Shihāb Al-Dīn Suhrawardī's

Illuminationist Texts and Textual Studies Iran Studies Editorial Board Ali Gheissari (University of San Diego) Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle) Christoph Werner (University of Marburg) Volume 16 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/is Hossein Ziai (1944–2011) Illuminationist Texts and Textual Studies Essays in Memory of Hossein Ziai Edited by Ali Gheissari John Walbridge Ahmed Alwishah LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Hossein Ziai, Song of Gabriel’s Wings, 1994. Watercolor, 4 × 6 in. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1569-7401 isbn 978-90-04-35658-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-35839-3 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Preface ix Note on Contributors xvi Part 1 Introduction 1 Hossein Ziai, Professor of Philosophy and Iranian Studies: A Bio-Bibliographical Introduction 3 Ali Gheissari 2 Hossein Ziai and Suhrawardī Studies 13 John Walbridge Part 2 Suhrawardī and the Philosophy of Illumination 3 Illuminationist Manuscripts: The Rediscovery of Suhrawardī and its Reception 21 John Walbridge 4 Some Observations on the Kashf al-Ghiṭāʾ li-Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ 42 Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl 5 Suhrawardī’s Creed of the Sages 66 John Walbridge 6 The Meaning and Etymology of Barzakh in Illuminationist Philosophy 86 Malihe Karbassian 7 The Concept of Sakīna in Suhrawardī 96 Nasrollah Pourjavady viii contents Part 3 The Illuminationists or Suhrawardī’s Commentators 8 Suhrawardī and Ibn Kammūna on the Impossibility of Having Two Necessary Existents 115 Ahmed Alwishah 9 Ithbāt al-Mabda ʾ by Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Kammūna: A Philosophically Oriented Monotheistic Ethic 135 Y. Tzvi Langermann 10 Constructing a World of Its Own: A Translation of the Chapter on the World of Image from Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil al-Shajara al-Ilāhiyya 160 L.W. Cornelis van Lit and Christian Lange 11 Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī’s “Postscript” to His Tablets of ʿImād al-Dīn and Najm Dīn Nayrīzī’s Commentary on It 179 Reza Pourjavady Part 4 The Wider Tradition 12 Takmīl al-Manṭiq: A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Manual on Logic 199 Khaled El-Rouayheb 13 Fārābī’s Purposes of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Avicenna’s ‘Eastern’ Philosophy 257 Charles E. Butterworth 14 Mind the Gap: The Reception of Avicenna’s New Argument against Actually Infinite Space 272 Jon McGinnis 15 Translation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s The Traveler’s Provision (Zād al-Musāfir) 306 Eiyad S. al-Kutubi Index 327 Preface The late Professor Hossein Ziai’s interests focused on the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) tradition of philosophy. He was convinced of the importance of the Islamic, and particularly Iranian, philosophical tradition in developing con- crete intellectual encounters with western philosophical trends, as well as of the importance of this tradition for broader philosophical exchanges and communication. He believed that the historical and analytical approaches are equally important in investigating Iranian philosophical tradition and that this tradition enjoys a universality that gives it continued relevance in transcend- ing academic boundaries and affords it a potential for shaping Iranian, Islamic and, by extension, world intellectual culture. His first book dealt with logic in the Illuminationist tradition. The bulk of his later scholarly work was devoted to making the texts of the Illuminationist tradition available, both through editing previously unpublished texts and translating them into English. In his memory and honor several former colleagues and students of Ziai have contributed various chapters to this volume which on the whole repre- sents different aspects of his broad interests and scholarly commitments. The present volume, more specifically, deals with the post-Avicennan philosophical tradition in Iran, and in particular the Illuminationist school and later philosophers, such as those associated with the School of Isfahan, who were fundamentally influenced by it. The focus of various chapters is on transla- tions, editions, and close expositions of rationalist works in areas such as epis- temology, logic and metaphysics rather than mysticism more generally, and also on specific texts rather than themes or studies of individual philosophers. The purpose of the volume is to introduce new texts into the modern canon of Islamic and Iranian philosophy. Various texts in this volume have not been previously translated nor have they been the subject of significant Western scholarship. The present volume consists of fifteen chapters that are divided in four mains parts. Part 1 (Introduction) begins with a general Bio-Bibliographical Introduction of Hossein Ziai, by Ali Gheissari (Chapter 1), followed by an account of Hossein Ziai’s contributions to Suhrawardī Studies, by John Walbridge (Chapter 2). Part 2 (Suhrawardī and the Philosophy of Illumination) consists of five essays on various aspects of the formative periods of the Illuminationist Philosophy. In Chapter 3, “Illuminationist Manuscripts: Rediscovery and Reception of Suhrawardī,” John Walbridge examines what the earliest manuscripts of Suhrawardī’s works and certain later manuscript families can tell x preface us about the reception of his works and thought. The very limited number of manuscripts from the half century after his death seem to indicate that his works were known only in central Anatolia. Possibly as a result of the visit of the Jewish scholar Ibn Kammūna to Aleppo, probably around 1260, there was a flowering of interest in his works in the later 13th century with major com- mentaries and independent works by three significant figures. The article next examines the very different manuscript histories of Suhrawardī’s Persian allegories and occult works. It also looks at the role of elegant manuscripts of works by Suhrawardī and his followers commissioned by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet I. It concludes with some reflections on the choice of manuscripts as the basis of modern editions and the value of manuscripts as evidence for intellectual history. In Chapter 4, Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl offers “Some Observations on the Kashf al-Ghiṭāʾ li-Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ” with a translation of the text by John Walbridge. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the author of Kashf al- ghiṭāʾ li-ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ, one of the short treatises on the theory of knowledge that is most debatable with regard to its author. There are numerous copies of this treatise, which show us that philosophers and mystics were interested in it from 8th century to 13th century A.H. In spite of the identical motto/title of the text, they attributed to it some different authors. These manuscripts and their authors can be generally divided into four groups: the first one ascribes the work to Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyā Suhrawardī (d. 587 A.H.); the second group attributes it to Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī (d. 638 A.H.); the third group of copies names Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Kīshī (d. 695 A.H.) as its author; and finally, the fourth group, being included in a collection of manuscripts, does not men- tion an author at all. This chapter further aims to identify the author of Kashf al-ghiṭāʾ by reviewing the codicological information and comparing its content with the opinions of the attributed authors, as well as making accessible this treatise for readers. Thus, it includes two parts: The first, discussion about its authorship, explains its content, especially its author’s opinion on the theory of knowledge. In the second, it presents a critical edition of this treatise based on seven manuscripts from the 8th to 11th centuries A.H. In Chapter 5, John Walbridge introduces Suhrawardī’s Iʿtiqād al-ḥukamā. Accordingly, both the content and channels of manuscript transmission of the philosopher Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s short Arabic treatise, Iʿtiqād al-ḥukamā, “The Creed of the Sages,” show that this was an early work written prior to his “conversion” to Platonism/Illuminationism. Nevertheless, the concern with the compatibility of Sufism and philosophy is already present. Combined with parallel evidence from content and transmission of his Persian allegories, this provides evidence of his early philosophical and religious Preface xi standpoints. The Iʿtiqād al-ḥukamā’ is a short treatise of about ten printed pages defending the position that doctrines held by the ancient philosophers were compatible with revealed religion in general and Islam in particular. The account given of philosophy is Avicennan and covers cosmology, the relation- ship of God and the universe, the nature of the human soul, the basic struc- ture of the physical world, and the religious topics of the immortality of the soul and the nature and powers of prophets and saints. The text argues that while the doctrines of the philosophers may appear to differ from those of revealed religion, the underlying meaning is the same—for example, that the philosophers’ notion of the contingency of the universe is essentially identical with the religious idea of its being created. The Iʿtiqād contains none of the distinctive ideas of Suhrawardi’s masterwork, The Philosophy of Illumination: light as the fundamental reality, four rather than three metaphysical levels, the Platonic Forms, and the critique of Avicennan ontology.

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