Table Of ContentIlluminationist 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.
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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 philosophi-
cal 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 man-
uscripts 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 al-
legories 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 writ-
ten 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
