The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities

I. The Many Faces of Philosophy in the Safavid Age

SAJJAD RIZVI

The Safavid period ushered in an intellectual renaissance that established the study of philosophy as the pinnacle of intellectual and spiritual pursuits. This invigoration of the life of the mind was predicated on a notion that religion and philosophy were entirely parallel paths from and back to the Truth, and the act of philosophizing entailed spiritual exercises and ethical commitments. This synthetic approach, however, was not without its detractors. At its heart was a contestation of the very term hikma, which represented philosophy as a way of life for philosophers—a mixture of Greek thought and prophetic wisdom—and for those opposed to philosophy, it represented a wisdom that was exclusive to the teachings of the imams. For the latter, the true heresy of these philosophers lay in their mixing of the pure teachings of the imams with the conjectures of the ancient Greeks. To illustrate the contestations and faces of philosophy in Iran during this period, I selected three passages that present three modes of answering the why and the how of philosophy.

Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1636) was arguably the most famous thinker of the Safavid period, and the first chapter of his magnum opus, The Four Journeys (al-Hikma al-mutaʿaliya fi-l-asfar al-ʿaqliya al-arbaʿa, commonly known as al-Asfar al-arbaʿa), provides a starting point for describing both the definition and the practice of philosophy as a way of life that was so influential (and hence contested). Central to his conception is the Platonic notion (articulated in the Theaetetus and the Timaeus) that the ends of philosophy are godlikeness.

Second, I demonstrate how one of the major modes of philosophical inquiry was exegesis, not just commentaries on famous philosophers but trying to make sense of scripture through the holistic assumption that both revelation and reason pointed to the same truth. A commentary on the twelfth hadith in Sharh al-arbaʿin, known as the famous narration of ʿImran the Sabean on the first Being (that is, God), represents this mode. The philosophical approach of Qadi Saʿid Qummi (d. 1696), a prominent thinker on the margins of the court, was similar to that of Mulla Sadra, but the results of his inquiries in metaphysics were quite distinct. His approach to theology assumed the radical distinction between the Necessary and the contingent as opposed to Mulla Sadra’s monism.

Finally, I examine how philosophy was contested in the Safavid period by looking at the earliest surviving critique of Mulla Sadra. Mulla Tahir Qummi (d. 1089/1678), in his Wisdom of the Gnostics (Hikmat al-ʿarifin), focused on the doctrine of being and its “contamination” by the monism of the Sufi school of Ibn ʿArabi. This excerpt provides a critique of the Asfar on monism. The text was written in the late 1650s when Qummi was the prayer leader in the Shiʿi holy city of Qum and hence was an influential figure.

MULLA SADRA’S VIEWS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PHILOSOPHY

In The Four Journeys (al-Asfar al-arbaʿa), Mulla Sadra provides a famous definition of philosophy that draws upon previous exemplars and expresses his own interest in philosophy as an ethical commitment and a practiced way of life. For him, philosophy and scripture are parallel forms of revelation that are intertwined. He points out that the prophets taught the ancient sages, and when philosophy from Hellenic contexts became arabized, Muslims were reappropriating their own tradition. The goal of philosophy is to become a sage and moreover someone who attains to theosis, to divine likeness. This process is still predicated on Aristotelian divisions between theoretical and practical philosophy and the practice of demonstrative science.

Translation

Know that philosophy is the perfecting of the human soul (istikmal al-nafs al-insaniya) through cognition of the realities of existents as they truly are, and through judgments about their being, ascertained through demonstrations (bi-l-barahin), and not understood through conjecture or adherence to authority (bi-l-zann wa-l-taqlid), to the measure of human capacity (ḥasab al-taqa al-bashariya). You might say that it [philosophizing] ascribes to the world a rational order understood according to human capability so that one may attain a resemblance to the Creator (al-tashabbuh bi-l-bariʾ).1

The human is kneaded of two ingredients: a spiritual form from the world of command (ʿalam al-amr, the intelligible world) and sensible matter from the world of creation (ʿalam al-khalq, the sensible world), and thus he possesses in his soul both attachment [to the body] and detachment [from it]. Wisdom is sharpened through the honing of two faculties relating to two practices: one theoretical and abstract and the other practical, attached to creation.2

The goal of the theoretical art is the fashioning of the soul with the soul of Being in its perfect and complete order, and its becoming a rational microcosm not in its matter but rather in its form and shape and countenance and presentation. This art is the wisdom sought by the lord of the messengers—peace be with him—when he beseeched in his supplication his lord saying: “O My Lord, show me things as they truly are,” and also [sought] by the intimate of God [Khalil = Abraham] when he asked: “My lord bestow upon me wise judgment” (Q. al-Shuʿara’ 26:82). Judgment is verifying the existence of things entailed by conceptions.

The fruit of the practical art is the direct performance of good deeds in order to allow the soul control over the body and for the soul to manage and govern the body. This is alluded in the words of the Prophet—peace be with him and his progeny: “Acquire the virtues of God” and when Abraham supplicated: “And associate me with the righteous” (Q. al-Shuʿaraʾ 26:83).³

The divine scripture alluded to these two arts of philosophy: “We created the human in the best of forms,” which is his form sculpted from the world of command, “then We reduced him to the lowest of the low,” which is his matter that comes from dense and tenebrous bodies, “except for those who believe,” alluding to the goal of theoretical wisdom, “and perform good deeds” (Q. al-Tin 95:4–6) alluding to the perfection of practical wisdom.

What is conveyed by the perfection of the practical faculty is that by which the order of the household is produced and salvation in the afterlife, and by the perfection of the theoretical faculty is the states of the first Cause and reversion to it and reflection upon what comes between the two through true thought and consideration. The Commander of the Faithful said: “May God bless the person who takes care of his soul and prepares for his death, and knows where he is, whence he is, and wherefore he is.” The divine philosophers understood this when they said that the prophets had established that philosophy is resemblance to the divine.⁴

The value of philosophy lies in many things. One is that it becomes a rationale for the existence of things in the most perfect sense, because if one does not know existence as it is, one cannot bring it into being or produce it. Existence is pure good and there is only value in existential good. This is what is symbolized in the saying of the divine: “and one who is given wisdom is given great good” (Q. al-Baqara 2:269). It is in this sense that God—the Exalted—called himself the Wise on many occasions in his glorious scripture, which is a revelation from the Praised and Wise, and characterized his prophets and his friends with wisdom and called them lordly sages (rabbaniyin hukamaʾ) who know the realities of things. He said: “God made a covenant with the prophets when he gave them from the scripture and wisdom” (Q. Al ʿImran 3:81), and specifically for Luqman when he said: “We gave Luqman wisdom” (Q. Luqman 31:12). All of that was in the context of virtue and the place of bounties. There is no sense to the term “sage” except that person who is characterized by this sense of wisdom explained above. It is clear and revealed that there is nothing in existence of greater value than the essence of the worshipped One and his prophets who guide to the clearest of his paths. All of this the Exalted has described by wisdom.

The nature of its value and glory has been disclosed to us such that we must know the way of contemplating and focusing on it, the result of which is the bestowal of gifts that come and means of understanding, so that we can accept the foundation of its laws and principles and the summation of its proofs and demonstrations in the measure of what comes to us and all these various things have been disclosed to us by the First Cause. The keys to overflowing abundance are in the hands of God who gives them to whom he wishes.5

QADI SAʿID QUMMI

In his commentary on the forty hadiths (in actuality twenty-seven were completed), one of the most important texts is a long exegesis on a famous disputation that is recorded in the classical Shiʿi text ʿUyun akhbar al-Rida by Shaykh al-Saduq (d. 991). This disputation between ʿImran the Sabean and the eighth Shiʿi Imam ʿAli al-Rida at the court of al-Maʾmun represents one of many such disputations recounted by al-Saduq to demonstrate that the knowledge of the imams in matters of theology and philosophy was superior, miraculously so, to that of their contemporaries. This particular disputation is a long dialogue on the nature of the first being and the creation, and the nature of their relationship. The commentary of Qummi focuses on the nature of the first being and the first creature and demonstrates his mastery of Neoplatonic thought; just like in his commentary on the Theologia Aristotelis in which he cites hadith and mixes Shiʿi texts with Hellenic ones, so too do we see him here in his exegesis refer to notions from classical late Neoplatonism such as emanation (sudur). One also sees clearly the influence of the language of monism of the school of Ibn ʿArabi with its focus on the levels of the manifestations of the One from the point of singularity and absence of any qualities or names, to the Names and the other theophanies of the divine in the cosmos.

Translation

Know that what is meant by “the first being” (al-kaʾin al-awwal) in the speech of the questioner and “the One” (al-wahid) in the speech of the imam is the First True One (al-mawjud al-awwal al-haqq).6 What is meant by “what he created” is the first emanation (al-sadir al-awwal). It is clear that the questioner only asked about these two, which is what comes to mind through the usage of the term “which one,” and as is clear from the answer when he denied that the One possesses neither limits (hudud) nor qualities (aʿrad) that may be used in response to “which thing” concerning the first Cause and affirming it for the first emanation. This is what is meant by the absence of affirming in the statement of the questioner that “it is not affirmed for me,” meaning the affirmation of the essence and the explanation of the reality of affirming its existence because that was accepted by the questioner. As the speech of the questioner contained two questions, thus he—the imam—gave two answers, ending the second one by discussing the negation of need and purpose in His agency—exalted is He—in order to explain the bringing into being of the first emanation. Now let us discuss a number of issues as they arise in the narration, supplemented by their responses.

THE ISSUE

He—God—is One in his eternal simplicity (wahda) that encompasses not being a number (ghayr ʿadadiya) nor being engrossed in multiplicity nor can He be divided into dimensions, and therefore it follows that He has no limits or qualities. One cannot reply to what He is in the way that one replies to the questions “what” (ma) and “how” (lima).

THE EXPLANATION

For the first Being, he—the imam—described it as the One so that the beginning of his speech would be a response to the questioner clarifying that at the level of the singularity of the divine essence there is no other thing such that he cannot be given a name since there is no description for the Presence of Singularity (al-hadra al-ahadiya), no name, no specific characteristic, no description, no haecceity, no direction, no limit and no essence (mahiya). All of these would negate simplicity and that would make Him dependent upon the existence of others and entail many problems as the righteous recognize. All multiplicity is effaced in Him and His essence cannot possess attributes as indicated in the narration from ʿAli when he said: “It is impossible for His essence to possess attributes.”⁷ This is among the concomitant truths of His simplicity that encompasses not being a number and hence entails the impossibility of any multiplicity. The opposite of simplicity that is not numerical is multiplicity that is not numerical, but that is impossible and cannot exist because it is self-contradictory.⁸

I think there is no proof clearer for the negation of any partner to God than affirming his simplicity that is not numerical because it is claimed that there is no doubt that God is the agent of numerical oneness in things and because the agent cannot be qualified by what he created—as is established in hadith and through demonstrations (barahin)—therefore He is One with a simplicity that is not numerical, and so it necessarily follows from this that He has no partner. Similarly there is no demonstration more perfect for simplicity than what the people of God [mystics] see when they affirm this simplicity that is not numerical.

There is no better way than this of affirming that the cosmos has a first Cause (al-mabdaʾ al-awwal). He—the imam—takes this path in affirming that simplicity in answer to the questioner in this narration, given that the questioner claims at the beginning of his speech that no one has affirmed for him that He is One and no other. So reflect. The One and the Simple, there is none more perfect than He, the everlasting refuge in which there is no shortcoming; whatever you suppose He is, He is other than it. The divine sage Pythagoras, disciple of Solomon the prophet, was correct when he divided oneness into oneness that is not dependent upon another and that is the oneness of the Creator and oneness that encompasses all things, oneness that judges the existence of a thing, oneness from which units and the many existents emanate, and oneness that is dependent on another such as the oneness of existents.9 One might report this division from him in another way: absolute oneness is divided into oneness before perpetuity (dahr) and that is the oneness of the Creator, oneness with perpetuity and that is the oneness of the universal intellect (al-ʿaql), and oneness after perpetuity and before time (al-zaman), which is the oneness of the universal soul (al-nafs), and oneness with time, which is the oneness of the elements and the compounds.¹⁰

In sum, as he—the imam—said: “He remains One and nothing is with Him,” and “He remains as such” in allusion to His essential Simplicity that does not listen to the song of the multiplicity of essences. At that level do all essences become extinct. He is He in preternity and eternity as al-Sadiq said in answer to the question, “What is God greater than?” He said: “God is greater than all things.” “So then there is something He is greater than.” He—the imam—said: “God is greater than what one imagines.”

And his saying: “he has no limits nor qualities” indicated that presence that does not culminate in a limit or a direction nor is any description or quality capable of sufficing it. The limit comprises the sustaining causes and other than them because all things culminate in their limits as is established in the books of philosophy concerning the finitude of causes. It also comprises the existence of the general and the specific because it is one of the limits, rather it is the first of them as it is clear from demonstration and from the saying of al-Sadiq in the narration of the materialist who questioned him to the point when he—the imam—said: “You have limited Him (haddadtahu) when you have affirmed His existence,” meaning that based on the principles that I mentioned before, you know that when you affirm existence of Him this entails limitation. He—the imam—said: “I did not limit him, that is, you spoke truly when you said, Because I affirmed His existence, I limited Him, but I affirmed Him in the sense of negating the claim of denying and negating it; if I did not affirm Him, what would be understood from that is pure negation and sheer nonexistence, but God is far above such agnosticism.” Then he—the imam—said: “As there is no station between negation and affirmation” meaning that because there is no station between negation and affirmation, there cannot be any talk of a means between them, as negation is not appropriate to it, therefore necessarily I chose affirmation, not in the sense of affirmation of existents—God is far above such immanence—but by pure necessity and compulsion. This explanation emanating from the very source of wisdom and prophecy is the greatest realization of the term “being” shared (ishtirak lafẓi) between the Necessary and the contingent.11 So reflect.

The limit also comprises the attributes in their being the same and in their being additional to the divine essence because one who attributes something to God limits Him. It also comprises the limits established by the senses and the intellect—all of these are negated of God. What is meant by the qualities in the terminology of the narrations are qualities necessitating change whether these are psychological or not, hence one ought to take them according to the terminology of the philosophers.

AN ADMONITION

Know that the claim that there is nothing with Him in preternity or eternity does not negate His saying, “He is with you” (Q. al-Hadid 57:4); this is one of the most obscure issues in theology. The cause is with the effect but the effect is not with the cause, because if it were with the cause in its essence then its constituents would occur without and independent of its essence, if one solely analyzed it. “Being-with” in essence entails independence and a type of loneliness—but that is impossible. Its essence and qualities are extinguished in the cause, but it is the manifestation of the cause and its states and subsisting by its subsistence and by its (the cause) making it (the effect) subsist. The perfect thing cannot be divided from its essence or the concomitants of its essence and its manifestations because it exists necessarily with all of them. So the cause is with the effect but the effect is not with the cause.

Of the great sages who came close to this point is Empedocles the disciple of Luqman when he said: “The Creator creates the forms not through a type of will that is suspended but by a type that is causative.” So the cause is with the effect but the effect is not, for if it were not, then the effect is with the cause in essence. If it were allowed to be held that an effect is with the cause then the effect in this case is not the same as the cause so the effect is not prior in its being as an effect to the cause, and nor is the cause by its being a cause prior to the effect. Then the effect must be one by the cause and the cause is the cause of all causes and so necessarily the effect is not with the cause in any direction at all. If it were, then it would destroy the very sense of the terms cause and effect.¹²

THE ISSUE

The first emanation from the Creator is the Intellect.

Know that when the questioner asked about the first creature what is it, he was not intending to learn and clarify first of all the reality of the first emanation and its essential qualities because that had already been discussed by the ancients and others and in the occult sciences. But he—the imam—offered his explanation by discussing the specific and essential qualities, and he guided him to it by negating all the concomitant qualities of existents from Him. Then his saying, “Then He created a creation ex nihilo (mubtadiʿan)” is an allusion to the specific quality of that existent and creating ex nihilo means to establish what was not before, or in other terms, bringing into being from nothing, as expressed by the poles of the theologians and evident in the usage of the narrations of the imams. This meaning is not specific to the first emanation because it is also true of the soul, prime matter and form, in fact of many of the actual realities, and many that are used in the custom of the imams in the sense of bringing into being without cause or from nothing. This sense is only true of the first emanation because one cannot ask of it “how” it came to be, that is, how did its agent bring it into being. Because “how” asks about the cause of something and the cause is what is in answer to “how” must be predicted of the efficient cause that it has insofar as it is a causer prior to it explained by “because.” So it must be predicable and the Creator—glorified is He—has nothing prior to it nor is it complex such that its essence is composed of causes each of which may be in response to the question “how.” Just as he—glorified is He—said: “He is not asked about what he does but they will be asked” [Q. al-Anbiyaʾ 21:23].

As for what is not the first emanation, it can be asked of it “how” even about the agency of the first emanation, just as the intellect becomes a cause for the soul. It must therefore be emanations of luminous illuminations from the first Principle such that one can speak of these illuminations. It brings the soul into being but in some of the cause “how” and the “what” are one such as the higher causes in the world of generation and corruption, but in other causes they are differentiated. So understand.

Then the imam said: “different qualities and different limits.” What is meant by qualities are different orientations in the first emanation, and by limits his sustaining causes. When one distinguishes the bringing into being from other substances generally in the sense of origination just as he clarified through his allusion to the perfection of its differentiation from it and being determined of it in three apophatic ways:

The first of these is what one grasps from the imam’s saying: “It does not subsist in anything” which is not true of accident or form, as these two subsist in a substrate and in matter.13 So it is not the case for these two that they can be the first emanation because their existence is posterior to the existence of these receptacles.

The second of these is what is alluded in the imam’s saying: “there is nothing that limits it” as opposed to prime matter and body as these two are limited by form so it is necessary for the being of each of the two to emanate from the First—glorified is He—without any mediation. As for body, it is apparent that it is posterior to its parts and prime matter can only exist with form that is identical to it as it is not a cause for form nor is form a cause for it. This entails the emanation of multiplicity from the One as is the case with agents but they [matter and body] are not agents.

The third of these is what is expressed by the imam’s saying: “Nor is he restricted by anything” in opposition to the soul as the divine lights imitate what is in the intellect and have a similitude to it and hence restrict it. But that is not the case with the first emanation because its similitude is posterior to what it is similar to. The same is true of matter that requires it to be prior to it or together within it at the level of perpetuity (dahr).

Then the imam explained in general terms the emanation of multiplicity from that emanation by saying: “then he made creation after it a pure thing” alluding to immaterial intellects and souls and “what is not pure” referring to matter and material things.14

TAHIR QUMMI’S VIEWS

I. The Wisdom of the Gnostics (Hikmat al-ʿarifin) is an important critique of the philosophy of Mulla Sadra and is, in fact, the first work to cite him critically. One can discern in Qummi’s corpus a suspicion of philosophy as such because it arose from Greek origins and not from the imams. But in this work in particular he rallies against philosophy influenced by the monism of the school of Ibn ʿArabi, which is exemplified in the work of Mulla Sadra. Three passages from this text are presented here. The first is a short one taken from the introduction excoriating philosophy, by arguing that philosophy takes people away from the imams. True wisdom lies in adhering to scriptural knowledge and includes both theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom and ethics rooted in these sources.

Translation

When the Seal of the prophets (khatam al-anbiyaʾ) passed from this transient abode, the community went astray and forsook the practice of the prophet. They followed their whims and became divided into many sects, but the only one of them that is successful is the one that adheres to the people of the mantle….

The Imami Shiʿa, the successful sect, used to follow the teachings of their imams from the pure progeny and would make sense of their works for their principles and subsidiary matters until the occultation of the Mahdi…. After that some became like sheep in search of a shepherd. After the passage of time, they differed and branched out and some became Muʿtazila and some became traditionalists.15 Just as others before them became confounded, so did many of the Shiʿa and some became Muʿtazila and some followed the doctrine of the philosophers. If it is said: how can one allow the condemnation and excoriation of philosophy when philosophy is hikma and the sages are philosophers. God praised wisdom in his scripture when he said: “and one who has been given wisdom has been given great good” (Q. al-Baqara 2:269)….¹⁶ However, we say that wisdom mentioned in these verses is not in the sense of philosophy as assumed by those confounded; rather, wisdom in these verses is glossed as obedience to God and recognition of the imam of the time….¹⁷

Wisdom is the recognition of the imam and the wise one is one who recognizes the true imam and who acquires from him knowledge of the religion. There is no doubt that the pure imams from the progeny—the true imams and the sources of wisdom—learned wisdom from the prophet, including both the principles and subsidiary matters of the faith and knowledge of vices and virtues, and methods of spiritual practices, and not issues of philosophy that are contrary to the scripture and to the prophetic practice.

II. The second is a specific critique of the doctrine of existence in Mulla Sadra, located in the conclusion, which is a refutation of the invalidity of the doctrine of the unity of being, or monism. In particular, Qummi reads Mulla Sadra as arguing for a form of pantheism in which there is a substantial unity proposed for all that exists.

Translation

Know that it is apparent from what we have explained about the nature of existence and essence that the doctrine of the so-called Sufis known as the wujudiya is false when they claim that the Creator—exalted is He—is the none other than pure Being insofar as it is unconditioned (la shart) and undetermined (la taʿayyun).¹⁸ He is neither substance not accident, because substances have essence apart from their existence, as does accident. He does not need to be distinguished from nonexistence by any determination because there is no commonality between the two states nor is he determined and distinguished from the world of spirits and bodies. He is the totality of the cosmos and his relationship to the parts of the cosmos is like that of the natural universal to its individuals.¹⁹ There is no doubt that this claim is sheer unbelief (kufr) and clear associationism (shirk).

It is established through rational and scriptural proofs that the essence of the Creator is a thing in the true sense of being a thing, but not like other things, distinguished from all of creation; He does not resemble anything. We have previously explained that being is not a thing in extra-mental reality and it is not the same as the existent thing; rather it is a secondary intelligible and an abstract concept.20 Hence it would not be the case that he is a creative cause or creator of forms or volitional agent. A natural universal (kulli tabiʿi), self-evidently, has not existence in extra-mental reality, and as is well known it has no chain of effects in extra-mental reality because effects pertain to individuals and an individual cannot be an effect of a universal essence.²¹ And of course it is necessarily the case that a thing cannot be its own cause. Besides, the claim that the relationship of God to the cosmos is like that of the natural universal to its individuals belies the saying of God: “there is nothing that is a like unto Him” (Q. al-Shura 42:11)…. One cannot have recourse to mystical unveiling (kashf) in this matter because it is like the claim that it is unveiled that there is no creator or that God is the third of three.²²

III. Qummi argues that one must affirm that God exists and is real because the religion requires that, but ascribing the abstract notion of existence to Him is another matter. He continues his critique citing Mulla Sadra from the Four Journeys and from his Divine Witnessings (al-Shawahid al-rububiya).

Translation

As for his saying, “He exists through existence which is identical to him,” if it means that God is identical to the self-evident notion of existence then there are many arguments to refute that as we have already indicated. If he means that the essence of the Creator is in reality not identical to the self-evident notion of existence but rather is identical to it in a figurative sense such that his existence does not rest upon a cause and that the Creator in this consideration exists in reality through existence that is particular to Him just as the remainder of existents exist through existences that are particular to them, then that does not entail (belief in) the unity of existence (wahdat al-wujud). Mulla Sadra says in his Divine Witnessings, having adopted the method of Ibn ʿArabi, his ilk, and his followers: “It is not permissible to uphold the view adopted by one of the illustrious scholars, which he called ‘the taste of the theosists’ (dhawq al-mutaʾallihin), such that the being of the existentiality of things and their essences with respect to existence is the meaning of unicity (tawhid) at its root, but this is not what is tasted by the theosists because its foundation is that the first emanation from the Agent is essence and not existence and that essence exists without existence, which he claims is a “being of reason” and one of the secondary intelligibles.²³ But you know the invalidity of this. If this were the nature of the unity of being as they claim, then the specific existence of each contingent would be a purely abstract matter, which was unreal, and what is actual in extra-mental reality is only essence. Thus it would then be essences, which are united in extra-mental reality.”

Here Mulla Sadra is criticizing the view of Jalal al-Din Davani (d. 1502) who held that existence is purely an abstract concept when applied to contingents; only God truly exists. However, as suggested because he held that existents were merely essences then the unity of those entities in extra-mental reality would constitute a doctrine of the unity of essence and not of existence.

So you have come to know the invalidity of this sense of unity of being and also the one adopted by this scholar (Mulla Sadra), and we shall continue with further proofs that demonstrate the invalidity of the position.

NOTES

1. Mulla Sadra Shirazi, al-Hikma al-mutaʿaliya fi-l-asfar al-ʿaqliya al-arbaʿa, ed. Ghulam-Rida Aʿwani (Tehran: Sadra Islamic Research Institute, 2004), 1:23–26. This is the key theme of theosis, the Platonic end of philosophy being godlikeness.

2. Mulla Sadra juxtaposes the Aristotelian division of philosophy into theoretical and practical arts with the homologies between two aspects of the human (the body and the soul) and two worlds (the higher intelligible and the lower sensible).

3. This phrase is the second part of Q. 26:83 and the remainder of Abraham’s prayer.

4. This is a good example of the way in which Mulla Sadra juxtaposes exegesis and philosophy in the Four Journeys.

5. For Mulla Sadra, true wisdom cannot be attained through the independent action of the philosopher. It requires divine grace and for God to bestow understanding and discernment in the heart of the seeker.

6. Qadi Saʿid Qummi, Sharh al-arbaʿin, ed. Najafquli Habibi (Tehran: Mirath-i maktub, 2000), 277–87.

7. There are various narrations from the first Shiʿi Imam ʿAli on this theme. One famous example is the first sermon in the collection collated by al-Sharif al-Radi. Nahj al-balagha (Najaf: al-ʿAtaba al-ʿalawiya, 2015), 39.

8. This is an example of an argument from its contrary (argumentum a contrario). As the contrary is false, so too is the proposition.

9. On Pythagoras as a Muslim monotheist of the doxographies, see Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karim al-Shahrastani, al-Milal wa-l-nihal, ed. Ahmad Fahmi Muhammad (Beirut: Dar al-kutub al-ʿilmiya, 1992), 2:385–98 (the view quoted by Qummi is on page 386); Qummi’s contemporary Qutb al-Din Ashkiwari, Mahbub al-qulub I, ed. Ibrahim Dibaji and Hamid Sidqi (Tehran: Mirath-i maktub, 1999), 208–32; Matthieu Terrier, trans., Histoire de la sagesse et philosophie shiʿite: “L’aimé de coeurs” de Qutb al-Din Askevari (Paris: Cerf, 2016), 373–420.

10. This passage draws on the threefold levels of temporality that one finds in Avicenna. The level of eternity (sarmad) that is unique to God, the level of perpetuity (dahr) in which the immutable divine and the other eternals interact such as the intellects, and the level of time (zaman) that is the sublunary cosmos, the world of generation and corruption. This exists within a cosmology of the emanation of existence from the One to the Intellect to the Soul and then to a series of intellects, souls, and spheres.

11. Qadi Saʿid Qummi, like his teacher Rajab ʿAli Tabrizi, denied the doctrine of the modulation of being (tashkik al-wujud) associated with Mulla Sadra. He held that being was merely a term shared between God and other things said to exist but that no commonality in meaning is intended by the term.

12. For this and similar material on the Arabic Empedocles, see al-Shahrastani, al-Milal wa-l-nihal, vol. 2, 379–85 (the view quoted by Qummi is on page 380); Qummi’s contemporary Qutb al-Din Ashkiwari, Mahbub al-qulub 1:205–8, in Terrier, Histoire de la sagesse et philosophie shiʿite, 363–73. For a discussion of this figure, see Daniel de Smet, Empedocles Arabus: une lecture néoplatonicienne tardive (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, 1998).

13. This draws upon the Aristotelian position of hylemorphism and category theory. Things in this world are composites of form (sura) and matter (madda) in which forms are active principles and matter passive, but the former requires the latter to exist. Similarly, accidental qualities such as place, quality, and quantity can only exist in a subject or substrate (mawduʿ).

14. Intellects and souls are pure entities because they are free of material composition and generation and corruption. Matter, in a Neoplatonic conception, is a “contaminating” entity because it renders the thing susceptible to generation and corruption.

15. It is a common accusation used by those opposed to philosophy to argue that it represents going astray in the period of confusion after the advent of the occultation of the Twelfth Imam.

16. Qummi here cites exactly those verses mentioned by Mulla Sadra as constituting allusions to philosophy.

17. Various Shiʿi exegeses link wisdom in the Qurʾan with the recognition of the imam—see the exegesis attributed to ʿAli b. Ibrahim al-Qummi, Tafsir, eds. Sayyid Muhammad Abtahi et al. (1434; Qum: Muʾassasat al-Imam al-Mahdi, 2013), 1:138. Similarly, Mulla Sadra’s student Muhsin Fayd Kashani (d. 1680), an erstwhile rival of Qummi, mentions so in his Tafsir al-Safi, ed. Husayn al-Aʿlami (Tehran: Maktabat al-Sadr, 1994), 1:298–99, where he also identifies the imams as the sages (hukamaʾ).

18. The interesting feature of the text is that Qummi spends most of the time critiquing the views of philosophers and presenting what is the correct doctrine on the nature of metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, all of which contain an implicit refutation of monism. Thus the conclusion moves to a more explicit refutation focusing on Mulla Sadra and Ibn ʿArabi, the latter of whom he characterizes with unbelief (kufr).

19. This form of pantheism is not the doctrine of Mulla Sadra.

20. Like Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and others, Qummi seems to hold that existence is not a real predicate and is merely an abstract “being of reason.” For some of the philosophers before Mulla Sadra, only God is existence. For Mulla Sadra, being is predicated in a modulated manner of God and all others.

21. A natural universal is an essence predicated of individuals that exists in extra-mental reality and in nature.

22. An important feature of Qummi’s critique of Sufism is the attack on kashf as a method of verification; the point here is simple—one cannot establish falsehoods through kashf.

23. Davani associated his view with what is acquired through theosis, and hence he is arguing that it is a true doctrine that has been disclosed to him.