur-
prising given the fact that studies on the Iranian reception of Kirmānī still represent a
lacuna.
149  For more on Pīrniyā and his idea of an Iranian nation that is rooted in ancient Iranian his-
tory, see Helena Rust, Rasse, Nation und die Konstruktion der iranischen Antike. Zur Funk-
tion der Begriffe nežād (Rasse) und āryānhā (Arier) in Ḥasan Pīrniyās (1872–1935) Īrān-e
Bāstānī, MA Dissertation, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies und Science of Religion,
Universität Bern, Bern, 2014.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 361

of nation), jism-i millī (Volkskörper, body metaphor signifying the entirety of

an ethnic group), waṭan (homeland), and ḥubb-i waṭan (patriotism).150

5.4 Egalitarianism (socialism, anarchism, nihilism, historical

materialism)
The dissemination of Marxist and socialist thought in Iran was initiated
not so much by the appropriation by Iranian intellectuals of the theoretical
texts of European socialist and Marxist authors but rather through the con-
tacts Iranian activists established with various groups belonging to the labour
movement in the Caucasus. These groups in turn were influenced by socialist
and social democratic movements in Russia.151 The propagation of this intel-
lectual trend among Iranians was, therefore, from the very beginning strongly
linked to actual political agitation and the formation of political associations
for the working class. Besides this, however, some of the intellectuals covered
in this chapter also referred to some of the basic concepts and discussions that
underlay the activist discourse of these movements. The reception of broadly
speaking egalitarian ideas focused on the concept of equality for which the
Arabic/Persian term musāwāt or the loanword igālīti was used. Malkum Khān,
for instance, employed the idea of equality in a way that pointed to the equal-
ity of all citizens before the law.152 Ṭālibuf also discussed the idea of equality,
which he understood, with reference to Voltaire, as the natural equality of all
human beings: thus he dismissed all sorts of class distinctions based on ori-
gin and genealogy.153 Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī offered a brief systematic ac-
count of various European approaches to the concept of equality. He not only
­discussed Voltaire and Rousseau in this regard, but also referred to a number
of quite recent intellectual trends of his time such as historical materialism,
the discourses of eminent anarchist thinkers such as Mikhail Bakunin and

150  Some of these terms like “ḥubb-i waṭan”, before being employed by Ṭālibuf, have been in
use as technical terms in the Ottoman Turkish discourse of nationalism in the 19th centu-
ry. Therefore, Ṭālibuf might have picked them up from the writings of Ottoman intellectu-
als or Iranians based in Istanbul. For a summary of Ṭālibuf’s discourse on patriotism and
nationalism see F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i Tabrīzī, pp. 87–94.
151  On the development of the early labour movement and socialism in Iran, see Sabine
Roschke-Bugzel, Die revolutionaere Bewegung in Iran 1905–1911: Sozialdemokratie und rus-
sischer Einfluß (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991), Cosroe Chaqueri, Origins of Social Democracy
in Modern Iran (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2001).
152  See, for instance his “Nidā-yi ʿadālat,” Risālahā-yi Mīrzā Malkum Khān-i Niẓām al-Dawla,
pp. 136–157.
153  For Ṭālibuf on equality, see his Masʾala-yi ḥayāt. For a brief discussion see also
F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshahā-yi Ṭālibuf-i Tabrīzī, pp. 31–64; A. A. Heydari, Rezeption der
westlichen Philosophie durch iranische Denker in der Kadscharenzeit, p. 92.
362 Seidel

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and nihilism. In doing so, he introduced these strands

of thought and their protagonists into Iranian discourse for the first time.
What he specifically appreciated with regard to these discourses was the idea
of distributional equity. Beyond that, in his discussion on equality, he drew an
interesting parallel with the religious movement of Mazdakism, which is said
to have had revolutionary social tendencies. Kirmānī particularly highlighted
the anticlerical and anti-aristocratic tendency of Mazdakism in a comparison
with some Enlightenment and socialist or even anarchist thinkers. What he
criticized, above all in anarchism and nihilism, was the rejection of any kind of
state authority, which he regarded as indispensable for a functioning society.154

6 Conclusion

This chapter is intended to provide a broad overview of the multifaceted phe-

nomenon of the process of the reception of several of philosophical ideas into
the intellectual and philosophical discourse of nineteenth-century Iran. It be-
came obvious that the protagonists of this process barely elaborated system-
atic doctrines with regard to the broader intellectual currents discussed above,
but rather made use of these ideas eclectically. Although these intellectuals
seem to have been well known and are widely discussed in the scholarly lit-
erature on the (intellectual) history of Qajar Iran, their writings still await a
systematic and more comprehensive evaluation with regard to the appropria-
tion of the ideas of eminent European thinkers in their texts. We still know
little about which European philosophical texts they actually studied, which
texts were available to them and which of these texts were translated into
languages—other than Persian—that they were acquainted with (Ottoman
Turkish, Arabic, Russian, English, French, etc.). We also lack a clear image of
which of these texts were popular in the period when these Iranian intellectu-
als were writing their essays. To achieve a more comprehensive image of the
reception process, one has to locate these intellectuals in their respective con-
texts and reconstruct their intellectual networks more thoroughly. One needs
to establish, for instance, which people a particular Iranian thinker in mid-
nineteenth-century Istanbul had contact with, whether or not there was an
exile community, who was active in that community and what its connections
were to other local intellectual circles. To better understand the crucial issues
discussed in these Iranian exile communities, one must also consider what

154  For some brief references to Kirmānī’s account of egalitarianism, see F. Ādamiyyat,
Andīshahā-yi Mīrzā Āqā Khān-i Kirmānī, pp. 105–130, 250–264.
The Reception of European Philosophy in Qajar Iran 363

was discussed in the broader intellectual environment in which these com-

munities were located. In other words, insights from the intellectual history of
­eighteenth—and nineteenth-century Russia (especially the Caucasus region),
the Ottoman Empire and the Arab world need to be systematically examined
with regard to the reception and appropriation of European thought as well as
the continuation and further development of Islamic intellectual traditions,
where applicable. Therefore, more targeted collaborations with experts in
these fields are inevitable. In terms of the source material that is involved, it is
first necessary to undertake an extensive reassessment of the inventory of texts
related to this process of knowledge transmission. This is to be achieved by
means of a systematic evaluation of the relevant library catalogues containing
the sources of eighteenth—and nineteenth-century Iranian writers focusing
thematically on philosophical issues. This needs to be followed by a sophisti-
cated categorization of these sources.
One specific topic that requires particular attention is the question of the
translation of European philosophical texts, which, as has been shown, is not
only an under-researched but also, by its very nature, a complicated issue.
Texts were often only paraphrased rather than literally translated and some-
times the original author was not indicated, while in other instances various
original texts were merged and then either shortened or extended. By the
same token, translators often chose texts that, from a contemporary view of
the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century, seem to be rather mar-
ginal (among them textbooks, in particular). Finally, there is the apparently
widespread phenomenon of translations that were carried out at one remove
using an existing translation of the original work of the author. This seems to
have applied in particular to those done by Iranians based in Istanbul, who
often used Ottoman Turkish renditions, or intellectuals in Tbilisi, for instance,
who had Russian translations at their disposal, although this phenomenon of
using already translated versions is not necessarily bound to a specific place.
What also needs to be studied in more detail are how other thinkers received
these translations and appropriations of European philosophical doctrines
presented by intellectuals and scholars of Qajar Iran in the following decades.
Which of these texts and translations, which loan words and neologisms of
technical terms had an impact on the philosophical discourse—be it among
scholars in the religious seminaries or those connected to the newly founded
European-style institutions of learning? How they shaped the image of what
was perceived to be European philosophy in early twentieth-century Iran? In
response to all these questions, this chapter is only able to provide some snap-
shot answers focusing on a limited number of examples. However, it is hoped
it has succeeded in highlighting the significance of the reception of modern
364 Seidel

European philosophy as an important problem in the intellectual history of

Qajar Iran and will encourage further research in this field of study.

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Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

ʿAbbās Mīrzā Qājār 41, 154, 314, 315, 319 ʿĀmilī, Zayn al-Dīn Jubāʾī 232
ʿAbd al-Bāqī, Miʿmār Kāshānī 286 Amīn al-Ḍarb 346
ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 22n Amīr Kabīr 317
ʿAbd al-Razzāq Khān 39 Amīr Niẓām 290n
ʿAbduh, Muḥammad 336, 337 Āmulī, Mullā Muḥammad 289
Abdülhamid II 337, 349n Āmulī, Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī 194n, 195
Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn 9, 22, 24, 41, 233, 244, Āmulī, Sayyid Ḥaydar 163, 279
293, 295, 296 Anarchism 361
Abū Bakr 153 Anquetil-Duperron,
Abū l-Qāsim, Mīrzā 154 Abraham-Hyacinthe 359
Abū Saʿīd Abū l-Khayr 26n Anṣārī, Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh 201
Adam 163, 165, 167, 168 Anṣārī, Shaykh Murtaḍā 82, 191, 192n
Adīb Pīshāwarī 190, 191 Āqā Ḥusayn Khwānsārī see Khwānsārī, Āqā
Afḍal al-Mulk, Ghulām-Ḥusayn 286 Ḥusayn
Afḍal al-Mulk Kirmānī 341, 341n Āqā Jamāl Khwānsārī see Khwānsārī, Āqā
al-Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn 20, 191, 30, 321, 333, Jamāl al-Dīn
335, 349, 351 Āqā Khān Kirmānī, Mīrzā see Kirmānī, Mīrzā
Afshār Kangāwarī, Mīrzā Maḥmūd Āqā Khān
Khān 344 Āqā Mīrzā Sayyid Bāqir 23n
Ahl-i Ḥaqq 332 Āqā Mīrzā Sayyid Ḥasan 179n, 187n
Aḥmad Khān, Sayyid 336 Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān see Kirmānī,
al-Aḥsāʾī, Ibn Abī Jumhūr 279 Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān
al-Aḥsāʾī, Shaykh Aḥmad 2, 3, 4, 24, 28, 60, Āqā Muḥammad Khān Qājār 13, 17, 40, 148,
66–124, 135, 138, 142, 146, 146n, 152n, 180
181n, 183, 191, 200, 332 Ardabīlī, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad 22, 23n
Akhbārīs 13, 15, 82n, 128, 132n, 133 Ardabīlī, Muqaddas 22, 22n
Akhundov see Ākhūndzāda, Mīrzā FatḥʿAlī Ardakānī, Ḥājj Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan Tājir 
Ākhūndzāda, Mīrzā Fatḥ ʿAlī 30, 316, 316n, 265
321, 322, 330, 334, 342n, 351, 354, 358, Ardakānī, Mullā Aḥmad 25, 28, 48, 130, 243,
360 250, 250n
Āl Jabbār, Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Ardistānī, Amīr Mahdī Ḥakīm al-Mulk 17n,
ʿAlī 83 182n
ʿAlawī, Sayyid Aḥmad 25, 143 Ardistānī Mullā Muḥammad Ṣādiq 8, 9, 11,
ʿAlawī, Sayyid Ashraf 158n 10, 10n, 127, 131, 158
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 69, 136, 144, 150, 155, 196, ʿĀrif, Mullā Muḥammad 185, 185n
200, 279 ʿĀrif Bujnūrdī, Mullā Ismāʿīl see Bujnūrdī,
ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn, Imām Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 66 Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif
ʿAlī b. Mūsā l-Riḍā, Imām 79, 96, 119, 120, 163 Aristotle 16, 22, 26, 76, 85, 89, 90, 92, 92n,
ʿAlī Murād Khān 126n 93n, 97, 99, 102, 103n, 106n, 107n, 121n,
ʿAlī Naqī b. Aḥmad, Shaykh 80 109, 113, 117, 119, 121, 150, 161, 202, 202n,
ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana see Iʿtiḍād 246, 250, 267, 301, 307
al-Salṭana ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā Qājār Asadābādī, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn see al-
Almāsī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Taqī 127, 131 Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn
ʿĀmilī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 43, 283n Ashʿarī 240
ʿĀmilī, Ḥasan b. Zayn al-Dīn 232 Ashʿarīs 232n, 254
374 Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

Ashkiwarī, Mīrzā Hāshim 4, 25, 26n, 28, Bīdābādī, Āqā Muḥammad 12, 29, 41, 42,
262, 265 47n, 59, 74, 82, 125, 128, 131, 143, 154, 158,
Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Aḥmad 262 243, 249n
Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 246, 266, 289, 291 Bīdgulī, Mullā Muḥammad Jaʿfar 36
Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris 5, 195, Bihbihānī, Muḥammad Bāqir Waḥīd 13,
205, 215, 290 23n, 39, 42, 68
Āshtīyānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan 288 Blunt, Wilfrid 337
Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Yūsuf 23 Bossuet 237
ʿAṣṣār, Muḥammad 196 Browne, Edward G. 333
ʿAṣṣār, Sayyid Kāẓim 262 Büchner, Ludwig 346, 347
Astarābādī Muḥammad Jaʿfar Sharīʿatmadār Buckle, Henry Thomas 324, 354
see Sharīʿatmadār Astarābādī, Bujnūrdī, Mullā Ismāʿīl ʿĀrif 191, 199, 200
Muḥammad Jaʿfar Bursī, Rajab 166
Astarābādī, Mullā Muḥammad Mahdī b. Burūjirdī, Mīrzā Maḥmūd 4, 22, 25, 26, 48n,
Muḥammad Shafīʿ 83 266, 267
ʿAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn 201 Burūjirdī, Mullā Ṣāliḥ 266
Avicenna 8, 8n, 10n, 11, 12, 14, 16, 21, 22, 23n, Burūjirdī, Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī see Baḥr
25, 26, 26n, 29, 38, 44, 46, 46n, 47, 50, al-ʿulūm
51, 53, 56, 83, 90, 99, 103, 106n, 129, 131, Buzshalūʾī Kumījānī, Shaykh Shihāb
137, 138, 139, 155, 159, 161, 202, 202n, 212, al-Dīn 191
232, 234, 241, 245, 246, 252, 256, 264n,
265, 269, 288, 289, 290, 294, 295, 298, Chīnī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 17n, 182n, 285
301, 304, 305, 307, 326, 350 Chishtīs 57
Comte, Auguste 329, 330, 331, 346, 347, 349,
Bābā Afḍal see Kāshānī, Afḍal al-Dīn 350
Bābism 20 86, 320n, 332, 333, 352
Bacon, Francis 237, 331n, 345, 349 Dakanī, Shāh Ṭāhir Ḥusaynī see Shāh Ṭāhir
Badīʿ al-Mulk 231n, 237, 344, 345, 346, 348, Ḥusaynī Dakanī
239, 266 Damāwandī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 11
Bāghnawī, Mīrzā-Jān Ḥabīb Allāh 8n, 9n, Dāmghānī, Mullā Aḥmad 199
41, 46 Dānish Tabrīzī, Luṭf-ʿAlī 248
Bahārī Hamadānī, Shaykh Muḥammad 191 Dārābī Shīrāzī, Mīrzā ʿAbbās 188
Bahmanyār 294 Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahānī, Mullā Ismāʿīl 21, 25,
Baḥr al-ʿulūm 42, 68, 131, 182n, 283 28, 115, 116n, 133n, 138, 139, 142, 146n, 181,
al-Baḥrānī, Shaykh Ḥusayn 87 202, 243, 244, 249, 249n, 260, 263n,
al-Baḥrānī, Shaykh Yūsuf 39, 82n 285n
al-Baḥrānī, Sulaymān Māḥūzī 25 Dargazīnī, Ḥusayn Qulī Khān Shāwandī 191
Bakunin, Mikhail 361 Darjazīnī, Muḥammad b. Mīrzā 26n
Baraghānī, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ 20 Darwin, Charles 333, 338, 347, 349
Baraghānī, Mullā Muḥammad Taqī 72, 83 Dashtakī Shīrāzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn 21, 203, 204,
Bārfirūshī Māzandārānī, Mullā 240, 242
Muḥammad 80 Dashtakī, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr 242
Bénigne Bossuet, Jacques 345 Dastgirdī, Mīrzā Ḥasan Waḥīd 264
Berkeley 349 Davy, Humphrey 327
Bernardin de Saint Pierre 333, 335, 343, Dawānī, Jalāl al-Dīn 21, 23, 48, 48n, 240, 241,
353 242
Berney, Emile 339 Dawlatābādī, Mīrzā Yaḥyā 17, 298
Bestuzhev, A. A., 323 de Condorcet, Antoine 331n
Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 375

Descartes, René 27, 237, 333, 338, 341, 343, Gīlānī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim 24n, 130, 182n,
344, 345 232
Dhahabīs 59, 127, 128, 129, 131n, 133, 134, 263 Gīlānī, Mīrzā Naṣīr 285n
Dhū l-Qarnayn 155 Gīlānī, Mullā Ḥamza 9, 10n, 37n
Dizfūlī, Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn 129 Gīlānī, Mullā Miḥrāb 126n, 127, 129, 284n
Gīlānī, Mullā Muḥammad b. Muḥammad
Egalitarianism 361 Rafīʿ 42, 126
Empiricism 349 Gīlānī, Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī 4, 12, 130
Enlightenment 362 Gīlānī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 22, 267
Eve 165 Gīsū-Darāz, Sayyid Muḥammad 57
Evellin, Francoise Jean-Marie 346 Gnosticism 68n, 86, 90, 90n, 166, 196, 197
Gobineau, Arthur Comte de 1, 2, 186, 260,
Fāḍil-i Hindī 8, 8n 236, 242, 340, 338, 346, 359
Fāḍil-i Shaybānī, Mājid 23n Gogol 323
Fāḍil-i Tabbatī, Shaykh ʿAlī 188, 199 Gunābādī, Sulṭān ʿAlī-Shāh 190
Fāḍil-i Tūnī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn 263 Gurgānī, Mīrzā Bābā 24, 199
Fāḍil-i Yazdī, Mullā Aḥmad 191, 199, 200 Gurgānī, Mīrzā Ismāʿīl 139
Fakhr al-Dawla, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān
Marwī/Marwazī 18, 132 Ḥāʾirī, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm 264
Fanārī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḥāʾirī Simnānī Māzandarānī, Muḥammad
Ḥamza 26, 184, 184n, 262, 272 Ṣāliḥ 240, 251
Fārābī, Abū Naṣr 25n, 26, 26n, 83, 106n, 267 Ḥāʾirī Yazdī, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm 266
Farahānī, Abū l-Qāsim see Qāʾim-Maqām Ḥakīm Ilāhī, Mīrzā Muḥammad 191
Farahānī, Abū l-Qāsim Ḥakīm Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Ghulām-ʿAlī 237
Farahānī, Mīrzā ʿĪsā see Qāʾim-Maqām Ḥakīmzāda, Sharaf al-Mulk Āqā Ḥasan 235
Farahānī, Mīrzā ʿĪsā 154 Hamadānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir 85
Farāmūshkhānahā 318 Hamadānī, Mullā Lālazār see Mullā Lālazār
Fasāʾī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Hamadānī
Ḥusaynī 153, 154 Hamadānī, Mullā Muḥammad Riḍā 154n
Faṣīḥī, Ḥājj ʿAbd al-Ṣāniʿ 20, 186 Hamadānī, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b.
Fatḥ ʿAlī Shāh Qājār 14, 17, 18, 20, 41, 70, 71, Muḥammad Ḥusayn 81
132, 133, 136, 148, 155, 185, 231n, 232n Harandī, Mullā Muḥammad b. Mahdī
Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ 166 Ẓahīr 10, 38
Fayḍ Kāshānī, Mullā Muḥsin 7, 23n, 48, 76, Harawī, Muḥammad Taqī 291
129, 131, 146, 149, 191, 200, 279, 294 Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, Imām 164
Fénelon, François 333, 343, 345 Ḥasan al-Mujtabā, Imām 67, 87, 283
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 237, 345 Hāṭilī Kūpāyī, Shaykh Ṣadr al-Dīn 264
Fīrūzkūhī, ʿAlī 193n Hazār-Jarībī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad 24n,
Flammarion, Camille 327 27n
Furūghī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 341 Hazār-Jarībī, Āqā Muḥammad Bāqir 182
Futūnī Najafī, Shaykh Muḥammad Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 92, 94, 95,
Mahdī 39 96n, 100, 101, 103n, 106, 107n, 110n, 237,
339, 346
Gallupie, Pasquale 344 Hegelian Left 86
Gawhar, Mīrzā Ḥasan 80, 83, 84 Hegelianism 86
Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid 48, 295, 307 Hellenism 101, 103
Ghulām-ʿAlī Khān 283 Helvétius, Claude Adrien 346
Gīlānī, Ḥamza 158n Heracles 94
376 Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

Heraclitus 98, 100, 119, 121n, 122 ʿImād al-Dawla, Badīʿ al-Mulk see Badīʿ
Hermes 100 al-Mulk
Hermetic cognitivism 76 Imāmīs 14
Hermeticism 69, 78, 79, 91, 94, 101, 119 ʿIrāqī, Āqā Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn 264
Hīdajī Zanjānī, Ḥakīm Mullā Iṣfahānī, Āqā Mīrzā Ḥasan Mudarris 
Muḥammad 189, 194n, 195, 290 259
Ḥikmī, Mullā Yūsuf 20 Iṣfahānī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn see Fāḍil-i Hindī
Ḥikmī Yazdī, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris 189, Iṣfahānī, Ḥājj Muḥammad Ḥasan 346
237, 265, 268, 344 Iṣfahānī, Ḥājj Muḥammad Kāẓim 190
Ḥillī, Jamāl al-Dīn 289 Iṣfahānī, Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh see Ḥusayn
Ḥishmat al-Salṭana 237 ʿAlī-Shāh
Historical Materialism 361 Iṣfahānī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 22n
Ḥukamāʾ mutaʾallih 278 Iṣfahānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b.
Hume, David 324, 325, 349, 354 Muẓaffar 12, 126n
Ḥusām al-Salṭana, Sulṭān Murād Mīrzā 201 Iṣfahānī, Mullā Ismāʿīl Wāḥid al-ʿAyn
Ḥusayn ʿAlī-Shāh 41, 154 see Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahānī, Mullā Ismāʿīl
Ḥusayn, Imām 72n, 150 Iṣfahānī, Shaykh Muḥammad Taqī 182n
Ḥusayn, Mīr ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn 143 Isfarāʾinī, Mullā Ismāʿīl Miyānābādī 200
Ḥusayn, Shāh Sulṭān 8, 11 Ishrāqī see Illuminationism
Ḥusaynī Fasāʾī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Ishrāqīs 3, 50, 90, 112
see Fasāʾī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Islamaic philosophy 77n
Ḥusaynī Ismāʿīl, Khedive 336
Ḥusaynī, Shāh Ṭāhir see Shāh Ṭāhir Ḥusaynī Ismāʿīl, Mullā 233, 285n
Dakanī Ismāʿīlīs(m) 68n, 86, 90, 90n, 112, 163, 332
Iṣṭahbānātī, Āqā Mīrzā Muḥammad
Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī see al-Aḥsāʾī, Ibn Bāqir 291
Abī Jumhūr Iʿtiḍād al-Salṭana, ʿAlī Qulī Mīrzā Qājār 23,
Ibn ʿArabī, Muḥyī l-Dīn 11, 12, 23n, 25n, 26, 27, 283, 298
26n, 29, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 87, 128, 137, Iʿtimād al-Salṭana, Muḥammad Ḥasan
140, 140n, 143, 144, 147, 150, 156, 162, 163, Khān 179n, 233, 236, 234n, 259n, 319,
166, 167, 184, 262, 273, 274, 279, 285n, 337
293, 300, 301
Ibn Bābawayh (or Ibn Bābūya) 238, 286 Jadīd al-Islām, ʿAlī Qulī 9, 9n
Ibn Bābawayh, cemetery of 262 Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, Imām 108, 254
Ibn Fāris, Shaykh ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh 69 Jaghmīnī, Muḥammad 295
Ibn Rushd 93 Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 26, 201, 237, 266, 289,
Ibn Saʿūd, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn 294, 298
Muḥammad 70n Jandī, Muʾayyad al-Dīn 293
Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn see Turka Jesus 167, 279
Iṣfahānī, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn Jilwa, Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan 12, 15n, 16, 17, 20,
Ibrāhīm Shāh, Mīrzā 283 22, 24, 25, 29, 60, 135, 139n, 195, 238,
Ibtihāj al-Ḥukamāʾ, Mīrzā Ibrāhīm 235 262, 263, 265, 267, 269, 272, 273,
Iḥtishām al-Dawla Thānī, ʿAbd al-ʿAlī 269 283–312
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ 294 Jones, Sir William 359
Illuminationism 26, 93, 93n, 94, 97, 100, 102, Jubāʾī ʿĀmilī, Zayn al-Dīn 232
102n, 103, 107n, 109, 117, 119, 120, 121, 159, Jurjānī, Sayyid Sharīf 23n, 27, 241, 242, 294,
180 338n
Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 377

Jurjānī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 242 Khumaynī, Sayyid Rūḥ Allāh 87, 348

Khurāsānī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn 21n
Kabūdarāhangī, Muḥammad Jaʿfar 40, 46, Khurāsānī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 21n
60, 126, 152n Khurāsānī, Ākhūnd Mullā Muḥammad
Kafāʾī, ʿAbd al-Riḍā 196n Kāẓim 190, 192n, 196, 196n
Kahakī Qummī, Mīrzā Muḥmūd Khurāsānī, Ḥakīm Muḥammad 264
Mudarris 264, 268, 292 Khurāsānī, Muḥammad Ṣādiq 152n
Kalāntarī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim 289 Khwājūʾī Māzandarānī, Mullā Ismāʿīl 10,
Kamaraʾī, Shaykh Muḥammad Jaʿfar 8 10n, 11, 12, 37, 50, 52, 56, 127, 131, 133
Kamarbunī, Abū l-Qāsim b. Riḍā Nūrī 22n Khwānsārī, Āqā Ḥusayn 8, 9n, 46, 56, 143
Kanī, Mullā ʿAlī 261, 291 Khwānsārī, Āqā Jamāl al-Dīn 8, 9, 10, 10n,
Kant, Immanuel 92, 92n, 103n, 237, 344, 22, 22n, 37, 135, 139, 139n, 143, 145, 240,
345, 346 245, 246, 250n
Karakī, ʿAlī 23n, 38n Khwānsārī, Āqā Raḍī 10n
Karbalāʾī, Sayyid Aḥmad 191 Khwānsārī, Muḥammad Bāqir 21n, 66n, 71n,
Karbalāʾī, Sayyid Jawād 332, 333n 73, 82n
Karbāsī (Kalbāsī), Ḥājjī Muḥammad Khwānsārī, Sayyid Aḥmad 266
Ibrāhīm 42, 82, 130, 132, 133, 135, 139, 182n Khwānsārī, Sayyid Muḥammad Taqī 266
Karīm Khān Zand 39 Kirmānī, Afḍal al-Mulk see Afḍal al-Mulk
Kāshānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq 26, 60n, 137, 163, Kirmānī
201, 293 Kirmānī, Āqā Muḥammad Karīm Khān 81,
Kāshānī, Afḍal al-Dīn 292 84, 86, 90n, 234, 247
Kāshānī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn 23n Kirmānī, Mīrzā Āqā Khān 30, 321, 330, 332,
Kāshānī, Muḥsin Fayḍ see Fayḍ Kāshānī, 337, 341, 343, 350, 352, 358, 361
Muḥsin Kirmānī, Mīrzā Riḍā 333
Kāshānī, Mullā Muḥammad 263 Kirmānshāhī, Āqā Mīrzā Ḥusayn 259n
Kāshānī, Sayyid ʿAlī Yathribī 266 Kirmānshāhī, Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī 13, 240
Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ, Shaykh ʿAlī b. Jaʿfar 132, Kirmānshāhī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 19, 195, 237,
133 265, 267, 290
Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ, Shaykh Jaʿfar Najafī 132, Kubrawīs 57, 165
182n
Kātibī, Najm al-Dīn 27, 289 Lāhīj[ān]ī Langarūdī, Mullā Muḥammad
Kāzirūnī, Mīrzā Sayyid ʿAlī 189 Jaʿfar 3, 17n, 77, 116, 134, 233, 236, 241,
Khabūshānī, Mirzā ʿAbd al-Karīm 189 250, 259, 284, 293
Khafrī, Shams al-Dīn 9n, 55, 55n, 135, 139, Lāhījī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq 2, 18n. 21, 22, 23, 56,
145, 242, 246, 250n, 284n 56n, 139, 146, 155, 181, 202, 204, 232, 238,
Khalīfa Sulṭān 143 244, 245, 249n, 294, 295
Khalkhālī, Sayyid Samīʿ 200 Lāhījī, Muḥammad Ṣādiq 284n
Khātūnābādī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn 12 Lāhījī, Sayyid Raḍī 17n, 285
Khātūnābādī, Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir 8 Lāhījī, Shams al-Dīn 26
Khātūnābādī, Mīr Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ 8 Lālazār Hamadānī see Mullā Lālazār
Khātūnābādī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim Hamadānī
Mudarris 12, 125, 129, 130, 131, 135, 284n Lao-Tzu 100, 110n
Khātūnābādī, Muḥammad Ismāʿīl 56 Lārījānī, Ibrāhīm Saʿīd al-ʿUlamāʾ 25, 27n
Khātūnābādī, Sayyid Muḥammad 10 Lārījānī, Sayyid Riḍā 182n
Khuʾaynī Qazwīnī, Sayyid ʿAlī 290 Lārījānī Māzandarānī, Sayyid Raḍī 133, 135,
Khudā-Raḥm, ʿAlī Aṣghar 23n 139, 233, 236, 260
378 Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

Lawvere, William 101 Mirabeau 324, 342n, 343

Leibniz 110n, 345 Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan 266
Lermontov 325 Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kirmānī see Kirmānī, Mīrzā
Locke, John 331n, 349 Āqā Khān
Mīrzā Ḥasan Shīrāzī see Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī
Maḥallātī, Ḥājj Ākhūnd 262 Mīrzā Ibrāhīm Ibtihāj al-Ḥukamāʾ see Ibtihāj
Mahdī 163 al-Ḥukamāʾ Mīrzā Ibrāhīm
Mahd-i Awliyāʾ 19 Mīrzā ʿĪsā Qāʾim-Maqām Farahānī see
Majdhūb ʿAlī-Shāh see Kabūdarāhangī, Qāʾim-Maqām Farahānī, Mīrzā ʿĪsā
Muḥammad Jaʿfar Mīrzā Jaʿfar Muhandis see Muhandis, Mīrzā
Majlisī, Muḥammad Bāqir 8 Jaʿfar
Majlisī, Muḥammad Taqī 128 Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Muẓaffar see
Malikī Tabrīzī, Mīrzā Jawād 191 Iṣfahānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī b.
Malkum Khān, Mīrzā 30, 318, 321, 324, 325n, Muẓaffar
329–31, 333, 337, 338, 342n, 349, 350, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan Shīrāzī see
355, 358, 361 Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī
Māmaqānī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Shafīʿ b. Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṣādiq b. Muḥammad
Ḥusayn 81, 84, 86 Jaʿfar 148
Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd 13 Mīrzā Naṣīr 38
Marāghaʾī, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 316 Mīrzā-yi Qummī 14, 130, 132, 136, 148, 154,
Marcus Aurelius 327 182, 232, 262, 290
Marlinskiĭ 323, 325 Mīrzā Rafīʿā 283, 283n
Martyn, Henry 42, 153, 153n, 154, 154n, 155 Mīrzā Sayyid Ḥasan see Āqā Mīrzā Sayyid
Marwī/Marwazī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān Ḥasan
see Fakhr al-Dawla, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Mīrzā Shafīʿ Khān Māzandarānī see
Khān Qājār Marwī/Marwazī Māzandarānī, Mīrzā Shafīʿ Khān
Marx 110n Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī 259n, 291, 337
Marxism 333, 349, 361 Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān 325n
Mary 167 Mishkān Ṭabasī, Sayyid Ḥasan 264
Maryam 167 Miskawayh, Abū ʿAlī see Muskūya, Abū ʿAlī
Mashhadī, Ibrāhīm 10 Miyānābādī Isfarāʾinī, Mullā Ismāʿīl 200
Mashhadī, Shaykh Mahdī 12 Molière 323
Masjid-i Shāhī, Shaykh Muḥammad Montesquieu 324, 331n, 333, 354
Bāqir 263 Mudarris Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Mahdī see
Materialism 349 Āshtiyānī, Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris
Maybudī, Mīr Ḥusayn 9, 41 Mudarris Ḥikmī Yazdī, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar see
Māzandarānī, Mīrzā Shafīʿ Khān 20, 261n Ḥikmī Yazdī, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris
Māzandarānī, Sayyid Raḍī see Lārījānī Mudarris Iṣfahānī, Āqā Mīrzā Ḥasan see
Māzandarānī, Sayyid Raḍī Iṣfahānī, Āqā Mīrzā Ḥasan Mudarris
Mazdakism 362 Mudarris Kahakī Qummī, Mīrzā Maḥmūd
Mazdeans 3 see Kahakī Qummī, Mīrzā Maḥmūd
Mill, John Stuart 324, 328, 331, 342, 342n, Mudarris
343, 349, 354, 356 Mudarris Khātūnābādī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim
Mīr Dāmād, Muḥammad Bāqir 22, 23n, 25, see Khātūnābādī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim
26, 26n, 37, 50, 90, 99, 127, 137, 139n, Mudarris
140, 143, 144, 145, 145n, 150, 160, 169, 202, Mudarris Ṭihrānī, Āqā ʿAlī see Ṭihrānī, Āqā
241, 242, 246, 267, 294, 295, 307 ʿAlī Mudarris
Mīr Findiriskī 189, 242, 283n Mudarris Zunūzī Tabrīzī, Mullā ʿAbd Allāh
Mīr Ḥusaynā 10n see Zunūzī, Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris
Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 379

Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān Qājār see Fakhr Nāʾīnī, Rafīʿ al-Dīn see Mīrzā Rafīʿā
al-Dawla, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Khān Najafī, Āqā Muḥammad ʿAlī 182
Marwī/Marwazī Najafī Iṣfahānī, Shaykh Muḥammad
Muḥammad al-Bāqir, Imām 66 Riḍā 347
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī, Shaykh 84 Najafī, Muḥammad Ḥasan 82, 263
Muḥammad Shāh Qājār 18 Najafī, Shaykh Jaʿfar b. Khiḍr 68
Muḥammad, Sayyid ʿAlī 86 Najjār Tabrīzī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm see Ṭālibuf, ʿAbd
Muhandis, Mīrzā Jaʿfar 331n al-Raḥīm
Mullā Awliyāʾ 25 Najm al-Dawla, ʿAbd al-Ghaffār 26
Mullā Ismāʿīl 263, 263n Naqī, Ḥājj Sayyid ʿAlī 261
Mullā Lālazār Hamadānī 27, 339 Naqshafirūsh, Ḥājj Muḥammad Ibrāhīm 19,
Mullā Muḥammad ʿĀrif see ʿĀrif, Mullā 233, 236n
Muḥammad Naqshbandī 59
Mullā Naʿīmā Ṭāliqānī 11, 158, 250, 250, 250n Narāqī, Mullā Aḥmad 36n, 41, 48, 154
Mullā Ṣadrā 1, 2, 3, 4, 4n, 5, 7, 11, 12, 22, 23, Narāqī, Mullā Mahdī 4, 4n, 16, 28, 36–65,
24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 37, 37n, 46, 50, 51, 54, 126n, 127, 129, 130, 152n, 267
54n, 55, 56, 56n, 57, 58, 69, 72, 74, 76, 77, Nāṣir al-Dawla, Mīrzā Aḥmad Khān
83, 87, 90, 91, 93, 97, 99, 107n, 109, 112, Badr 286
113, 116, 117n, 121, 127, 129, 131, 134, 136, Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh Qājār 15n, 18, 19, 19n, 133,
138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148, 149, 179n, 187, 198, 235, 239n, 261, 286, 290n,
152n, 155, 157, 158, 161, 167, 168, 181, 196, 317, 319, 320, 329, 330, 331, 333, 337,
197, 200, 201, 203, 204, 207, 208, 212, 232, 340n, 342, 349n
234, 236, 238, 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, Nāṣir-i Khusraw 287
247, 248, 249, 250, 250n, 252, 254, 256, National Socialism 360
259n, 262, 263, 266, 268, 272, 274, 284n, Nationalism 357
289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 295, 298, 299, Naturalism 336, 349
301, 307, 332, 338, 338n, 344, 348, 350 Nawwāb, Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir 131
Müller, Friedrich Max 359 Nayrīzī, Quṭb al-Dīn 127, 131, 131n, 143,
Munawwar ʿAlī-Shāh 235 263
Munīr al-Salṭana 290n Nayrīzī Shīrāzī, Āqā Mīr Shihāb al-Dīn 263,
Murtaḍā, Ḥājj Shaykh 264n 265, 292
Mūsā l-Kāẓim, Imām 162 Nayyir al-Dawla, Sulṭān Ḥusayn Mīrzā 
Mūsawī, Muḥammad Hāshim 25 286
Mūsawī Shāhrūdī, Sayyid ʿAbbās 291, 297, Neoplatonism 102, 109, 121n, 138, 149, 161,
298 166, 250, 295
Mushīr al-Dawla, Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān Nicholas, L. M. 325n
Sipahsālār 19, 330, 331n Nihāwandī, Ḥaydar Qulī Khān Qājār 238
Muskūya, Abū ʿAlī (Ibn) 48 Nihilism 361
Mustashār al-Dawla, Mīrzā Yūsuf Khān 325, Niʿmatullāhīs 59, 126, 152n, 154, 190, 235
325n Nīsābūrī, Niẓām al-Dīn 129
Mustawfī l-Mamālik, Mīrzā Yūsuf 23, 198 Niẓām-i jadīd 313, 319
Muʿtamid al-Dawla Māzandarānī, Mīrzā Nūr Allāh Mīrzā see Shāhzāda Janāb
Shafīʿ Khān see Mīrzā Shafīʿ Māzandarānī Nūrbakhshīs 154
Muʿtazila 144, 232n Nurī, ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn 133
Muẓaffar al-Dīn Shāh Qājār 330, 344 Nūrī, Ḥājj Shaykh ʿAbd al-Nabī 292
Nūrī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥasan 17n, 133,
Nādir Shāh 10, 127 133n, 139, 142, 146n, 182n, 232, 233, 235,
Nāʾīnī, Mīrzā Ḥusayn 265 236, 243, 250, 250n, 259, 269, 284
380 Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

Nūrī Mīrzā Yaḥyā see Ṣubḥ-i Azal, Mīrzā Qazwīnī, Kalb ʿAlī b. ʿAbbās Afshār 22n
Yaḥyā Nūrī Qazwīnī, Mīr Muḥammad Hādī 143
Nūrī, Mullā ʿAlī 4, 12, 17, 18, 18n, 20, 21, 25, Qazwīnī, Muḥammad Bāqir 23n
28, 29, 59, 60, 74, 76, 77, 82, 83, 100, 112, Qazwīnī, Mullā Āqā Ḥakīm/ Ḥikmī 20, 133,
113, 115, 125–78, 181, 182n, 183, 202, 231, 233, 235, 236, 243
232, 233, 241, 243, 244, 249, 259, 264n, Qazwīnī Najafī, Sayyid Mahdī 291
272, 284n, 285n Qazwīnī, Sayyid Ḥasan 125
Nūrī, Mullā Muḥammad ʿAlī 250 Qazwīnī, Sayyid Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad
Nūrī, Shaykh ʿAlī 18n, 238, 267 Ibrāhīm 10n
Nūrī, Shaykh Faḍl Allāh 289 Qudamāʾ al-Ṣūfiyya 53
Nūshābādī Kāshānī, Muḥammad b. Qūchānī, Muḥammad Bāqir 25n
Muḥammad Zamān 10, 38 Qummī, Qāḍī Saʿīd 23n, 56
Qummī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim see Mīrzā-yi
Offray de La Mettrie, Julien 346 Qummī
Qumshaʾī, Āqā Muḥammad Riḍā 4, 20, 22,
Pahlavi 357, 360 24, 25, 29, 48n, 134, 135, 139, 238, 244,
Parmenides 97, 98, 99, 119, 121 259–282, 284n, 285n, 286, 288, 291, 292,
Peripatetics 83, 90, 94, 100, 102, 102n, 109, 296, 299
136, 203, 204, 213 Qumshaʾī, Mīrzā Naṣr Allāh 264
Pfander, Karl Gottlieb 153n Qumshaʾī, Muḥammad Mahdī 273
Pīrniyā, Ḥasan 360 Qumshaʾī, Mullā Muḥammad Hādī
Plato 92, 92n, 97, 103n, 107n, 109, 119, 138, Farzāna 264
307 Qumshaʾī, Mullā Muṣṭafā 12, 241, 250, 264n
Plotinus 107n, 121n Qumshaʾī, Shaykh Abū l-Qāsim 259
Plymouth Brethren 287 Qumshaʾī, Shaykh Asad Allāh 264
Porphyry 149 Qūnawī, Ṣadr al-Dīn 4, 24, 26, 184n, 262,
Positivism 349 285n
post-Shaykhism 86 Qurrat al-ʿAyn, Ṭāhira see Ṭāhira Qurrat
pre-Socratics 82, 97 al-ʿAyn
Prokesch von Osten, Anton Graf 339n Qūshjī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī 9n, 21, 44, 135, 145,
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 362 232, 245, 246, 250n, 284n, 295
Pushkin 323
Racism 357
Qāʾim-Maqām Farahānī, Abū l-Qāsim 41 Raḍī, Āqā Sayyid 235
Qāʾim-Maqām Farahānī, Mīrzā ʿĪsā 154 Rafīʿī Qazwīnī, Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan 194n,
Qāʾinī, Āqā Khalīl 10 240
Qashqāʾī, Jahāngīr Khān 263, 265, 265n Rashtī Gīlānī, Mullā Muḥammad b.
Qashqāʾī, Muḥammad Khān 263 Muḥammad Naṣīr 79
Qāsim Khān, Amīr Muḥammad 19 Rashtī, Mīrzā Hāshim 195
Qaṣīr, Āqā Sayyid Muḥammad 198 Rashtī, Sayyid Kāẓim 71n, 72n, 78, 80, 81, 83,
al-Qaṭīfī, Ibrāhīm 23 84, 85
al-Qaṭīfī, Shaykh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd ʿAlī Āl Rawḍa-khwān ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd 24n
Jabbār 81 Rawlinson, George 359
Qawām al-Mulk 291 Rāz-i Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim 133
Qayṣarī, Dāwūd 26, 135, 184, 260, 262, 263, Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn 14, 51, 207
266, 269, 270, 271, 279, 293 Rāzī, Mullā Yūsuf 25213, 241, 289, 294, 295,
Qazwīnī, Amīr Muḥammad Ibrāhīm 10 296
Qazwīnī, Āqā Sayyid ʿAlī 262 Rāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn 8, 8n, 9n, 27, 41, 46, 289,
Qazwīnī, Muḥammad Ḥasan 48, 130 294, 296
Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 381

Renan, Ernest 324, 336, 338, 359 Shaftī, Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir 132

Riḍā Shāh 288 Shāhābādī, Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī 87, 262
Riḍawī, Āqā Mīrzā Abū l-Ḥasan 198 Shāhī, Mīr Muḥammad Taqī 10
Riḍawī, Sayyid Aḥmad 190 Shāh Ṭāhir Ḥusaynī Dakanī 242
Riḍwān 264 Shāhzāda Janāb 189, 194
Right-Hegelianism 85 Shakespeare 323
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 324, 327, 333, 343, Shanb-Ghāzānī, Ismāʿīl 27
352, 354, 361 Sharīʿatmadār Astarābādī, Muḥammad
Rūḥī, Shaykh Aḥmad 337 Jaʿfar 48
Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn 23, 200 Shāwandī Dargazīnī, Ḥusayn Qulī Khān 191
Rūmī, Qāḍīzāda 295 Shaybānī, Mājid see Fāḍil-i Shaybānī, Mājid
Shaykh al-Shawāriq see Nūrī, Shaykh ʿAlī
Saʿādat ʿAlī-Shāh 190 Shaykh Bahāʾī 242
al-Ṣābīʾ, ʿImrān 119 Shaykh Ṣadūq see Ibn Bābawayh
Sabzawārī, Āqā Mīrzā Ḥusayn 290 Shaykhism 3, 77n, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 234, 247
Sabzawārī, Ḥājj Mullā Ḥusayn 180, 183 Shaykhiyya School in philosophy 3
Sabzawārī, Mahdī 179 Shiblī Shumayyil 347
Sabzawārī, Mirzā/Mullā Asad Allāh 187, Shīrāzī, ʿAbd al-Karīm 25n
188, 189 Shīrāzī, Āqā Shaykh Ghulām-ʿAlī 265
Sabzawārī, Mīrzā Ḥusayn 189, 195 Shīrāzī, Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Karīm Sharīf 22n
Sabzawārī, Mullā Hādī 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 15n, 16, Shīrāzī, Mirzā Ḥasan 189, 337
20, 22, 23, 29, 97, 115, 118, 118n, 134, 138, Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ 315, 331n
139, 142, 151, 157, 179–230, 241, 243, 244, Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 24
249, 264, 274, 284n, 285, 290 Shīrāzī, Muḥammad Mujtahid 235
Sabzawārī, Mullā Muḥammad 185n, 188, Shīrāzī, Nāʾib al-Ṣadr 235
191, 194 Shīrāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn 26, 49, 202, 234, 245,
Sabzawārī, [Walī Allāh]Asrārī 179n, 189 292
Saʿdī, Muṣliḥ al-Dīn 201 Shīrāzī, Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad 85
Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī see Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, Shaykh Aḥmad 24, 24n, 25, 25n
Saʿīd al-ʿUlamāʾ see Lārījānī, Ibrāhīm Saʿīd Shīth see Seth/Shīth
al-ʿUlamāʾ Shubbar, Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh 82
Saint-Simon 329 Shushtarī, ʿAbd Allāh 283n
Ṣāliḥī, Āmina 20 Shūstarī, Sayyid ʿAlī 191
Ṣāliḥī, Fāṭima 20 Simnānī, Shaykh ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla 57, 58, 59,
Sammākī, Fakhr al-Dīn 22, 22n 60, 293
Sawādkūhī, Mīrzā Naṣr Allāh Khān Simnānī, Mullā Kāẓim 79
Mustawfī 235 Simnānī, Sayyid Ṣādiq 198
Sāwajī, Muḥammad Ḥusaynī 272 Simon, Jules 342
Say, Jean-Baptiste 356 Sipahsālar, Mīrzā Ḥusayn Khān Mushīr
Sayyid Raḍī see Lārījānī Māzandarānī, Sayyid al-Dawla, see Mushīr al-Dawla, Mīrzā
Raḍī Ḥusayn Khān Sipahsālār
Sayyida Baygum 235 Sipahsālār Qājār, Mīrzā Muḥammad
Scholasticism 97, 98n, 102 Khān 19, 233
School of Tehran 6n, 139 Sipihr, Muḥammad Taqī 179n
Seth/Shīth 271 Sirhindī, Aḥmad 60
Shabistarī, Maḥmūd 26 Smith, Adam 356
Shaftī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim see Mīrzā-yi Socialism 361
Qummī Spencer, Herbert 331n, 333, 347, 349
382 Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought

Spinoza 237, 339, 346 Ṭihrānī, Āqā ʿAlī Mudarris 1, 6, 16n, 17n, 19,
Ṣubḥ-i Azal, Mīrzā Yaḥyā Nūrī 332 20, 22, 24, 25, 25n, 29, 135, 146n, 195,
Sufis(m) 37, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54n, 57, 59, 68n, 231–58, 262, 265, 274, 284n, 286, 288,
93, 94, 112, 129, 134, 154, 162 289, 290, 291, 295, 338, 344, 345n
Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn 26, 90, 94, 99, Ṭihrānī, Mīrzā Abū l-Faḍl 262
117n, 121, 138, 201, 202n, 234, 241, 245, Tūnī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Tūnī, Muḥammad
297 Ḥusayn see Fāḍil-i Tūnī, Muḥammad
Sukūt Shīrāzī, Mīrzā Abū l-Qāsim 134, 154 Ḥusayn
Sulaymān, Mullā 25 Tūnī Khurāsānī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 10n
Sulaymān, Shāh 17n, 182n Tūnī Khurāsānī, ʿAbd al-Jawād 17n, 263, 285
Sulṭān Murād Mīrzā Ḥusām al-Salṭana see Tunikābunī, Āqā Ḥusayn 7, 25n, 131
Ḥusām al-Salṭana, Sulṭān Murād Mīrzā Tunikābunī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
al-Fattāḥ 56
Ṭabasī, Sayyid Ḥasan Mishkān 264 Tunikābunī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 134
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Ḥājjī Sayyid Ibrāhīm Tājir 24n, Tunikābunī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ṭāhir 17n,
26n 267, 288
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Sayyid Abū l-Ḥasan 283 Tunikābunī, Mīrzā Sulaymān 134
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Sayyid ʿAlī 132, 133 Tunikābunī, Sayyid Muḥammad
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Sayyid ʿAlī Akbar 271 Ḥusayn 134, 139
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī see Turka Iṣfahānī, Ṣāʾin al-Dīn 4, 24, 26, 26,
Baḥr al-ʿulūm 126n, 140, 144, 145, 156, 162, 166, 167, 184,
Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Sayyid Ṣādiq 289 262, 266, 268, 269, 288, 289, 294
Ṭabāṭabāʾī Nāʾīnī, Rafīʿ al-Dīn see Mīrzā Rafīʿā Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn 8, 9n, 14, 21, 23n, 25, 25n,
Ṭabīb Ṭihrānī, Ismāʿīl 24n 42, 44, 47, 49, 53, 99, 139, 202, 213, 232,
Tabbatī, Shaykh ʿAlī see Fāḍil-i Tabbatī, 245, 246, 250n, 259n, 262, 269, 288, 289,
Shaykh ʿAlī 290, 292, 294, 295, 296
Tabrīzī, Mullā Riḍā 243, 250 Tūysirkānī, Mullā Ḥusayn ʿAlī 264
Tabrīzī, Rajab ʿAlī 8, 56, 56n
Ṭāhira Qurrat al-ʿAyn 20 ʿUmar b. Khaṭṭāb 153
Ṭāhirābādī, Muḥammad b. Ḥājj Ṭālib 42 Uqlīdis 49
Ṭālibuf, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 30, 321, 326, 327, 328, Urmawī, Sirāj al-Dīn 289
351, 352, 354, 358, 360, 361 Uskūʾī, Mīrzā Muḥammad Bāqir 80
Ṭāliqānī, ʿAlī Akbar 25n, 26n Uṣūlīs 13, 82n, 84, 128n
Ṭāliqānī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 136 ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān 153
Ṭāliqānī, Muḥammad Naʿīm see Mullā
Naʿīmā Ṭāliqānī Vegetarians 287
Ṭāliqānī, Muḥammad Raḥīm 148n Voltaire 324, 331, 333, 343, 343n, 354, 361
Ṭāliqānī, Mullā Naẓar ʿAlī 238
Taoism 100, 101, 110n Wāḍiḥ, Mīrzā Shafīʿ 323
Taqawī, Sayyid Naṣr Allāh 17n, 291 Wahhābīs 70
Tawfīq, Khedive 336 Wāḥid al-ʿAyn see Darb-i Kūshkī Iṣfahānī,
Tawfīq Pashā 349n Mullā Ismāʿīl
Thales 82 Waḥīd Dastgirdī, Mīrzā Ḥasan 264
Thaqafī, Khalīl Khān 343 Wāʿiẓ-i Ṭihrānī, Shaykh Muḥammad
Theodosius of Bithynia 49 Ibrāhīm 198
Theosophists 287 Whitehead, Alfred North 77, 100, 110n
Ṭihrānī, Aḥmad 25n Wolff, Christian 97
Ṭihrānī, Muḥammad ʿAlī 21n Wujūdiyya 52, 58
Index of Personal Names and Schools of Thought 383

Yaʿqūb Khān, Mīrzā 329, 329n, 330 Zīnat al-Ḥājjiya 180

Yathribī Kāshānī, Sayyid ʿAlī 266 Zoroastrianism 332, 359
Yazdī, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris Ḥikmī see Zunūzī, Mullā ʿAbd Allāh Mudarris 4, 6, 18,
Ḥikmī Yazdī, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar Mudarris 28, 129n, 132, 136, 139, 242, 231, 232n,
Yazdī Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad 17n, 182n 236, 245, 246, 249
Zunūzī Sayyid Ḥasan 36n, 40n
Zand, Jaʿfar Khān 131 Zunūzī, Āqā ʿAlī see Ṭihrānī, Āqā ʿAlī
Zanjānī, Āqā Mīrzā Ibrāhīm 189, 290 Mudarris
Zarābādī, Sayyid Mūsā 290
Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms

ādamiyyat 356 āzādī 356
āfāq 111 āzādī-i riqābat-i iqtiṣādī 356
aḥad 92n
aḥadiyya 53, 54, 144 badāʾ 144
ākhar al-maʿlūlāt 56 baqāʾ 164
al-ākhira 247 barzakh 247
ʿālam basīṭ 102, 306
al-barzakh 37 al-ḥaqīqa 161
al-mithāl/ʿālam-i mithāl 138, 198, 199, al-ḥaqīqa kull al-ashyāʾ 137
204 al-ḥaqīqa kull al-umūr 113
al-ʿalawiyya al-ʿulyā 165 bihtarīn-i aqsām-i mumkin al-ījād 345
alfāẓ 100 bi-l-ʿaraḍ/bi ʿaraḍ 251, 306
ʿamal 118 bi-l-dhāt 306
amāna 164 bi-l-ishtiqāq 240
al-ān al-sayyāl 161 bi-l-muwāṭaʾa 240
anfus 111 bi-sharṭ ʿadam māhiyya 53
ʿāqil 214, 215 bi-sharṭ lā 52, 275, 277
ʿāqiliyya 214 bi-sharṭ shayʾ 52, 55
ʿaql al-kull 102n burhān 256
ʿaql 92, 102, 107, 108, 109, 111, 118, 121n al-ṣiddīqīn 265
juzʾī 102n al-taḍāyuf 213, 214
al-ʿa. al-kull 165
muqayyad 205, 219 dafʿī 304
naẓarī 165 dalīl 168
ʿaqlī 307 dalīl al-ḥikma 99
ʿaraḍ 208 dastgāh-i qānūn 355
aʿrāḍ 305 dhāt 110, 216, 217, 221, 222, 297
ʿaraḍiyya 107 dhātī 110, 299, 304
ʿāriḍ 51 ghayr - 299
ʿāriḍī 302 dhātiyya 107
ʿārif 68n dhātiyyāt 208
ʿarsh-i huwiyyat 242 dhawq 184
aṣālat 298 dhihnī 205
aṣālat al-māhiyya 144 ḍidd 107
aṣālat al-wujūd 51, 136, 137, 145, 160, 207 dīn 358
ashbāḥ diyānat 352
mithāliyya 37
muʿallaqa 200 fāʿil 307
athar 120n fāʿil-i mukhtār 356
ʿawāriḍ-i ḥaqāʾiq-i wujūdiyya 251 fanāʾ 60, 164
awliyāʾ 101 al-fārūq al-kullī 166
awwal al-ʿilal 56 fasād 304
aʿyān fawqa l-tāmm 242
imkānī 277 fuʾād 92, 95n, 99n, 107, 111, 121n
thābita 162, 211, 277
Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms 385

ghayr dhātī 299 iḍāfa

ishrāqiyya 150, 211
ḥabas al-būl 286 ishrāqiyya wujūdiyya 216
hādī 241 iḍāfāt 219
ḥādith 303n iḍāfī 219
ḥāl 193n, 208 idrākiyya 216
ḥāll 204 igālīti 361
ḥaml iḥtiyāṭ 128
awwalī 208 ījād 55
awwalī dhātī 240 ijāza 68
dhātī 208 ikhlāṣ 67, 67n
mutaʿāraf 208 ilāhiyyāt
shāʾiʿ bi-l-ʿaraḍ 208 bi-l-maʿnā l-aʿamm 202
shāʾiʿ bi-l-dhāt 208 bi-l-maʿnā l-akhaṣṣ 193
shāʾiʿ ṣināʿī 208, 240 ʿilm 92, 107
ḥaqīqa 92 al-ḥurūf 140
jāmiʿa 163 ʿilmī 216
māddiyya 108, 109 imkān dhātī 224
Muḥammadiyya 165 inbisāṭ 55
ḥaqīqat al-wājib 54n inḍimām 54
ḥaqīqat al-wujūd 53 insān kāmil 75
ḥaqīqī 299 irāda 163, 168
ḥaqq 92 irādī 303
ḥaraka ishrāq 211
ʿaraḍiyya 304 ishrāqāt 278
jawhariyya 108n, 117, 121, 145, 155, 159n, ishtirāk
160, 199, 203, 307, 350 lafẓī 75, 112
qasriyya 302 maʿnawī 75, 112, 147
tawassuṭiyya 304 istiʿdād 253
ḥashr 252 istighfār 67
ḥashr al-ajsād 199 iʿtibār 218
ḥaythiyya iʿtibārī 207, 274, 277, 301
iṭlāqiyya 275 ittiḥāḍ 208, 215, 216
taʿlīliyya 275 ittiṣāl 107n, 216
taqyīdiyya 275 ittiṣālī 307
ḥikma 13, 89, 117
ʿamaliyya 89 jadal 96n
ʿilmiyya 89 jaʿl 51
ḥiss mushtarak 220 jamʿ 56
ḥubb-i waṭan 361 jawāmiʿ al-kalim 163
ḥudūth 114n, 121n al-jawhar wa-l-ʿaraḍ 139
dahrī 37, 50, 139n, 246 jiha 99, 107, 110, 113
dhātī 137 jism ṭabīʿī 307
ḥujja 256 jism-i millī 361
ḥukm 355 jism-i taʿlīmī 297
ḥulūl 53, 54, 58 juzʾiyyāt maʿnawiyya 220
huwiyya sāriyya 53
386 Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms

kamm 110n maʿnawī 107
kashf 159, 205 maʿqūl 51, 215
kayf 209 maʿqūliyya 213, 214
khafī 165 maʿrifa(t) 68n, 92, 95, 101, 107, 111, 197
khalʿ 203 mashʿar 102, 106, 109
khalʿ wa-lubs 203 mashīʾa 163, 168
khalīfa 165, 279 mashwirat-khāna 316
khārijī 205 maslak 214
khātam al-walāya 279 masʾūl dar aʿmāl 345
al-khayāl al-kull 242 mawḍūʿ 208, 211, 304
khayr 297 mawt
khiyāl 220 dhātī 199
khuluww 224 iḍiṭrārī 199
kullī ikhtiyārī 199
muqayyad bi-qayd juzʾī 219 millat 360
ṭabīʿī 53 miṣdāq 274
al-mithāl al-kull 242
lā bi-sharṭ 52, 275 muʾaththir 120n
lamaʿāt 278 muḍāʾif 215
laṭāʾif 165 mudrik 216
lawāzim, sg. lāzim 221, 224, 299 al-Muḥammadiyya al-bayḍāʾ 165
Liberalism 353 mumkin 54n, 107n
lima 193n munḍamm 54n
lubs 203 muntashirat al-afrād 220
lubs baʿda lubs 203 murshid 241
lumʿa ilāhiyya 231n musānakha 253
musāwāt 361
mā 193n musāwiq 106
maʿād jismānī 199, 240 mushāhada 205
maʿād 142 mustaʿidd 203
maʿānin 217, 220 mustakfī 242
juzʾiyya 217, 218 mutajaddidāt 305
wijdāniyya 220 muttaṣil 302
mabdaʾ al-āthār 299
madd 168 nafs 88, 103, 107, 109, 165
mādda 109, 202, 345 al-amr 105, 111, 112, 113, 114, 121, 301
mafāhīm-i salbiyya u ʿadamiyya 251 al-kull 165
mafhūm-i thubūtī 251 kullī 307
maḥabba 219 nijād 358
maḥall 204 nūrī 216
māhiyya 100, 109, 221, 222, 241 nuzūlī 199
taʿammuliyya 224
maʿiyya 140, 277 qaḍāʾ 163
majʿūl 51 qadar jawharī 110n
malzūm 224 qadīm 303n
maʿnā 92, 100, 103n, 108 qaḍiyya
salbī 299 muhmala 296
manāfiʿ-i tijārī 356 ṭabīʿiyya 296
Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms 387

qadr 144 ṭabīʿī 303
qadīm 345 taḍāyuf 215
qalb 92, 107 tadrījī 307
qamarī 165 tafakkur 118
qālib 255 tafraqa 56
qānūn 355 taḥaqquq 107
qasrī 303 takāfuʾ
qawānīn-i mawḍūʿa 291 al-mutaḍāʾifīn 215
quwwa wāhima 217 fī l-martaba 215
quwwa 345 takwīn 144
tanzīh 277
rajʿat 199 tanzīl vs. taʾwīl 89
riḍā 67n taqdīr 163
riyāḍat 159 taqwā 164
rūḥ 165 tarkīb
rukn rābiʿ 85 inḍimāmī 203
rutba 105n, 110, 111 inḍimāmī ṣināʿī 203
inḍimāmī ṭabīʿī 203
saʿāda 297 ittiḥādī 203
ṣadr 92, 103, 107 taṣawwur 206, 208
saʿīd 297 tashakhkhuṣ 219, 304
ṣamad 92n, 113 tashbīh 54, 58
sarayān al-wujūd 297 tashkīk 112, 113, 136, 137, 140, 150, 298
shaqī 297 ʿāmm 112
shayʾiyya 149, 222, 223 khāṣṣ 112
ṣifa 120n, 209 khāṣṣī 147
ṣifāt-i ʿayn-i dhāt 345 al-wujūd 158n
ṣifāt-i kamāliyya 345 al-wujūd bi-l-shidda wa-l-ḍuʿf 160
sinkhiyyat al-wujūd 138 tawālī al-ānāt 303
sirr 165 tawassuṭī 304
ṣudūr 99 tawḥīd 279
sulūk 277 taʾwīl vs. tanzīl 89
ṣuqʿ 105n, 115 thābit 304, 306, 307
ṣūra 92, 108, 109, 202
ʿaqliyya 214 umūr
idrākiyya 213 ʿāmma 97, 139, 193, 202, 244
jawhariyya 304, 305 iʿtibāriyya 221
lāḥiqa 204 ʿuqla 103
ṣuʿūdī 199 ʿurūḍ 53
ṣuwar uṣūlī 68
mutakhayyala 200
ʿilmiyya 211 waḥda
inbisāṭiyya 278
taʿallum 92, 107 shakhṣiyya 277, 302
taʿaqqul 92, 102, 107 tashkīkiyya 274, 306
taʿayyun 212 waḥdat al-wujūd/waḥdat-i wujūd 8, 13, 37,
taʿayyunāt 300 55, 127, 129, 160, , 247, 275, 278, 298,
ṭabīʿa(t) 302, 307 300
388 Index of Arabic and Persian Technical Terms

wājib 54n insānī 301
al-wujūd 274 khāṣṣ 51
bi-ʿaynihi wa-bi-dhātihi 300 munbasiṭ 51, 54, 212, 300
walāya 29, 67n, 101, 163, 164, 166, 168, 267, muqayyad 57
279 muṭlaq 51, 57, 58, 276
wāqiʿ 105 fī nafsihi 211
waṭan 361 li-l-nafs 211
wijdān 95n, 107n rābiṭ 216, 240
wilāyat-i āzādī 315 tabʿī 211
wujūb 114n, 121n ẓillī 59, 209
wujūd al-aʿyān 297
wujūd 75, 95n, 100, 241 yaqīn 107
ʿāmm munbasiṭ 275
baḥt 58 zāʾid 51
bi-sharṭ lā 300 zamānī 304
dhihnī 205 ẓill 111, 114n
ḥaqq 92 ẓuhūr 92, 107, 108, 277
Index of Madrasas and Academies

ʿAbd Allāh Khān 189 Marwī 18, 19, 132, 136, 238

Almāsiyya 263 Maʿṣūmiyya 185
Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī 20, 186
Chahār-bāgh 131 Munīriyya 290

Dār al-Funūn 25, 26, 317, 319 Najaf, Seminary of 190

Dār al-Shifāʾ 19, 20n, 285, 286
Qāsim Khān 19, 19n, 233
Encümen-i Danış 324 Qum, Seminary of 266

Fakhriyya 18 Rāziqiyya 39
Faṣīḥiyya 20, 186
Ṣadr 19, 20, 20n, 261, 263, 265
Ḥājj Ḥasan 184, 192 n Ṣāliḥiyya 20
Ḥakīmiyya 17, 17n, 182 Sayyid Naṣr al-Dīn 195
Shamsiyya 17, 133, 182
Jadda Buzurg 263 Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn 266
Sipahsālār (Old) 19, 233, 238, 262, 265, 288,
Kāsagarān 17, 133, 182, 284 290
Sulṭānī 41, 131n
Mādar-i Shāh 19, 233
Manṣūriyya 291 ʿUlūm-i Siyāsī 318
Index of Manuscripts

Los Angeles Marʿashī 11214 148n, 149n

UCLA, Biomedical, A. 116, 81n Marʿashī 14614 147n
UCLA, Minasian 120, 146n Markaz-i Iḥyāʾ-i Mīrāth-i Islāmī 2290 40n
UCLA, Near East Coll. 1062 81n
Strasbourg
Mashhad Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 324 196n Strasbourg, Gobineau Coll. files no. 66
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 786 129 and 68 1
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 648 291n
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 1173 291n Tehran
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 7511 147n Dāʾirat al-Maʿarif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī 298 79n
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 7517 145n Dāʾirat al-Maʿarif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī 534 148n,
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 8127 148n 150n, 152n
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 8127 148n Dāʾirat al-Maʿarif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 8127 149n 1972/2 47n
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11287 151n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 84 295
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11572 147n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 101 293
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 11869 146n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 106 293, 293n
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 12040 148n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 126 295
Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī 14255 272 Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 133 293n, 295n,
296n
Oxford Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 842 152n
Bodleian Or. 765 154n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1020 129, 142n, 148n,
153n
Paris Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1132 147n
Bibliothèque Nationale, Manuscrits Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1265 140n
Orientaux, Archive du Prince Malkom Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1719 147n, 148n,
Khan, Supplements Persans, 1996 331n 149n
Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1723 245n
Qom Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1734 232n
Fayḍiyya 1570 152n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1818 269
Gulpāyigānī 1233 140n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1819 152n
Ḥaram-i Ḥaḍrat-i Maʿṣūma 703 151n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1911 297n
Marʿashī 2010 152n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1934 142n, 152n
Marʿashī 3840 152n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 1966 38n
Marʿashī 4319, ff. 69b–85a 38n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 3761/1–3 43n
Marʿashī 5588 241 Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 3942 289
Marʿashī 5653 112n, 146n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 4346 142n
Marʿashī 6995 146n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 6947 273
Marʿashī 7297 152n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 10196 156, 156n
Marʿashī 7328 46n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 16651 7
Marʿashī 7347 145n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 15329 189n
Marʿashī 8081 296n, 297n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 17353 151n
Marʿashī 8350 40n Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī 17535 147n
Marʿashī 10339 199 Majlis-i Shūrā-yi Islāmī, Sinā 1774 193n
Index of Manuscripts 391

Marwī 19, 18n University of Tehran 3092 147n, 152n

Millī F/13/149 342n University of Tehran 3092/5 148n
Millī 264 152n University of Tehran 3325 248n
Malik 1321 269 University of Tehran 342 193n
Malik 1321 269 University of Tehran 467 49n
Malik 1674 143 University of Tehran 4354 147n
Malik 2318 250n University of Tehran 6772 42n
Malik 5759 267 University of Tehran 870 143n
Malik 5957 266 University of Tehran, Adabiyyāt 387 148n
Malik 6172 341n University of Tehran, Mishkāt 241 294
Sipahsālār 6459 149n University of Tehran, Ilāhiyyāt 87 42n
University of Tehran 1854 129 University of Tehran, Ilāhiyyāt 652/6 271
University of Tehran 2624 148n