An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 5

From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century

S. H. Nasr, Mehdi Aminrazavi, S. H. Nasr, Mehdi Aminrazavi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781848857506
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857738127
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Persia is home to one of the few civilizations in the world that has had a continuous tradition of philosophical thought lasting more than two and a half millennia. From the time Zoroaster brought the Gathas, the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism, until today, it has had a philosophical tradition comprising diverse schools and various languages including Avestan and Pahlavi as well as Arabic and Persian. The West has seen surveys of Persian art and anthologies of Persian literature, but this work is the first to present a millennial tradition of philosophy in Persia in the form of translated selections and introductory sections for each period and figure. Existing translations have been used where possible but most of the selections have been newly translated for this work which, with the help of the explanatory introductions, makes possible an intellectual journey into a philosophical continent much of which has been uncharted for Westerners until now. The fifth and final volume of An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia deals with some seven centuries of Islamic thought stretching from the era following the Mongol invasion to the end of the Qajar period.
Organized around the cities which became the main centres of philosophical activity during this long period, the volume is divided into three parts: 'The School of Shiraz', whose importance not only for Persia but also for Ottoman Turkey and Muslim India is only now being recognized; 'The School of Isfahan', which marks the integration of some eight centuries of Islamic thought and culminates with Mulla Sadra; and finally 'The School of Tehran', where traditional philosophy first encountered modern thought in Persia, bringing this series into present times.

I

The School of Shiraz

Introduction

Scholarship of the past few decades has made clear the centrality of Shiraz and its environs in the philosophical life of Persia between the eighth/fourteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries and has been witness to the establishment of the usage of the term the School of Shiraz. As Khurasan waned as the centre of Islamic philosophy in the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries, Azarbaijan became the centre of philosophical activity for over a century and was where such major figures as Suhrawardī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī were either born, or carried out their philosophical activities. But during the aftermath of the Mongol invasion social and political conditions became such that the province of Fars with its capital Shiraz became the main centre of intellectual and also artistic activity in Persia. The Atābakān dynasty in Fars preserved Fars to a large extent from the Mongol onslaught and the Āl-i Jalāyir, Āl-i Muẓaffar and Āl-i Quyünlü continued to make this province a relatively safe and peaceful place for the flourishing of the arts and sciences, for the religious sciences and for Sufism and philosophy. Scholars and students came to Shiraz from near and far to teach and to learn. By the time of Tamerlane Shiraz was recognized throughout the eastern lands of Islam as the premier centre of learning and the arts and the Tīmūrids who succeeded Tamerlane continued to support the intellectual and artistic activities of that city.

It was during the period associated with the School of Shiraz that perhaps the greatest poets of the Persian language, Saʿdī and Ḥāfiẓ, appeared on the scene in that city. Saʿdī wrote many poems on the intellectual life of his native city while Ḥāfiẓ, who was not only born but also lived his whole life in Shiraz, hardly travelling anywhere else, in contrast to his compatriot Saʿdī who was a world traveller, celebrated in immortal verses the spiritual and intellectual ambience of his beloved city of birth. In one of his most famous verses he writes,

Joyous is Shiraz and its peerless state,

O God preserve it from destruction.

Come to Shiraz and the emanation of the Holy Spirit,

Seek from its people, possessors of perfection.

Through these two poets alone the fame of Shiraz spread during the very lifetime of the School of Shiraz not only throughout the Persian-speaking world, but also throughout India and the Ottoman world from Bengal to Europe.

During the centuries marking the life of the School of Shiraz as the centre of philosophical activity in Persia, Shiraz was also a remarkable focus of cultural activity not only in the field of Persian literature, but also in art. It was during this period that the Shiraz School of miniature painting developed, reaching its peak during the Tīmūrid period when, along with the Schools of Herat and Tabriz, it produced some of the greatest masterpieces of the Persian art of miniature painting. Nor was artistic activity in Shiraz limited to painting. Important architectural creations saw the light of day and gardens of remarkable beauty were created, gardens that became world famous. The profound influence of the intellectual and cultural activities of Shiraz on Muslim India and the Ottoman world can be seen not only in the fields of philosophy and the sciences, but also in the arts from painting to landscaping. When we think of the School of Shiraz, we must remain aware of the vibrant cultural and artistic ambience in which philosophical activity proper took place.

With this truth in mind let us now turn to the religious and theological situation of Shiraz during the period under consideration here. At the beginning of this period Shiraz, like the rest of Persia, was predominantly Sunni but while Ismailism had declined with the destruction of Alamūt and other Ismaili centres by Mongols, Twelver Shiʿism was on the rise especially after Uljāytü embraced this form of Islam and took the name Sultan Muḥammad Khudābandah. Between the eighth/fourteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries there were still many Sunni religious scholars in Shiraz but Shīʿī ones began also to appear. As far as Ashʿarite theology is concerned, Shiraz became in fact the main centre for its cultivation and many of the major works of kalām, as already discussed in Volume Three of this Anthology, were associated with Shiraz—works of such figures as Taftāzānī, Ījī, Jurjānī and Dawānī that are still part of the curriculum for the teaching of kalām in centres of Sunni learning such as al-Azhar university in Cairo and the Qarawiyyīn in Fez. Shiraz was also the site during this period for the composition of major Qurʾānic commentaries that are studied widely to this day by Sunni and Shiʿa alike, such as Anwār al-tanzīl wa asrār al-taʾwīl (Lights of Revelation and Secrets of Hermeneutic Commentary) by Qāḍī Bayḍāwī upon which many commentaries were written by such men as Dawānī, Qāḍī Nūr Allāh Shūshtarī and Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿĀmilī. Shiraz was also a major centre for the teaching of Islamic jurisprudence at this time. The founder of the Akhbārī School in Shiʿism, Muḥammad Amīn Astarābādī, in fact studied in Shiraz.

As for Sufism, Shiraz and its environs had been centres of Sufism before the seventh/thirteenth century producing such major figures as Ḥallāj, Ibn Khafīf, Abū Isḥāq Kāzirūnī and Rūzbahān Baqlī. In fact, from the seventh/thirteenth century onward Shiraz gained the title of Burj al-awliyāʾ, the ʿTower of Saints’. The first famous philosopher of Shiraz, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, who might be considered as the prelude to the School of Shiraz, although his philosophical activities were carried out elsewhere, received his initiation into Sufism at a young age in that city. This tradition continued in strength during the later centuries associated with the School of Shiraz. During this period there appeared such Sufi figures as Awḥad al-Dīn Kāzirūnī, Shāh Dāʿī Shīrāzī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Lāhījī, Khwājah Muḥammad Dihdār and Bābā Rukn al-Dīn Bayḍāwī Shīrāzī, some of whom were born in Fars while others studied and taught there. Moreover, some of these well-known figures were also masters of doctrinal Sufism associated with the School of Ibn ʿArabī, as amply demonstrated by the famous commentary of Bāhā Rukn al-Dīn on the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) of Ibn ʿArabī and the commentary of Lāhījī on the Gulshan-i rāz (The Secret Garden of Divine Mystery) of Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabistarī, which is one of the masterpieces of doctrinal Sufism and gnosis in Persian.

It was in this very rich and diverse intellectual, religious and artistic ambience that the philosophical School of Shiraz had its genesis and flourished. Let us then turn to some of the general characteristics of this school in which there was the presence of all the major schools of earlier Islamic thought from both Sunni and Shīʿī kalām to Peripatetic (mashshāʾī) and Illuminationist (ishrāqī) philosophy to ʿirfān or gnosis to the various Islamic mathematical, medical and natural sciences. It is interesting to note that while later philosophers of the Schools of Isfahan and Tehran were not notable scientists, even if they knew something of Islamic mathematical, natural and medical sciences, some of the philosophers of the School of Shiraz were notable scientists and followed the tradition of earlier Muslim philosopher-scientists such as al-Kindī, Ibn Sīnā, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī who were both major philosophers and notable scientists.

The history of science of the period associated with the School of Shiraz has yet to be written and there is still much to discover and unearth in this field. Yet, even with the incomplete knowledge that we now have, we can observe the significant contributions to science and medicine in the works of a number of philosophers of this school. For example, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr Dashtakī was also a notable scientist. Shams al-Dīn Khafrī’s commentary upon the Tadhkirah (Treasury of Astronomy) of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī is a major scientific work that is of great importance in the history of later post-Ptolemaic astronomy. Furthermore, Fatḥ Allāh Shīrāzī, who migrated from Shiraz to India, was not only a philosopher but also a significant scientist and engineer. During this period not only Shiraz but also such other cities and towns of Fars as Bayḍāʾ, Īj, Karbāl, Lār, Fasā, Dawān and Khafr were centres where both philosophy and the sciences were taught and studied.

This scientific dimension of the School of Shiraz is not unrelated to the concern of so many philosophers of this school with logic. For example, there seems to have been special interest at this time in certain logical paradoxes such as ‘the liar’s paradox’. Several treatises were written during this period on this difficult subject and it might be said that these philosophers created a new chapter in the history of Islamic logic and did not simply repeat the formal logic formulated on the basis of Aristotelian logic by such earlier figures as Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, whose works were of course well known to the philosophers of the School of Shiraz.

Until quite recently little attention had been paid by not only Western but also Persian sch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Reprinted Works
• Note on Transliteration
• List of Contributors
• General Introduction
• Prolegomenon
• Part I. The School of Shiraz
• Part II. The School of Isfahan
• Part III. The Qajar Period and The School of Tehran
• Select Bibliography