Introduction

The period in Islamic Philosophy from the death of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in 672/1274 to the beginning of what has come to be known as the “School of Isfahan”, which may replaced during the latter part of the tenth/sixteenth century, encompasses some 300 years of intense philosophical activity on many fronts, an understanding of which is essential in order to comprehend the changes, which the speculative sciences underwent in the Safavid era.

Unfortunately, to a certain extent, this period has not received the attention which the earlier and later period have enjoyed in the history of Islamic Philosophy. To some extent this lack of attention may be attributed to the tendency of writers in this period to produce commentaries, supercommentaries, glosses, superglosses and marginalia on the works of their predecessors rather that to write new texts and to the tendency of many modern reseachers to see such writing as a sign of intellectual stagnation. This view needs to be revised, if the richness and importance of these texts is to be understood, for it is in the elaboration od the basic materials of Islamic Philosophy in both commenting texts and the original texts during this period that the ideas which gradually accumulated to produce the later flowering of the intellectual sciences can be found.

With the advent of the Safavid (reigned 907/1501-1145/1732) in Persia in the early tenth/sixteenth century, the nomocentric, dogmatic forces in Islamic intellectual dsisposition immediately found a favourable political climate. The anxiety of legitimacy was particularly acute in the case of the Safavids. The probability that Shaykh Safi al-Din (d. 735/.1335), the founder of the Safavid order, was perhaps a Sunni made the Safavid monarchs, from Shah Isma’il I (ruled 907/1501-930/1524) onward, particularly anxious to demonstrate and institutionalize their Shi’i affiliation.
With the restoration of the Iranian empire and the reign of Shàh ‘Abbàs I (1587-1629), Isfahan became the capital of the Islamic arts and sciences, and the centre of spiritual culture in Iran. The thinkers who began to proliferate in Iran at that time should be grouped under the heading of ‘School of Isfahan’. There were many different orientations within this school. Nevertheles, once Shiism had definitely come out of hiding, vast works began to make their appearance (such as those by Mullà Sadrà, Qàdì Sa’ìd Qummì and others), in which the hadith of the Imams bore fruit in philosophical meditation.

The Iranian biographical-bibliographical catalogues too often make a summary distinction between Peripatetics (mashsha’un) and Platonist (ishraqiyun). First and foremost, the term ‘Peripatetics’ does not have quite the same meaning for our philosophers as it does for us, if only because of the Theology attributed to Aristotle, a work greatly popular among them. On the other hand (for the same reason) it is almost the exception to find a pure Peripatetic among them, a who is not more or less steeped in neo-Platonism and who is not eo ipso, in one way or another, almost an ishraqi.

Major Figures of the “School of Isfahan”

1. Mir Damad

A first and famous example is Mir Damad (Muhammad Baqir Astarabadi, who died in 1040/ 1631-1632), ‘the teacher of thinking’ to several generations of Shiite philosophers, and the greatest name of the School of Isfahan. He is often classed among the mashsha’un; and while this is not innacurate, this ‘Peripatetic’ has left ecstatic confessions of poignant beauty, with clear echoes of al-Suhrawardi, and he chose the pseudonym Ishraq. The college where he taught, the Madrasa Sadr, with its big gardens, still function in Isfahan.

Mir Damad left around forty works on both Arabic and Persian, noted for their abstruseness and almost entirely unedited, as though somewhat eclipsed by those of his briliant pupil Mulla Sadra. His books are: Book of the Burning Coals (Qabasat), a summa of his researches on Avicenna, written in Arabic; Book of the Burning Brands (jadhawat, written in Persian; these fanciful titles have no bearing whatever on the seriousness of the text), perhaps he gives freer rein to his personal vision. On of the problem that preoccupied him was that of finding a solution to the dillema of cosmology: a world ab aeterno, or a world which come into existence in time (as the mutakallimun professed) before there was any time? Between the eternally existing and the event which came into existence in time, he sought a solution in an eternal coming-to-be (huduth dahri), an eternally new event—a concept laden with implications for the events of hierohistory, and which entailed the further concept of an ‘imaginary time’ which was to inspire heated polemics.

Among Mir Damad’s many pupils, mention can only be made here of a few of the most famous. First among these is Sayyid Ahmad ibn Zaynal-‘Abidin al-‘Alawi (died between 1054/1644 and 1060/1650), a young cousin of his who became his pupil and then his son-in-law. His writings on philosophy are important and comprise about ten works. Besides the commentaries on his teacher’s difficult treatises, there is a vast opus on Avicenna’s Shifa’ entitled The Key to the Shifa’, in which the author makes express reference to Avicenna’s ‘Oriental philosophy’; a long introduction to a philosophical and theosophical tafsir of the Quran (Lata’if-i ghaybi’ in Persia), and others.
Another pupil wrote a monumental commentary of one thousand two hundred folio pages on The Book of the Burning Coals (Qabasat), an entire life’s work, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali-Rida ibn al-Aqajani (completed his work in 1071/1661). Another pupil of Mir Damad, Qutb al-Din Muhammad Ashkivari (also known as Sharif-i Lahiji, who died after 1075/1664-1665) wrote a vast raphsody in Arabic and Persian, which divides the traditions, quotations and commentaries concerning the ancient sages prior to Islam, the philosophers and spiritual adepts of Sunni Islam, and finally the Imams and the great figures among the Shiites thinkers and adepts, into three great cycles. The chapter on Zoroaster contains a remarkable comparison of the Twelve Imam of the Shiite with the Saoshyant or eschatological Saviour of the Zoroastrians. He also wrote a treatise on the mundus imaginalis and a commentary on the Quran which employs a Shiite symbolic hermeneutic (ta’wil).

Lastly, Mulla Shamsa Gilani, whose work, amounting to about fifteen treatises hitherto confined to libraries, seem to us of increasing importance as its reconstruction proceeds. He was an Iranian who came from the shores of the Caspian Sea, and for many years he followed the teaching of Mir Damad, whose doctrines he expanded in his books. He was a great traveller (he had travelled aover almost all of Iran, as well as in Iraq, Syaria and Hijaz). He was a younger co-disciple of Mulla Sadra, but unlike him he remained faithful to the metaphysics of essence. Although they criticized each other in their respective books, they conducted a friendly correspondence with each other. Worth mentioning here are his Treatise on the Ways of Certitude, his Treatise on the Manifestation of Perfection to the Companions of Truth, and his Treatise on the Coming-to-be of the World, in which he supports the thesis of Mir Damad that summarized above.

2. Shaykh Baha’ al-Din ‘Amili

The most colourful figure of the Safavid period was Baha’ al-Din ‘Amili, better known as Shaykh Baha’i. His father was the leader of the Shi’ah community of ‘Amil and a student of Shahid-i Thani. Baha’ al-Din, who was born in Baalbek in 953/1546, was then only thirteen years old and well qualified to master the Persian language.. in Persia he continued his studies in the religious sciences, poetry, and hikmat and soon became the leading scholar of his day and the Shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan. Despite his nearness to the court and necessary participation in worldly life he was a gnostic and spent many of the last years of his life travelling with the dervishes and visiting various Sufi masters. He finally passed away in 1030/1622 while returning from the hajj.

Shaykh Baha’ al-Din was the leading theologian and jurist of his time and the leader of the ‘ulama’ of Isfahan. Some of his important works include Jami’-I ‘abbasi on jurisprudence in Persian; Fawa’id al-samadiyyah on Arabic grammar which is still in wide use; atreatise on algebra, the Khulasah fi’l hisab; several treatises on astronomy including the Tashrih al-aflak; a treatise on the astrolabe, ‘Urwat al-wuthqa; general Quranic commentaries; many works on various aspects of the Shari’ah; the Kashkul, a collection of Arabic and Persian writings which ranks among the most famous Sufi works; a series of mathnawis such as Bread and Sweet, Cat and Mouse, Milk and Sugar, and the Tuti-Namah.

3. Mir Abu’l-Qasim Findiriski

The third of the famous triumvirate of sageas from Isfahan, Mir Findiriski, spent much of his life travelling outside Persia, especially in India where he was highly respected by most of the princes and where he made acquaintance of many Hindu sages. He became well acquainted with Hinduism and even wrote a commentary upon the Persian translation of the Yoga Vasistha by Nizam al-Din Panipati, which is one of the major works on Hinduism in Persian. In the Muslim sciences he was a master in philosophy (hikmat), mathematics and medicine, and taught the Shifa’ and the Qanun of Ibn Sina in Isfahan where he dies in 1050/1640.

Mir Findiriski composed several important treatises including one on motion (al-harakah), another on the arts and sciences in society (sana’iyyah) the book on Yoga already mentioned, Usul al-fusul on Hindu wisdom, and a history of the Safavids. The most famous of his poems is a qasidah, based upon that of Nasir ibn Khusraw Dihlawi, which is one of the best known poems on hikmat in Persian.
Mir Findiriski occupied himself not only with methaphysics and the theoretical sciences but also with the sciences of society, of traditional society in which the social structure itself has a directly based on methaphysical principles.

4. Mulla Muhsin Fayd Kashani

Muhammad ibn Shah Murtada ibn Shah Mahmud, better known as Mulla Muhsin or Fayd Kashani, is after Mulla Sadra the most famous of the sages of the generation following that of Mir Damad, Shaykh Baha’i and Mir Findiriski. Born in Kashan in 1007/1600, he spent some years at Qum and then came to Shiraz to complete his studies with Mulla Sadrawhose daughter he later married. Mulla Muhsin’s writings display a harmonious integration of reason, revelation, and gnosis with lesser emphasis upon reason. He succeeded in the Shi’ah world to bring about a complete harmony between Law and spiritual life, Shari’ah and Tariqah.

5. Mulla Muhammad Baqir Majlisi

Muhammad Taqi (1003/1594-1070/1659), known as the first Majlisi, was one of the students of Shaykh Baha’i and an outstanding theologian and Sufi of his time. His son, Muhammad Baqir (1037/1628-1110/1699), the second Majlisi, however, surpassed his father in fame and power and became the most dominant figure of Shi’ism. Having studied with his own father, Mulla Khalil Qazwini, and Mulla Muhsin Fayd, he in turn became the master of over a thousand disciples including Sayyid Ni’matallah Jaza’iri, wellknown for his many writings, especially the account of his own life as a student,
The second Majlisi is especially famous for revivifying the various branches of the Shi’ite sciences and for assembling the writings of the earlier doctors of Shi’ism and prophetic hadiths into encyclopedias which have become the main reference for all who undertake religious education in the Shi’ah madrasahs.

Conclusion

This form of wisdom or hikmat, some features of which we have sought to outline here, did not die with the termination of the Safavid dynasty. Likewise, the school of hikmat continued through the students of Mulla Sadra and others from generation to another and it produced indirectly such figures as Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i, the founder of the Shaykhi movement, who was opposed to Mulla Sadra but also Hajji Mulla Hadi Sabziwari, and several other outstanding figures in the Qajar period, the light of whose teachings has not yet disappeared from the horizon of Persia. One can hardly understand the intellectual life of Islam in its totality without taking into account this last major periodof Muslim philosophycal activity, lasting from the Sfavid period to the present.

E. Sri Mulyati

(Master Student of Islamic Philosophy- ICAS Jakarta)