The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, Shahrazuri and Beyond 9781474415866

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The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy

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EDINBURGH STUDIES IN ISLAMIC APOCALYPTICISM AND ESCHATOLOGY This series features studies devoted to end-time expectations in Islam and the intellectual, social and political contexts in which they occur and become virulent, from the beginning of Islam until the twenty-first century. Concerning the apocalyptic aspect, the series is dedicated to investigating apocalypticism in Muslim thought and history: notions of the catalytic events ushering in the end of history, mahdism and other forms of (political and non-political) millenarianism. Eschatologically, studies in this series will examine traditions of imagining and reasoning about the hereafter: judgment, salvation, and reward and punishment in paradise and hell. Series Editors Professor David Cook (Rice University) and Professor Christian Lange (Utrecht University)

Editorial Advisory Board Professor Abbas Amanat, Professor Fred Donner, Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu, Professor Yohanan Friedman, Professor Mercedes García-Arenal, Professor Mohammed Khalil, Professor Daniel De Smet and Professor Roberto Tottoli Titles in the series “The Book of Tribulations: The Syrian Musli Apocalyptic Tradition”, An Annotated Translation by Nuʾaym b. Hammad al-Marwazi Edited and translated by David Cook

Eschatology in Classical Islamic Mysticism: From the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries Michael Ebstein

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Beyond L. W. C. van Lit An Apocalyptic History of the Early Fatimid Empire Jamel A. Velji

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The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy Ibn Sīnā, Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Beyond

L. W. C. van Lit

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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © L. W. C. van Lit, 2017

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 1585 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 1586 6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 1587 3 (epub)

The right of L. W. C. van Lit to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii Acknowledgmentsviii

1 Introduction Questions and Answers of this Book Outline of the Book The Study of Suhrawardī and the World of Image Methodology

2 From Ibn Sīnā to Suhrawardī: The Contested Idea of Using Imagination after Death Ibn Sīnā on the Role of Imagination in Eschatology The Rejection by Islamic Thinkers after Ibn Sīnā Suhrawardī’s Reception and Initial Development 3 Suhrawardī’s Recognition of an Additional Realm From Celestial Bodies to Suspended Images From Mere Fantasies to Real Things From Bodily Perception to Spiritual Experience Sources and Issues Left Undone

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1 2 3 4 9

20 22 28 37 48 48 55 65 73

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4 Shahrazūrī on Suhrawardī’s Suspended Images Introduction to Shahrazūrī’s Life and Works Shahrazūrī’s Establishment of the World of Image The Main Features of Shahrazūrī’s Interpretation

5 Suhrawardī’s Lukewarm Commentators A Hesitant First Reception The Cautious Commentators from Shiraz An Alternative from Mullā Ṣadrā

6 The Reception of Shahrazūrī’s World of Image up until the Present Day Twelfth–Thirteenth Century: The Acceptance by  Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī Fourteenth Century: Taftāzānī as an Important  Transmitter Fifteenth–Sixteenth Century: Commentators at Work Seventeenth Century: Safavid Intellectuals take Notice Eighteenth Century: The Digestion in Shīʿī Traditional  Thought Nineteenth Century: The Balkans-to-Bengal Complex at  Work Twentieth–Twenty-first Century: Continuing Interest Conspicuous Absence of Ibn ʿArabī and his Commentators

79 79 87 97

113 114 124 135

142

144 148 150 152 161 162 169 173

7 Conclusion

176

Notes Bibliography Appendix A: Edited Passages Appendix B: List of Persons Mentioned in this Study Index

189 237 256 267 273

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Figures and Tables

Figures 1.1 The relationship of the newly defined sets 6.1 The transmission of the idea of a world of image

Tables

16 174

2.1 Comparison between Ibn Sīnā and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī 3.1 Suhrawardī’s two versions of the same idea  4.1 Chronological analysis of Shahrazūrī’s works 5.1 Related triades in Mullā Ṣadrā’s eschatology 6.1 Changes made to the passage by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī 6.2 Changes made to the passage by Taftāzānī 6.3 Analysis of the reception of the passage by Nayrīzī  6.4 Changes made to the passage by Shaykh Bahāʾī 6.5 Analysis of the modern reception of the passage

34 49 84 141 145 149 154 156 167

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Acknowledgments

T

his book came about in two phases. The first phase was my time as a doctoral candidate in the Here and Hereafter in Islamic Traditions project, funded by the European Research Council (Starting Grant No. 263308). This project was hosted at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, under the caring supervision of Christian Lange. The second phase was my time at Yale University, as a postdoctoral associate. I was hosted by the Department of Religious Studies and the MacMillan Center, under the excellent supervision of Frank Griffel. Over the years, countless individuals and institutions have helped me. They are too many to mention, but I trust that they know that I am very grateful for it. I hope to one day pay it forward.

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Dedicated to the Monks of the Carthusian Order. They are planted in the house of the Lord, They flourish in the courts of our God. That they might be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

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1 Introduction

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hoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images.”1 This book can be considered one big gloss on just this sentence from Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. With it, Suhrawardī broke with the standard tripartite division of the cosmos into the realms of intellects, souls, and bodies, and added a realm of “suspended images,” that is, images that are “not in a place nor in a locus.”2 What suspended images exactly are, and why they matter, is at the center of attention of this book. It provided Suhrawardī with an elegant solution for problems in eschatology, in particular the controversy over bodily resurrection. Medieval Islamic philosophers argued that only the soul survives death, or, rather, only the rational part that is receptive to intelligibles. This idea was in flagrant contradiction with sacred, traditional sources, such as the Koran and the Hadith, which promised many kinds of bodily agony and delight for the deceased. A middle-of-the-road solution, suggesting that immaterial souls could imagine material, eschatological scenes, was first proposed by Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037). Suhrawardī took that idea and gave a unique twist to it, thereby introducing “suspended images.” In turn, his most faithful disciple, Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288), developed these ideas further into the “world of image” (ʿālam al-mithāl). From Shahrazūrī the idea was

“

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handed down over the centuries, finding popularity mostly in Shīʿī Iran, all the way up to the present day. In the pages that follow I recount the unlikely history of how a highly contested idea was born out of a heated discussion, came to be a sophisticated system of thought, and eventually conquered a place in mainstream, traditional texts. Questions and Answers of this Book

Two factors have stood in the way of a full understanding of Suhrawardī’s notion of suspended images and its impact in later centuries. First, understanding anything from the history of philosophy from the post-Avicennan period is contingent upon the disclosure of the source material. A fine example is our understanding of Suhrawardī and his reception. Whereas around 1900, scholars were only aware of two works of Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and Hayākil al-nūr, reading them from manuscripts and lithographs, we currently have at our disposal editions of most of Suhrawardī’s texts (at least, those relevant to eschatology) and a fair number of the commentaries that came to be written over the centuries after Suhrawardī. Second, in our understanding of Suhrawardī and his notion of suspended images, we have been mainly informed by Corbin, who, as I discuss in the next section, did not aim to give a historically correct rendering of it, but rather used it for his own philosophical project to provide a foundation for his esotericism. It is therefore likely that our understanding of Suhrawardī’s contributions to eschatology, and its further development among the commentators, is incorrect or incomplete. To give only two simple yet compelling examples, why does Corbin (and others after him) continuously speak of ʿālam al-mithāl when discussing Suhrawardī, when Suhrawardī never uses this term in any of his writings? And why does Corbin (and others after him) speak of a “school of thought,” referring to the commentators as faithful adherents of Suhrawardī, without getting into details about what the commentators exactly say? With many of the texts now edited, a number of them translated, and with more than a handful of scholarly studies, we are now much better equipped to embark on a detailed study on the notion of

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introduction | 3

s­ uspended images and the world of image. This is what I set out to do in this book. Next to finding out what these notions stand for, I will specifically pay attention to the question of who exactly made contributions toward developing it. That means that, apart from gaining a better understanding of the notion of ʿālam al-mithāl, we shall also get to know more about its genesis and later development and reception. As the use of this term is rather widespread in the early modern period, a full treatment of all its occurrences is not tenable in one study. In this book, I give priority to Suhrawardī and his commentators. Outline of the Book

In the remainder of this chapter I shall attend to the secondary literature and explain the methodology adopted in this study. In the case of Suhrawardī, the secondary literature is an important topic. In the twentieth century, Henry Corbin single-handedly raised our ability to study Suhrawardī, and our knowledge of him, to a whole new level. But we need to be aware of the deeply personal approach he employed to his studies in order to make best use of his scholarly output. I further show that Corbin’s work, especially with regard to Suhrawardī’s eschatology and the world of image, should also be understood as a continuation of previous scholarship. In the methodology section, I explain how I employ new ways of obtaining results, ways that are meant to prepare us for the future when we will be able to use more and more sources in full-text, digital form. I provide a set of notions with precise definitions, of which a “restricted commentary tradition” is among the most useful newly minted notions. In Chapter 2, we start with this investigation of the world of image by discussing how Ibn Sīnā and Suhrawardī expanded on the standard soteriology of a twofold division and how they allowed for a postmortem fate for middle categories different from true, intelligible felicity and different from eternal misery. We shall see how Ibn Sīnā came to develop his idea of using the imagination after death, how virtually all Muslim thinkers denied it, and, finally, how Suhrawardī was the only one who received it favorably.

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4 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

In Chapter 3, we then look at how Suhrawardī developed this idea and made it into something entirely different, namely, his theory of suspended images. We will get to know what suspended images are, what their place is in the ontological division of the cosmos, what their function is in epistemology, and how they can play an especially important role in sleep, meditation, and after death. In Chapter 4, Shahrazūrī will surface as the ultimate architect of the notion of a world of image. After presenting the key passages in his corpus that cover the world of image, I shall analyze their contents to show what Shahrazūrī had in mind, and how he is different from Suhrawardī. In Chapter 5, we look at the wider commentary tradition to show that not all commentators busied themselves with the idea, indeed, that many of them did not even supported it. Nonetheless, we shall encounter fresh arguments for and against suspended images and the world of image, testifying to the long legacy this discourse had. Lastly, in Chapter 6, the transmission of this idea is examined in its most minute details, tracing one crucial passage from the twelfth to the twenty-first century. This chapter is where the new methodology is most obviously at play, uncovering sometimes surprising lines of influence, such as the key role that Taftāzānī (d. 1390) played in the transmission of this idea.

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The Study of Suhrawardī and the World of Image

The study of Suhrawardī and his heritage is dominated by the work of Henry Corbin (1903–78), who devoted much of his scholarly career to editing, translating, and analyzing Suhrawardī’s corpus. Scholarship on Suhrawardī and his commentators has been influenced by Corbin to such a degree that it makes sense to provide the scholarly context of this book by using him as our focal point. Earlier Scholars’ Influence on Corbin

The earliest scholars on Suhrawardī were not concerned with the world of image or suspended images, but did construct a certain narrative around Suhrawardī on which later scholars built. Von Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

introduction | 5

Kremer paints a picture of a highly eclectic Sufi, who mixes elements of Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, and the “persisch-shyitischen Dogmas” of the infallible imam, to form a “Theosophie” (his rendering of the term al-ḥikma al-ilāhiyya), at a time when formalistic orthodoxy prevailed after devastating critique on philosophy such as that of Ghazālī (d. 1111).3 An influential point Carra de Vaux makes is to read the word “Eastern” (al-mashriqiyya) in the title of both Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ḥikma ­al-mashriqiyya and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s (d. 1209) al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya as “Illuminative” (al-mushriqiyya).4 He probably did this on the basis of Mehren’s work, who had earlier argued for a mystical part in Ibn Sīnā’s corpus.5 It was Louis Massignon who gave a decisive impulse to the study of Suhrawardī in two ways. First, he gave his young student Henry Corbin a lithograph of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and helped him with early publications.6 Second, whereas before only a few of Suhrawardī’s works were known, Massignon now mentions many more and puts them together chronologically into three periods: (1) works of his youth; (2) peripatetic works; and (3) Avicennian– Platonic works.7 These aspects of this earlier scholarship are important to note since they place Suhrawardī in a specific light. This is brought out well when we compare two other early scholars who worked on Suhrawardī, Spies and Van den Bergh. Spies repeats Massignon’s three periods to the letter,8 and since Suhrawardī himself claims that inspiration takes primacy over reason, it seems to him reasonable to classify him as a Sufi first, and as a philosopher second. This approach almost completely disregards the philosophical aspect of Suhrawardī’s writings. Spies concludes that “he built a system of his own which is unique and original.”9 Van den Bergh, who looks exactly at this philosophical aspect, writes that “This philosophy lacks in general any originality. In ‘The Temples of Light’ there is barely one thought, almost not even one expression, which is not derived from Greek philosophy.”10 The difference in evaluation lies, I would argue, in the angle from which a scholar approaches Suhrawardī. This small comparison does not necessarily show that one angle is redundant or wrong, but merely that we ought

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to be careful to attach too much value to a certain approach. Since Corbin clearly follows the direction of von Kremer, Carra de Vaux, and Massignon, we should likewise be careful in evaluating his studies. Henry Corbin: “Suhrawardian of the first hour”11

Corbin attached great value to the connection between oriental and illuminative, a connection first suggested by Carra de Vaux. Corbin tenaciously attacked Nallino’s criticism on it,12 and translated the title of Suhrawardī’s magnum opus Ḥikmat al-ishrāq not as “Philosophy of Illumination,” but as “Oriental Theosophy” (La théosophie orientale13). He insisted on “Oriental” because he promoted a distinction between Ishrāqī (“‘Illuminative”) and Mashshāʾī (“Peripatetic”), Oriental and Occidental, Plato and Aristotle. Suhrawardī had revived a kind of philosophy connected with “the spiritual vision of Ancient Persia,”14 and also with ancient thinkers such as Plato, Hermes, and Pythagoras. According to Corbin, this different kind of philosophy formed a proper school of thought, which constitutes the majority of philosophical activity of late medieval Islam. He defended the use of “theosophy” on the basis that this relies on the Greek Sophia, which has an association with gnosis, which, according to him, perfectly fits the context.15 One may reasonably suspect here a connection with his personal interest in esotericism. The importance of this in his life and its reverberations in his works have been studied well enough for us not to go into it here. Wasserstrom, for example, calls Corbin “the most sophisticated and learned esoterist of the century.”16 Similarly, Adams notes that “he took no satisfaction from the philological work for its own sake; he saw it as an unpleasant but unavoidable first step toward the study of the Islamic philosophy that was the center of his concern.”17 Or, in Corbin’s own words, “In always wanting to know ‘where’ things ‘come from’ one wanders about finally in vain pursuit of a succession of hypotheses.”18 This to him is a “petty game” (petit jeu).19 Instead, he takes as a starting question “to what does this lead?”20 Corbin makes much use of the idea of ʿālam al-mithāl, seeing it as a central part of Suhrawardī’s thought. His Terre céleste et corps de

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introduction | 7

résurrection has remained an influential study of this mundus imaginalis, as Corbin likes to call it. He states that “Latin terminology gives the advantage of providing us with a technical and fixed point of reference.”21 Alternatively, he uses imaginal world, the vernacular variant of the same. On coining this term, he says that “Just as the Latin word origo  has given us the derivative ‘original,’ I believe that the word imago can give us, along with imaginary, and by regular derivation, the term imaginal.”22 For Corbin, it was important not to use “imaginary,” but instead to invent a new term. Imaginary would refer to something unreal, a mere fantasy. This is something Corbin wants to combat not just because it would do no justice to the historical sources, but because he believed in the reality of it. In one article, in a span of three pages, Corbin puts the word “real” in italics seven times.23 In the same article, he shares his concern that he “was absolutely obliged to find another term” twice.24 In fact, he even tells us explicitly that this is not only out of concern for a faithful representation of the historical sources, but that he felt obliged out of vocation.25 Similarly, he makes up the term “Active Imagination,” mirroring the notion of the “Active Intellect,” to give the impression that imagination is a source of knowledge just as reliable as intellectual apprehension.26 To adopt Corbin’s vocabulary means to take over the conceptual baggage he attached to it, which I am not willing to do. For example, I will translate Ḥikmat al-ishrāq simply as “Philosophy of Illumination,” and ʿālam al-mithāl as “world of image” or “imaginable world,” mirroring “world of sense”/“sensory world” (ʿālam al-ḥiss) and “world of intellect”/“intelligible world” (ʿālam al-ʿaql).27 Moreover, whereas Corbin saw the historical-critical approach as a petty game, I believe that this book shows that such historical analysis can be of great value.

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Trends and Developments after Corbin

Nearly everyone occupied with the study of Suhrawardī after Corbin was heavily influenced by him. Generally, there are two different ways people followed him. There are those who seemed to agree with Corbin’s esoteric interpretation of Suhrawardī. Corbin had made Suhrawardī’s theory of suspended images (muthul muʿallaqa) into a Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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highly personal interpretation of it, which served his own thinking on modern spirituality and esotericism. Since not a few found exactly this thinking interesting, his interpretation of Suhrawardī, especially concerning the use and power of imagination, also gained quite some traction, even far outside the academic field of Islamic Studies. They positioned Suhrawardī as a mystic first, attributed great value to the Persian allegorical writings of him, and tried to make the terminology that Corbin had coined more acceptable by using it themselves.28 One notable case of this is the word “imaginal,” which has seen a surprising high adoption rate among scholars of Islamic Studies in general. There are also those who accept Corbin’s scholarly approach to Suhrawardī, or some of his major interpretations, and continue to work from there. One scholar who has throughout his writings shown appreciation for Corbin is Hermann Landolt. Many aspects of his approach, such as the topics to which he attaches importance and the interpretative context in which to place Suhrawardī, are similar to Corbin. However, his questioning of the Zoroastrian connection separates him from the followers of Corbin. Landolt’s main contribution is his attempt to bring to light any possible connection of Suhrawardī’s thought with Ismāʿīlī thought.29 Interestingly, most scholars who accept Corbin’s scholarly approach purport to be in disagreement with him. This is perhaps to signal that they are certainly not followers of Corbin’s esoteric outlook. The two most important scholars in this group are Hossein Ziai and John Walbridge. Both have contributed to a better understanding of Suhrawardī’s philosophy in general and to the relationship between Suhrawardī and his commentators. Ziai especially has been of tremendous importance in developing the study of Suhrawardī further, by editing and translating a number of works of Suhrawardī and his commentators. On certain fundamental issues though, they stuck very close to Corbin, such as the mythological–historical contextualization of Suhrawardī, and Corbin’s peculiar interpretation of Suhrawardī’s suspended images and the world of image. A bigger break with Corbin’s legacy happened only relatively recently, when Suhrawardī’s allusions to ancient religions and to

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introduction | 9

mysticism were left for what they are and scholars started to focus on his philosophy, in the context of the philosophical discourse of his own time, most notably in relation to Ibn Sīnā, Abū l-Barakāt Baghdādī (d. 1164?), and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī. Roxanne Marcotte is one of the earliest in this group, whose dissertation has been released piecemeal in articles. The reliance of Suhrawardī on Ibn Sīnā was no secret, but Marcotte detailed for the first time the what and how of this reliance, for their theories of the soul.30 A number of other scholars also focused on the theory of the soul and related subjects, such as epistemology.31 Yet others spent commendable efforts on editing the works of Suhrawardī’s commentators and describing the place they occupy in history.32 Surprisingly, in this upsurge of interest in Suhrawardī and his commentators, only a few have undertaken new efforts to better understand the notion of suspended images and the world of image. That is not to say that no one wrote about it, but most of the literature that has come out reiterates previous views which for the most part go back directly to Corbin’s interpretation. Sinai brings in an interesting contextualization with Ibn Sīnā,33 but more important is Arnzen’s study of Platonic Forms, in which he devotes some space to suspended images. Arnzen’s translation of the anonymous fourteenthcentury treatise on Platonic Forms and suspended images especially is a major boon for our philosophical understanding of this notion.34 My own approach falls in this last camp. Though I greatly appreciate the efforts of Henry Corbin and have made happy use of his scholarly output, I think this book demonstrates that there is much valuable insight to be gained from the petty game of historicization. To do this properly, I have developed a particular methodology which is the topic of the next section.

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Methodology

In this book I adopt a two-pronged strategy: close reading and distant reading. Close reading requires little elaboration as it is simply the strategy to read one source closely, often focusing only on certain parts of a source or even just a few sentences, rephrasing the contents Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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in modern language, and unpacking it either by making an educated guess or by bringing the passage in conversation with other parts of the same source. Its goal is to understand the text as fully as possible not only for the ideas it is proposing and the arguments it is making, but also the argumentation strategies that underlie it and the motivations to include or exclude certain terms, arguments, and topics. This approach is dominant in Islamic Studies, perhaps because, as Asad Ahmed points out, it is believed that highly focused studies on only one person or one book are “the necessary preliminary step[s] to writing the larger narratives of post-classical Islamic rationalism.”35 I think, however, that for the post-classical period this cannot be enough and needs to be supplemented with distant reading. Distant reading is, as I interpret it, a strategy that can serve multiple purposes, that utilizes patterns that connect a number of texts. The term comes from Franco Moretti. The key passage reads as follows:36 One last thing that became clear . . . was the enormous difference between the archive of the Great Unread, and the world of the canon. You enter the archive, and the usual coordinates disappear; all you can see are swarms of hybrids and oddities, for which the categories of literary taxonomy offer very little help . . . And then, to make matters worse, there is the opposite problem, too: working with large quantities, the average becomes an inevitable presence – and the average means loss of distinction, slowness, boredom . . .

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The world of the canon is something with which we are familiar: the list of authors and books that are the Great Reads, whose editions have been well established and whose characteristics are well known. If we come across a collection of texts that are not the carefully groomed and selected canon, and instead we do not know exactly what all these texts are, then we have a much harder time in recognizing something familiar. Because we do not know what to look for, we might focus on an unimportant detail and see that detail everywhere we look. It is hard to make sense of such a corpus of texts. Moretti argues that if the world of the canon is studied through close reading, the archive of the Great Unread ought to be studied through distant reading; collecting Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

introduction | 11

data in a meaningful way from a large number of texts, preferably in an automated fashion, to arrive at arguments and conclusions that would not be possible to obtain through close reading. As I see it, we have a canon for the classical period of Islamic intellectual history, but such is lacking for the post-classical period, the period approximately starting with Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) and approximately ending with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. To understand what is going on in that period, some form of distant reading is a most useful strategy. In this book, I give practical implementation to that theoretical reflection in two ways. The first is to take advantage of a defining aspect of post-classical Islamic intellectual history, namely, the vast amount of commentaries. As I outline below, a “commentary” can take on all kinds of shapes and forms, and is an excellent way of unequivocally establishing a dialogue between two authors. In the case of Suhrawardī, dozens of commentaries were written on his texts, and collecting them all provides us with a manageable yet significant set of texts. They form, by their structural nature, a discursive context unbound by geographical or historical limits. Chapter 5 in particular takes advantage of the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī, or, I should say, the “restricted commentary tradition,” to be defined below. That chapter is the result of looking into all commentaries on Suhrawardī’s texts exactly in those places where in Suhrawardī’s texts there is a mention of suspended images or the idea of using the imagination after death. Only looking in those places allows me to cover all the relevant commentaries, giving an impression of how intellectuals in the centuries after Suhrawardī received his thought. The second is to take advantage of another defining aspect of postclassical Islamic intellectual history, namely, the fact that many texts of this period are constructed by copying earlier texts, usually without acknowledgment. By paying attention to the letter of the text, I have been able to discern such acts of copying, which I have come to see as a good start to analyze the trajectory of an idea and the transmission of knowledge. I call the central term for this “intentional textual correspondence,” see below. Chapter 6 is a particularly powerful example

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of what this strategy is capable of. By finding all texts that show a certain sentence, I am able to give a sense as to how Suhrawardī’s ideas were received in the centuries after, different from how the commentary tradition illustrates that reception. In short, whereas close reading considers all texts of one author, distant reading considers all authors of one text. In the case of the commentary tradition, this one text is the base text by the author who originated the commentary tradition and all other authors contribute to it by choosing to connect or disconnect their own thought to it. In the case of the act of copying texts, the multiple authorship of the one text is even more obvious. In that case, it is especially interesting to see how such a copying process does not produce a straightforward literal copy, but is oftentimes tweaked slightly. With many tweaks, over time, the passage can change quite a lot, and the issue of authorship and originality becomes exceedingly difficult to relay. The main result of such a two-pronged distant reading approach for post-classical Islamic intellectual history, is that we are able to see how an idea moves through different intellectuals through the centuries. This gives us an indication of how this period is held together, that is, which intellectuals were in conversation with each other, and it gives us an indication of the popularity and perceived usefulness of an idea at different times, in different places. Ultimately, once this is established, the authors who use the idea in an unconventional way, or who add arguments for or against it, stick out and are easily spotted. It is those authors that can then be the subject of a close-reading strategy, to see exactly what they contributed to the history of Islamic philosophy.

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Technical Terms for a Distant Reading of Post-Classical Islamic Intellectual History

In this book, I make use of certain concepts that I shall describe here as precisely as possible.37 To approach late medieval Islamic intellectual texts under these concepts is part of my effort to focus on the letter of the text and to use the written words as a measure for continuity and change. Some of the terms introduced here, such as Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

introduction | 13

“commentary” or “gloss,” have a counterpart in the Islamic tradition (sharḥ, ḥāshiya). Dimitri Gutas has teased out the meaning of such terms, relying mostly on actors’ categories.38 I base my definitions on formal and logical grounds. A “text” is any written statement. A “treatise” is a text with a title, circulated independently, meaningfully composed, properly introduced and concluded. Corollary: an author may have written a text that turned into a treatise only by the hands of later redactors. We can speak of a pair of texts as a “hypotext” and “hypertext” if there exists some relation between the two texts, where the hypotext is historically prior to the hypertext. An “intermediary text” is both a hypotext and a hypertext. The hypotext of an intermediary text and a hypertext of an intermediary text also form a pair of texts as hypotext and hypertext. “Intentional textual correspondence” is a relationship between two texts on the level of words and sentences. It means that a hypertext utilizes in at least one place either a technical term or an argument (a logical connection between words) from a hypotext. Further, it must be most likely that this hypotext is the text from which the author of the hypertext derived the technical term, either directly or through an intermediary text. This likeliness can usually be argued by showing that the technical term or the argument is original to the hypotext or that it is meant in the hypertext in the same original way as the hypotext. Example: the ubiquitous term wājib al-wujūd clearly stems from the writings of Ibn Sīnā,39 even though it was already coined by Fārābī (d. 950).40 After Ibn Sīnā, many texts in philosophy and theology show intentional textual correspondence with Ibn Sīnā’s corpus. A hypertext “evidently relies in structure” on a hypotext if the way the hypertext is constructed – at the level of the composition as a whole and the level of chapters – is the same as a part or the whole of the hypotext, either directly or through an intermediary text, and if it shows intentional textual correspondence. Without intentional textual correspondence, it does not rely in structure but is simply similar in structure.

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We speak of “structural textual correspondence” if a hypertext not only evidently relies in structure on a hypotext (sing. matn), but shows intentional textual correspondence exactly in those places of the hypotext that define the structure and composition of the text. In this case we call the hypertext, loosely speaking, a “commentary” on the hypotext. These “commentaries” can be of different nature; commentaries (in the true sense of the word, sing. sharḥ),41 glosses (sing. ḥāshiya/ taʿlīqa), comparisons (sing. muḥākama), summaries (sing. mukhtaṣar/ mulakhkhaṣ), versifications (sing. naẓm), even translations (sing. tarjama) all have this relationship with a hypotext.42 As a rule, we will use the word “commentary” in the sense of structural textual correspondence only in the sense of commentary tradition (see what follows). A hypertext is a commentary in the true sense of the word when it shows structural textual correspondence and contains the complete hypotext. A “gloss” is a sequence of marginal notes by one author on one hypotext. A marginal note may best be visualized as a note in the margin of a manuscript of the hypotext, close to the passage that it discusses. It therefore always “hangs” on a part of the hypotext. This is indicated by its structure; it cites a sentence or passage from the hypotext and then continues to make a remark about this. A gloss can attain the status of a treatise, at which point the reader is either required to know the hypotext to the point of memorization or he or she is required to have the hypotext at hand. The prefix “super-” can be used to give an immediate sense of the degrees of being removed from the base text. A “super-commentary” is a commentary in the true sense of the word on any kind of commentary. Thus, it has structural textual correspondence with the first commentary and contains the text of it in full. Similarly, a “supersuper-gloss” is a gloss on any kind of commentary that is a commentary on any kind of commentary. In theory, one can keep adding the prefix “super-“ to indicate a higher level commentary. A “corpus” is the set of all texts written by one author. A “textual tradition” is a set of different hypertexts and at least one hypotext, with the hypotexts (minus intermediary texts) all

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introduction | 15

­ ritten by one author, under at least one specific intentional textual w correspondence for all hypertexts with at least one of the hypotexts. Thus, one can speak of a textual tradition of a certain author. Since we speak of specific intentional textual correspondence, we do not have to retrace our steps beyond this source author. Indeed, otherwise the notion of a textual tradition would be meaningless and would always be the same under the adage that “all philosophy is but a footnote to Plato” as Alfred Whitehead would have it. A “commentary tradition” is a set of different hypertexts and at least one hypotext, with the hypotexts (minus intermediary texts) all written by one author, and all hypertexts have structural textual correspondence with one of the hypotexts. In short, all texts from a commentary tradition take their hypotext and perform certain actions on it. Note: hypotexts themselves are also part of this set, since the “action” they perform can be described as the function of identity. Corollary: even a single marginal note in a manuscript of a hypotext or intermediary text is part of this set. This is because its composition as a whole is instructed by the hypotext, thus having structural textual correspondence. The “restricted commentary tradition” is the subset containing all treatises (as opposed to texts) of the commentary tradition. I have come to understand this concept as an ideal tool to assemble a subset of the most pertinent texts from a commentary tradition, to get a sense of the overall structure of the commentary tradition. Thus, the restricted commentary tradition does not contain single marginal notes, though it can contain glosses or even higher-order commentaries. For example, Siyālkūtī’s (d. 1656) glosses on Khayālī’s (d. 1465) glosses on Taftāzānī’s (d. 1390) commentary on Nasafī’s (d. 1142) ʿaqīda is a treatise and enjoyed an independent distribution, just as Khayālī’s glosses did. All four texts are part of the restricted commentary tradition on Nasafī’s al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya. The restricted commentary tradition forms the backbone of the commentary tradition; they are the most widely circulated and read texts of this set, and thus the most influential. This does not mean that they are the most creative texts of the commentary tradition.

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16 | the world of image in islamic philosophy Corpus / Source Text Restricted Commentary Tradition Commentary Tradition Textual Tradition Wider Discourse

Figure 1.1 The relationship of the newly defined sets

The above graphic brings in relation some of the notions introduced here, showing how we are able to draw ever larger circles around the corpus of someone. Toolbox for a Distant Reading of Post-Classical Islamic Intellectual History

A commentary tradition can be seen as a network of nodes and connections. My methodology operates on the premise that understanding the network is worth more than understanding the sum of all nodes. As we shall see, by studying the intertextuality of the commentaries, we not only come to understand their relations better, we are also able to better judge the meaning and worth of each text. As all commentaries take their hypotext and perform certain actions on it, it will speak for itself that to identify what kind of actions are performed is one of the primary ways to understand the intertextuality of the commentary tradition. Together with an evaluation of the intentional textual correspondence and the evident reliance in structure, we will be able to point to continuity and change in the historical development of the commentary tradition. This we will accomplish by placing the letter of the text central, for example, by giving citations in Arabic of different texts and showing dependencies. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

introduction | 17

A certain formatting is applied to such comparisons to bring out the process of adaption that the author of the hypertext used on the hypotext. In the following, when I say “word” I could also mean a word group, that is, multiple words that are connected to each other. For example, wa-ilayhi means “and to it” and is made up of three words (wa, ilā, and huwa), but are written as one word group in Arabic. For convenience, however, I will just use “word” even if I mean “word group.” When comparing, the hypertext is always on the right. Whatever is in bold is exactly the same, simply a verbatim copy of the other text. Normally, the comparison is given twice, with the second time the bold text whited-out. Whatever is underlined is basically also a verbatim copy, though with a minor variation in inflection. This can be anything, as long as the same root letters are used. A verb can be turned into an active participle, a definite article may be added or taken away, or a variant spelling may be offered. In the second comparison this is made grey. Double underline indicates that the hypertext has a word formed of completely different root letters, yet it does not change the idea expressed significantly. The asterisk, ★ , means that the hypertext does not show a word in a place where the hypotext does have a word; it has omitted it. If the hypertext skips more than one word (or word group) from the hypotext, the number of words is indicated with a number in superscript. It can also happen that a word or several words are present in the hypotext in an entirely different place than the hypertext has them. The words in the hypertext are marked by square brackets [ ]. A plus sign, +, is placed in the hypertext where those words actually belong, in comparison to the hypotext. A simpler, and more common, case of this is that word order is switched. Both word groups are indicated by round brackets, ( ), or curly brackets, { }. In between is a double-headed arrow: ( ) ↔ ( ) or { } ⟺ { }. The single-line arrow goes with the round brackets, the double-line arrow goes with the curly brackets. Two last phenomena that are marked is when something seems to have happened to the orthography or only some manuscripts of the two texts are in agreement. When it is about the orthography, this means that the hypertext shows a word Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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or several words that graphically look very close to what the word(s) look like in the hypotext, but are actually just a bit different. On the semantic level, this results, of course, in an entirely different word with an entirely different meaning, but the proximity in orthography still betrays influence and may be considered a misread, a copyist error, or an editing error. It is also a case of a misread, copyist error, or editing error when only some of the manuscripts of the two texts are in agreement. For this reason, and also because both phenomena are relatively rare, they are both indicated in the hypertext with bold and italic and surrounded by /slashes/. In brackets are the page and line number of the (standard) edition where the passage may be found. In the heading, the name of the author, name of the text, and year (only in ce) is given. If the text has no certain year of completion, the death year of the author is given, otherwise the year of completion is given. Conventions of this Book

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Virtually all edited texts used in this study show no critical apparatus and can be shown to be mistaken in more than one place.43 They remain, however, an indispensable resource in our study of Suhrawardī and his commentators. References to Suhrawardī’s writings will principally be made to the editions of Corbin et al., published in Œuvres philosophiques et mystiques. For Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, I also make reference to the edition and translation of Ziai and Walbridge, The Philosophy of Illumination, in the footnotes referred to as Philosophy. For Ibn Kammūna’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt I use Habibi’s edition; for Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya I use Habibi’s edition; for Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq I use Mohaghegh’s edition; for Mullā Ṣadrā’s Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq I use Musavi’s edition; for Dawānī’s Sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr I use Tuysirkani’s edition; for Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifāʾ I use Marmura’s edition; and for Ibn Sīnā’s al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt I use Zare’i’s edition. I make frequent use of manuscripts. Some of the passages that appear prominently in this study are appended. They are not critically edited, but simply represent the text in a useful manner.

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introduction | 19

The exact death date of historical figures can be found in Appendix B. In the text I maintain Common Era (Gregorian calendar) notation, based on the Ḥijrī year in combination with the month of Muḥarram. For names, I generally drop the definite article. Further, I maintain Arabic transliteration, which may in Persian cases sometimes look odd, like Partaw-nāmah instead of Partow nâmeh,44 or Mullā instead of Mollâ. I provide transliterations only sparingly, usually only for two reasons. The first is for those cases where a crucial technical term is involved, and the second is for cases where my English rendering is somewhat interpretative.

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2 From Ibn Sīnā to Suhrawardī: The Contested Idea of Using Imagination after Death

I

n this chapter, we shall discuss Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) reception and initial development of Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 1037) ideas concerning the fate of the majority of people after they die. To fully understand this reception, we shall first investigate Ibn Sīnā’s ideas in detail. Further, to understand the uniqueness of Suhrawardī’s acceptance of these ideas, we shall discuss the reception of Ibn Sīnā’s ideas, where we will see that virtually all intellectuals after Ibn Sīnā responded to it negatively. Eschatology among philosophers of medieval Islam was based on their notion of true felicity.1 Ibn Sīnā defines pleasure as “the attainment of what is agreeable,” and the definition of “agreeable” is “what contributes to the perfection of the substance of a thing, and the completion of its activity.”2 From here Ibn Sīnā continues to argue that to each faculty of the soul there is a specific agreeable thing – for taste, sweetness; for touch, softness, and so on. Because the intellectual part of the soul, or simply, the intellectual soul, is simple and detached from matter, its perception is “true, necessary, universal, everlastingly, permanent, eternal, and delightful,”3 which makes this faculty the most noble of all. True felicity, therefore, is the maximum use of the faculty of intellection. To use this faculty to its maximum is, however, impeded during our lifetime.4 This impediment is our body. It is at this point that the ethical part of the soul, as being the one who

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from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 21

controls the body, comes into play. When we strive for the mean, that is, an inclination to stay away from both extremes (neither indulgence nor abstention), we acquire a certain mastery over our body.5 Then, in those rare moments when we are able to shut out our bodily impulses completely and engage solely in intellectual activity, we can even in this life enjoy flashes of that bliss. Ibn Sīnā is certain, though, that a sustained enjoyment of absolute intellectual felicity is only to be expected in the afterlife.6 The task for man in attaining true felicity, becoming in command of his passions and obtaining intellectual knowledge, is not easy and it cannot be expected that everyone may reach it. As the Arabic Plotinus argues, only the “pure and clean,” the ones “not sullied or defiled by the defilements of the body” go immediately to the intellectual world. But someone who has “united with the body and submitted herself to it” cannot go to this world. The Arabic Plotinus rules out that such a soul would perish along with the body,7 instead arguing that the soul will:8

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become as if she was corporeal because of the extent of her immersion in the delights and pleasure of the body. [The soul] does not, when she parts from the body, reach her own world until by great toil she has cast away from herself every impurity and defilement that attached to her from the body.

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For the Arabic Plotinus, then, mankind is divided into two: those who enter the intelligible world, and those who first have to undergo a cleansing process. Fārābī (d. 950) also promotes a twofold soteriology, according to their progress in obtaining intellectual perfection.9 Good souls enjoy intelligible pleasure, and reinforce each other in this pleasure. Bad souls remain longing for matter after death, but since matter is absent, this longing pains them greatly. Different from other philosophers, Fārābī suggests that if souls have really not perfected themselves at all, they may perish along with the body. Ibn Sīnā argues that if bad habits become firmly rooted in the soul, they remain fixed in it after the separation from the body. This is an impediment to full perfection, and such a soul is “afterwards as Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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though it is in a body” (ka-annahā baʿd fī l-badan).10 This notion of being “as though in a body” that the Arabic Plotinus and Ibn Sīnā talk about, is not meant to imply that there is an actual body for such souls in the afterlife, nor that they imagine they have a body.11 It simply means that, as we noticed already in Fārābī, that the soul is craving for bodily pleasures, as it was used to when it was in a body, but now it does not have a body and it can therefore not act on those cravings anymore, causing great distress. Ibn Sīnā provides a detailed division of people after death that can be grouped under four logically different labels according to two variables. On the one hand, he considers whether souls have perfected their intellectual activity (nufūs kāmila) or have not perfected this (nufūs nāqiṣa). On the other hand, he considers whether souls have perfected their behavior (nufūs munazzaha) or not (nufūs ghayr munazahha). As such, there are absolutely good souls, who have perfected their intellectual skills and their behavior. There are the somewhat good souls, who have perfected their behavior but not their intellectual skills. There are somewhat bad souls, who have perfected their intellectual skills but not their behavior. And lastly there are the absolutely bad souls, who have perfected neither. The fate of the absolutely good is easy: they join the intelligible world to enjoy true felicity. The fate of the absolutely bad is that they suffer eternally from a total lack of any perception. For the middle categories, though, the case is more complicated. Ibn Sīnā wanted to break away from the twofold division and provide an eschatological experience commensurate with their intermediate status. Whereas the absolutely bad souls are associated with the Earthly world and thus sensory perception, and whereas the absolutely good souls are associated with the intelligible world and thus intellectual perception, Ibn Sīnā saw in imaginative perception the ideal candidate for these somewhat good and somewhat bad souls.

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Ibn Sīnā on the Role of Imagination in Eschatology

The idea of using the imagination in the afterlife to experience eschatological promises makes its first appearance in Ibn Sīnā’s writings,12 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 23

about 150 years before Suhrawardī would make use of it. It may have been proposed before Ibn Sīnā, but it may also have been his personal contribution to the discussion of bodily resurrection (maʿād jismānī). One source that antedates him, written by Kindī (d. 870), describes an idea that is not the textual source, but may have been the inspiration for Ibn Sīnā’s description of imaginable eschatological experience. Kindī writes: Plato says . . . that the abode of the intellectual souls, when they are freed, is . . . in the world of divinity, there where the light of the Creator is. Not every soul separated from the body comes in time to this place, because among the souls there are those . . . in which there are stains and evil things. Among them are those which come to the sphere of the moon, and remain there for a time, and when they are cleansed and purified, they ascend to the sphere of Mercury, and remain there for a time; and when they are cleansed and purified, they ascend to the sphere of each star, and remain in each sphere for a time. When they . . . have become pure to the furthest extent . . . they ascend to the world of the intellect.13

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In this passage Kindī introduces a mechanism for souls that have not perfected themselves in their Earthly lives to continue to develop themselves after death by connecting to one celestial body after another, thus slowly ascending toward the intelligible world. Notably, Kindī does not speak of the faculty of imagination having a role in this. In Fārābī’s book Ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, a step toward this is made. After he has described his eschatology, he argues that there are two ways of knowing what he just described. Philosophers know of it as it actually is, by apodeictic proof. Others will only know indirectly, by use of images (mithālāt) that they are able to understand.14 In this way, people may have the same idea about the afterlife, but with different imagery. Kindī’s and Fārābī’s notes are still far away from the idea that Ibn Sīnā described in various works of his. Since many of Ibn Sīnā’s major writings mention the idea, not all of them ascribing it to someone else,15 we would seem to be justified to call it a part of Ibn Sīnā’s ­thinking.16 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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In some of his writings he introduces the idea with “some say,”17 which could be interpreted as meaning that he is merely reporting the opinion of someone else,18 but it could equally be a rhetorical device to introduce this new idea without causing too much of a controversy. The different texts set forth the idea in a similar fashion. The central suggestion is, as his al-Shifāʾ/al-Najāt,19 puts it: They will imagine everything that they believed about the prospects of the afterlife, and the instrument that enables them to imagine is something of the celestial bodies.20

The idea seems primarily built as a bridge between the extremes of the twofold soteriological division of those granted true felicity and those condemned to eternal misery.21 This twofold soteriological division is parallel to a twofold ontological division into an immaterial part of the universe and a material part of the universe,22 and a twofold epistemological division between what is intelligibly comprehensible and what is sensorily comprehensible. Souls that are not perfect are lacking intellectually. Since the intellectual part of the soul is exactly the part that survives the perishing of the body, those souls who have not actualized their intellectual potential have nothing.23 Or, as Ibn Sīnā puts it in his al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, “if the soul separates from the body but still has those same [Earthly] habits, it is as though it has not separated at all. Those habits prohibit the soul from [experiencing] felicity, and this in turn creates an intense kind of pain.”24 Felicity is the entry of the soul into the immaterial world, and the pain is being excluded from it. The difference between felicity and misery is made along epistemic lines, and this could have motivated Ibn Sīnā to think that any development of the twofold division should be sought along epistemic lines as well. The faculty of imagination, with its ambiguous nature of being somewhere in between material (sense perception) and immaterial (intellectual perception), makes for an obvious candidate. This thought appears in elementary form in al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya, a treatise dedicated exclusively to eschatology. In the epistle, he bluntly argues against bodily resurrection, disproving any other position than a purely spiritual afterlife c­ onsisting

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of the continuation of the soul. On the last pages of the treatise, he first concludes the preceding paragraph by saying that “the best of the learned men [argue] that the perfect, elevated soul is not concerned with sensory comprehension (lā naẓar lahā ilā l-maḥsūsāt).”25 This, of course, reinforces the twofold division, which seems to be the dominant interpretation in this epistle.26 However, he then gives an interpretation that allows souls to retain their “faculty of imagination” (al-quwwa al-mutawahhima), which permits them to imagine all the eschatological prospects that religion has promised; a bad person will imagine sensory punishments and a good person will imagine sensory rewards. Of the last, he even gives examples like “the gardens” and “the huris” to make it clear that this interpretation is to give place to what has been promised by revelation.27 That this misery or felicity would merely be fancies of the imagination does not trouble Ibn Sīnā. As he sees it, it is the effect the comprehension has on a soul that counts. “For [the person] delights, and is pained, in reality by the impression in the soul, not that [the thing impressed] has external existence.”28 In fact, comprehension by imagination has a greater influence and clarity than comprehension by sensation, according to Ibn Sīnā, as attested during sleep.29 On how the faculty of imagination may be retained he does not say a word. This is remarkable, since the faculty of imagination is material, located in the brain during our Earthly life.30 It is material because it perceives particulars, and this, according to Ibn Sīnā, can happen only by means of a bodily organ.31 Since at the moment of death, the soul loses the body and its bodily faculties, one would assume that it loses imagination as well.32 To use the imagination would require another body, but Ibn Sīnā adamantly rejects metempsychosis (tanāsukh).33 This brings us back to the statement of al-Shifāʾ, or as he puts it in his commentary on the Arabic version of the Enneads (Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyā), “Souls that have separated from their body are not quite rid of covering and clothing, but are in need of a body . . . So perhaps they have a connection with celestial bodies.”34 In other texts he is less forthright about asserting that it must be celestial bodies that are used. In al-Ishārāt he speaks of “a celestial body or something equal to it,”35

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but it is only in al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād that he properly proposes all the alternatives and arrives at celestial bodies as the correct option. Since it has to be a body and it cannot be an animal body as that would imply metempsychosis, Ibn Sīnā sees only two alternatives: either it must be a celestial body or it must be a body made from air, smoke, and vapor; a thing “which approximates what we call ‘spirit’ in terms of the mixture (mizāj) of the substance.”36 According to Ibn Sīnā, this last option is possible for those who deny that the soul connects to the body and instead think the soul connects to the spirit. A doctrine like this is mentioned in al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya, where Ibn Sīnā ascribed it to Thābit ibn Qurra (d. 900) and discredited it out of hand.37 In al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād he does not propose any counterarguments, merely indicating he does not believe it by conditioning it with an unfulfillable condition (“were this to be true . . .”). Arguments in favor of celestial bodies are also not to be found. Over and over Ibn Sīnā merely stresses the possibility that celestial bodies could fulfill such a role. In al-Mubāḥathāt he even goes so far as to say that “I can neither affirm it nor deny it.”38 What comes close to an actual reason for which a soul would connect to a celestial body is mentioned in his commentary on the Arabic version of the Enneads. There he says that a soul, after leaving the body, deserves a better, nobler body.39 This would speak in favor of a celestial body over an Earthly body. Another point made by Ibn Sīnā also speaks in favor of celestial bodies. He says, again in his Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā, that “if one descends from the intelligible world, in which there is pure intellect and pure perception of the intelligible, universal meaning [of things], then the first place where memory [is possible] is the celestial world.”40 Both arguments point to a location that would be better than the Earth on which we spend our lives, but not as good as the intelligible which is the ultimate goal for the soul. It is in fact not said that the soul would remain forever among the celestial bodies, and perhaps he wishes these souls to advance to the world of intellect at some point. These intermediate souls therefore need to be located in a material place, as to give souls an opportunity to be in a place that allows change, which in turn allows change for the better. In contrast, the intelligible world

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from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 27

is immutable as everything has actualized its full potential and simply has no reason to change. Since souls are in control over the movements of their body, Ibn Sīnā is keen on explaining it is not exactly like that in the case of connecting to celestial bodies. “Not that these souls become souls of that body as to control them,” he says in al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, “for that is impossible. Rather, they use that body to make imagination possible.”41 Only in his Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā, does he elaborate on that, saying “such that it is like a mirror for them, and one mirror can be shared by many who look into it.”42 This explains both why a human soul would not be in control of the celestial body it is attached to, as well as how a great number of souls may use only a limited number of celestial bodies.43 From this discussion we may notice that the idea put forward is rudimentary, with many questions left unanswered. It is clearly not the case that Ibn Sīnā is arguing for a new world,44 this was not his objective. It seems more plausible that his motivation was to move a large group of people away from eternal misery, as the twofold soteriological division that the tradition of philosophy promoted was only favorable for the few elect philosophers who were able to actualize their full intellectual potential. In the twofold division, virtually everyone was destined for damnation, but with two extra categories there was room for shades of grey in between the black and white. Now, both somewhat bad and somewhat good souls could be accommodated. While Ibn Sīnā’s ultimate thinking is not clear, perhaps he reflected on his system of thought and the way he organized the universe and saw room for these souls among the celestial bodies since they are uniquely situated in between the Earthly, sublunar world of generation and corruption and the eternal world of intelligibles. What is clear is that according to Ibn Sīnā, souls may connect to celestial bodies after they have separated from their bodies, and stand in a relationship to these celestial bodies as one who is looking at a mirror. What they will see in that mirror is in accordance with the promises of traditional religion.

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The Rejection by Islamic Thinkers after Ibn Sīnā After Ibn Sīnā, the idea was received in different ways, though almost always negatively. Some do not even summarize the idea, simply dismissing it. A prominent example is Bahmanyār (d. 1065), who was the direct student of Ibn Sīnā. In his al-Taḥṣīl, he makes no mention at all of this idea of imaginative eschatological felicity. His discussion is only about the highest form of felicity, that of comprehension of intelligibles. He is thus implicitly endorsing the classical twofold division of souls. Beyond this he does not wish to go. “As for the state of the other souls,” Bahmanyār says, “there is no way of knowing their states by way of conclusive proof (bi-l-burhān).”45 If we can take this as a reference to Ibn Sīnā’s idea of post mortem imagination, then we can conclude that he is strongly against it. This seems plausible in light of what Abu l-Barakāt Baghdādī (d. 1164?) says. In summing up different views about the afterlife he mentions that “some say that they connect with celestial bodies,”46 but later he refutes this view saying; “And the report of coming and going in and out of bodies, or connecting to celestial things and spirits, all of that is said by conjecture, without any explanation, nor can there be made a proof for it with what they said.”47 One of the earliest neutral receptions is Lawkarī’s (d. 1123) Bayān al-ḥaqq. Since Lawkarī was a student of Bahmanyār, we would expect a similar negative reception, but instead the chapter on the afterlife is a verbatim copy of Ibn Sīnā’s chapter on the afterlife in his al-Shifāʾ and al-Najāt, including the part on using a celestial body to activate the imagination. Perhaps the use of Ibn Sīnā’s text indicates a lack of interest on the part of Lawkarī to critically engage with the topic, nevertheless, by copying Ibn Sīnā he contributed to the transmission of the idea of an imaginable afterlife. There are only very slight variations between Ibn Sīnā’s and Lawkarī’s text. One such is an omission on Lawkarī’s part, but it is easily seen that this is simply an accident; while citing Ibn Sīnā he must have ended copying a sentence with irtasama fī l-nafs. When he went back to the text of Ibn Sīnā, searching for these words to pick up the next sentence, he accidentally recognized the words irtasama fī l-nafs a line later and started copying from there.48

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from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 29

Around the same time as Lawkarī, or perhaps slightly before, the doctrine is also noted by Ghazālī (d. 1111). He does so in five texts that are all closely connected. In Maqāṣid al-falāsifa he relates the idea as follows: If [a soul] is alleviated from wrong habits, but it is devoid of knowledge and its interest is occupied with imaginations, then it is not farfetched that it imagines a pleasant form just like in dreams. So a description of heaven is imagined out of sensory objects. One of the celestial bodies is the substrate of its imagination, for imagination is not possible without a body.49

This is almost exactly repeated in Kitāb al-maḍnūn bihi ʿalā ghayr ahlihi, or, to distinguish it from other books in the Maḍnūn corpus, al-Maḍnūn al-kabīr.50 The similarity is not strange, as the two texts seem to have a substantial amount of overlap.51 A similar repetition occurs in the so-called “Hebrew Ajwiba.”52 Two other texts of the Maḍnūn corpus provide an insight into Ghazālī’s own position on this idea. In ʿIlq al-maḍnūn the idea is not repeated, but Ghazālī comes close to it when he asserts that after death people may experience sensory, intellectual, but also imaginable delights and torments. Imagination can provide similar joy as sensory perception and everything a deceased person desires is instantaneously actualized. At one point Ghazālī proposes that the eschatological state in the grave is of this kind, which is reminiscent of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya. As for how imagination is possible after death, Ghazālī remains silent, simply asserting that “its possibility is well-known.”53 In al-Maḍnūn al-ṣaghīr, better known as Nafkh al-rūḥ wa-l-taswiya, the same three forms of post mortem perception, sensory, imaginary, and intellectual, are discussed. In fact, it is discussed in the very same way, but this time the possibility for imaginary perception after death is discussed in detail:54

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What is reported in Tradition [about the afterlife] are either imaginable or sensory forms. But these perish at death, so how can they be affirmed? Know that it is rejected by those who deny the ­quickening Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

30 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

of the bodies . . . but everything that the ancient philosophers mentioned for indicating its impossibility is not an apodeictic proof (burhān muḥaqqiq) . . . A pointer that it remains unproven by the philosophers is that the most excellent of the recent philosophers, Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā, had argued in favor of it in the books al-Shifāʾ and al-Najāt . . . and some intellectual who is not [known to be] reckless has said that [Ibn Sīnā’s idea] is not impossible. This characterization points to the existence of a doubt on this point and that an [apodeictic] proof has not been established for it. But, [on the other hand,] would it be impossible, then he would not have been characterized by “not reckless,” for indeed what is reckless about meaning to say it is impossible?

The first part of this citation is a build up toward the idea, which he gives after mentioning that it can be found in al-Shifāʾ and al-Najāt (omitted in the translation above). Belief in sensory and imaginable eschatological experiences is obligatory according to revelation, and the consensus of philosophers to the contrary should be disregarded, as they cannot provide a valid argument for their denial. Ibn Sīnā’s idea is brought forward as an example that one renowned philosopher did not deny it, but in fact has argued in favor of it. As such, the idea stands out as something positive, something to be appreciated. The evaluation of the actual idea is then an almost perfect combination of hesitance and curiosity: Ghazālī insists that it is an idea that is not fully proven, in line with Bahmanyār and Abu l-Barakāt Baghdādī. However, he deviates from that position when he immediately follows up saying that “not impossible” implies that it could be true. In fact, over the span of at least a page he defends the position. He discusses in some detail how metempsychosis (tanāsukh) could be a problem for this idea, but need not be so. He then finishes with what seems to be a carefully worded personal statement, which loosely translated runs as follows:

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I do not mean to rush into it, but all I want to give is an explanation that there is no [apodeictic] proof for whoever denies the quickening of the bodies. And so, if there is no proof, then there ought to be Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 31

an intellectual explanation for the sensory and imaginable perception after death, in the grave and at the resurrection.

This passage, together with the fact that he does not mention the idea in the chapter on bodily resurrection in his Tahāfut al-falāsifa,55 would suggest that Ghazālī appreciated the idea to some extent, but saw no reason to fully endorse it.56 Slightly later into the sixth/twelfth century, we find the idea in Shahrastānī’s (d. 1153) al-Milal wa-l-nihal. From comparing his text with Ibn Sīnā’s texts, we quickly find out that it is the passage from either al-Shifāʾ or al-Najāt that he used.57 The picture that emerges from this comparison is that Shahrastānī skillfully copied those parts of al-Shifāʾ that he deemed useful to explain the idea, here and there dropping a word or slightly changing it. It shows that he was not merely copying without understanding the train of thought and the weight of each separate unite of the reasoning. Especially the jump from one paragraph of al-Shifāʾ to the next one, combining the idea of imaginable eschatological experience with the concluding paragraph of al-Shifāʾ, is interesting. That last paragraph reasons that truly perfect people will rise above this imaginable experience. The last sentence then states “If there were to remain in them a trace of [false] belief or [bad] behavior . . . they would be delayed in [attaining] the rank of the exalted ones until [such a trace] detaches itself and ceases to exist.”58 Reading the chapter on eschatology in al-Shifāʾ as a whole may distract from the gravity of that sentence, leaving the reader with the impression that the idea of imaginable experience is not an important part of Ibn Sīnā’s thought and that he is still primarily concerned with the twofold soteriological division. But citing this idea and combining it with the conclusion, as Shahrastānī does, gives this final sentence more significance, making the conclusion sound like imaginable experience is a normal step for a soul toward complete perfection, a way station toward the intelligible world. Given the attention to details that is evidenced in Shahrastānī’s copying practice – he appropriates the text to make it his own – I would argue that this different nuance was purposely built in. Perhaps this indicates ­acceptance on Shahrastānī’s

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32 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

part, in a similar fashion as we noticed with Ghazālī. If we are right to assume so, it may be that certain circles of intellectuals of the twelfth century were tentatively receptive toward Ibn Sīnā’s idea. This could then partly explain why the one person who as no other received and reworked the idea comes from this century: Suhrawardī, who was executed in 1191. Before we return to discuss Suhrawardī’s view, let us first consider the reception history as it occurred outside Suhrawardī’s influence. The first to consider besides Suhrawardī is his contemporary Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1209). He reports the idea in at least three of his major works. These are his commentary on al-Ishārāt, al-Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn, and his al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya.59 In the first, Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, he does not go against the view, but explains the idea in different words. At the end he adds that “this is to what the shaykh is inclined.”60 In al-Arbaʿīn he phrases the idea again in his own words. What is important here is the context in which he presents the idea. First, he places it in the chapter “on spiritual resurrection” (al-maʿād al-rūḥānī), and further he distinguishes it from another view by emphasizing that this idea has as a premise that imagination is a bodily faculty and therefore requires a body.61 In al-Mabāḥith he draws from Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifāʾ/al-Najāt, as is clear from the following comparison.62 It is clear that Rāzī’s passage is based on Ibn Sīnā’s passage, but at the same time we notice a lot of small changes throughout the passage. Perhaps the biggest change is the beginning of the paragraph. “One of them says . . .” are his opening words, whereby he makes it clear that the idea is not his. In Ibn Sīnā’s text, he also adds at the beginning that the idea applies not just to sinless souls, but to exactly those souls that are expecting eschatological delights like virgins and castles (al-ḥūr wa-l-quṣūr). Most importantly, Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s text adds an entire part not present in Ibn Sīnā’s text. This part is a response to the idea. A translation is as follows:

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One of them responds to that by saying that there are doubtlessly an infinite number of simpleminded souls. So if each of them ­connects Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 33

to one of the parts of the celestial object, it would follow that the celestial object has an actual infinite number of parts, but this is impossible.63 Also, [all] the parts of the celestial object are equal in quiddity, so it is not the case that one of them is more suitable than another for being a tool (or, organ, āla) for one of the souls. It is impossible for one part to be a tool for a number of souls, since one thing cannot be a tool for many actors who are acting differently. Also, this [idea] is based on [the premise] that imagination only happens by use of a bodily tool (āla) as you already know.

These points of critique fall under two categories. The first three points relate to what the soul will actually do with the celestial body, while the last point is directed to the materiality of imagination. To begin with the latter, to suggest imagination is immaterial is a significant remark by Rāzī, as the faculty of imagination is indeed a bodily function as far as Ibn Sīnā was concerned. The only immaterial part of the soul is the intellect. Apparently, the dividing line between material and immaterial, drawn among the faculties of the soul, shifted after Ibn Sīnā. By the time of Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, it was apparently possible to draw that line not between the faculties of intellectual comprehension and imaginative comprehension, but in between imaginative comprehension and sensory comprehension.64 The other points of critique also reveal an important shift, but this time not a shift in the theory of the soul, but a shift in interpreting the idea of imaginative eschatological promises itself. These points of critique hinge on the idea that a soul “connects” (tataʿallaqu) with a celestial body. This is how Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī understood it,65 even though Ibn Sīnā explained in his Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā that he pictures the dependency of souls on celestial bodies as one of standing in front of a mirror. Perhaps Rāzī’s interpretation is based on Ibn Sīnā’s al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād. In that text, Ibn Sīnā did not expressly state that a soul would connect to a celestial body, but he did use the verb tataʿallaqu to describe a soul’s relation to a body. Further, Ibn Sīnā expressly stated the issue of two souls controlling one body, and claimed that this is not the way human souls connect to celestial bodies. This claim Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

‫فإنها تتخيل جميع ما ٭‪ 5‬قيل لها [في الدنيا] وتكون آلة ٭‪ 2‬تخيلها لذلك جرما من الأجرام السماو ية‬ ‫فتشاهد جميع ما قيل لها ‪ +‬من أحوال القبر والبعث وال�خيرات ٭ وتكون الأنفس الردية أيضا‬ ‫تشاهد العقاب ٭‪ 2‬المصور لها في الدنيا ٭ فإن الصورة الخيالية ليست تضعف عن الحسية بل‬ ‫تزداد عليها تأثيرا ٭ كما يشاهد في المنام فربما كان تأثير \المحكوم\ به أعظم ٭ في ٭ النفس‬ ‫من تأثير المحسوس ٭‪ 3‬وهذه الحالة التي ذكرناها أشد استقرارا من الموجود في المنام بحسب قلة‬ ‫العوائق وتجرد النفس وصفاء القابل‬

‫فإنها إذا فارقت الأبدان ولم يكن لها ٭‪ 8‬علوم تسعدها ٭‪ 5‬ولا جبل يشقيها ٭‬

‫‪25‬‬

‫(‪ )430.13‬٭‪ 5‬وقال بعضهم ٭‪ 3‬أن هذه الأنفس \إذا\ كانت زكية وفارقت البدن ٭‪ 25‬وكانت‬ ‫متصورة لأمور قيل لها في أمر معادها من الحور والقصور‬

‫‪Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1209) - al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya‬‬

‫واعترض بعضهم على ذلك بأن قال النفوس البله لا شك أنها غير متناهية فإن تعلق كل واحدة‬ ‫منها بجزء من أجزاء الفلك لزم أن تكون للفلك أجزاء غير متناهية بالفعل وذلك محال وأيضا‬ ‫فأجزاء الفلك متشابهة في الماهية فليس بعض الأجزاء بأن تكون آلة لبعض النفوس أولى من‬ ‫البعض وإن كان الجزء الواحد آلة لعدة من النفوس فذلك محال لأن الشيء الواحد لا يكون آلة‬ ‫للفاعلين ا�لكثيرين في أفعال مختلفة وأيضا فإن ذلك مبني على أن التخيل إنما يكون بآلة جسمانية‬ ‫وقد عرفت ما فيه‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫فإنها تتخيل جميع ما كانت اعتقدته من الأحوال الأخرو ية وتكون الآلة التي يمكنها‬ ‫بها التخيل شيئا من الأجرام السماو ية فتشاهد جميع ما قيل لها في الدنيا من أحوال‬ ‫القبر والبعث وال�خيرات الأخرو ية وتكون الأنفس الردية أيضا تشاهد العقاب بحسب‬ ‫ذلك المصور لهم في الدنيا وتقاسيه فإن الصور الخيالية ليست تضعف عن الحسية بل‬ ‫تزداد عليها تأثيرا وصفاء كما يشاهد في المنام فربما كان المحلوم به أعظم شأنا في بابه‬ ‫من المحسوس على أن الأخروي أشد استقرارا من الموجود في المنام بحسب قلة العوائق‬ ‫وتجرد النفس وصفاء القابل‬

‫فإنهم إذا فارقوا الأبدان ولم يكن لهم معنى جاذب إلى الجهة التي فوقهم لا كمال‬ ‫فيسعدوا تلك السعادة ولا شوق كمال فيشقوا تلك الشقاوة بل جميع هيئاتهم النفاسنية‬ ‫متوجهة نحو الأسفل منجذبة إلى الأجسام ولا منع من المواد السماو ية من أن تكون‬ ‫موضوعة لفعل نفس فيها قالوا‬

‫[‪ ]٢٥‬ويشبه أيضا أن يكون ما قاله بعض العلماء حقا وهو أن هذه الأنفس إن كانت‬ ‫زكية وفارقت البدن وقد رسخ فيها نحو من الاعتقاد في العاقبة التي تكون لأمثالهم على‬ ‫مثل ما يمكن أن يخاطب به العامة وتصور ذلك في أنفسهم من ذلك‬

‫‪Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) - al-Shifāʾ/al-Najāt‬‬

‫‪Table 2.1 Comparison between Ibn Sīnā and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzi‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫واعترض بعضهم على ذلك بأن قال النفوس البله لا شك أنها غير متناهية فإن تعلق كل واحدة‬ ‫منها بجزء من أجزاء الفلك لزم أن تكون للفلك أجزاء غير متناهية بالفعل وذلك محال وأيضا‬ ‫فأجزاء الفلك متشابهة في الماهية فليس بعض الأجزاء بأن تكون آلة لبعض النفوس أولى من‬ ‫البعض وإن كان الجزء الواحد آلة لعدة من النفوس فذلك محال لأن الشيء الواحد لا يكون آلة‬ ‫للفاعلين ا�لكثيرين في أفعال مختلفة وأيضا فإن ذلك مبني على أن التخيل إنما يكون بآلة جسمانية‬ ‫وقد عرفت ما فيه‬

‫تزداد عليها تأثيرا ٭ كما يشاهد في المنام فربما كان تأثير \المحكوم\ به أعظم ٭ في ٭ النفس‬ ‫من تأثير المحسوس ٭‪ 3‬وهذه الحالة التي ذكرناها أشد استقرارا من الموجود في المنام بحسب قلة‬ ‫العوائق وتجرد النفس وصفاء القابل‬

‫فإنها تتخيل جميع ما ٭‪ 5‬قيل لها [في الدنيا] وتكون آلة ٭‪ 2‬تخيلها لذلك جرما من الأجرام السماو ية‬ ‫فتشاهد جميع ما قيل لها ‪ +‬من أحوال القبر والبعث وال�خيرات ٭ وتكون الأنفس الردية أيضا‬ ‫تشاهد العقاب ٭‪ 2‬المصور لها في الدنيا ٭ فإن الصورة الخيالية ليست تضعف عن الحسية بل‬

‫فإنها إذا فارقت الأبدان ولم يكن لها ٭‪ 8‬علوم تسعدها ٭‪ 5‬ولا جبل يشقيها ٭‬

‫‪25‬‬

‫(‪ )430.13‬٭‪ 5‬وقال بعضهم ٭‪ 3‬أن هذه الأنفس \إذا\ كانت زكية وفارقت البدن ٭‪ 25‬وكانت‬ ‫متصورة لأمور قيل لها في أمر معادها من الحور والقصور‬

‫‪Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1209) - al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqiyya‬‬

‫فإنها تتخيل جميع ما كانت اعتقدته من الأحوال الأخرو ية وتكون الآلة التي يمكنها‬ ‫بها التخيل شيئا من الأجرام السماو ية فتشاهد جميع ما قيل لها في الدنيا من أحوال‬ ‫القبر والبعث وال�خيرات الأخرو ية وتكون الأنفس الردية أيضا تشاهد العقاب بحسب‬ ‫ذلك المصور لهم في الدنيا وتقاسيه فإن الصور الخيالية ليست تضعف عن الحسية بل‬ ‫تزداد عليها تأثيرا وصفاء كما يشاهد في المنام فربما كان المحلوم به أعظم شأنا في بابه‬ ‫من المحسوس على أن الأخروي أشد استقرارا من الموجود في المنام بحسب قلة العوائق‬ ‫وتجرد النفس وصفاء القابل‬

‫فإنهم إذا فارقوا الأبدان ولم يكن لهم معنى جاذب إلى الجهة التي فوقهم لا كمال‬ ‫فيسعدوا تلك السعادة ولا شوق كمال فيشقوا تلك الشقاوة بل جميع هيئاتهم النفاسنية‬ ‫متوجهة نحو الأسفل منجذبة إلى الأجسام ولا منع من المواد السماو ية من أن تكون‬ ‫موضوعة لفعل نفس فيها قالوا‬

‫[‪ ]٢٥‬ويشبه أيضا أن يكون ما قاله بعض العلماء حقا وهو أن هذه الأنفس إن كانت‬ ‫زكية وفارقت البدن وقد رسخ فيها نحو من الاعتقاد في العاقبة التي تكون لأمثالهم على‬ ‫مثل ما يمكن أن يخاطب به العامة وتصور ذلك في أنفسهم من ذلك‬

‫‪Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) - al-Shifāʾ/al-Najāt‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

36 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

must have simply been rejected or ignored by Rāzī, leaving Ibn Sīnā’s idea exposed to the criticism that Rāzī raises. A similar interpretation is found in three writings of Sayf al-Dīn Āmidī (d. 1233), which are textually related to each other.66 Āmidī proposes that Ibn Sīnā’s idea basically comes down to metempsychosis, which everyone agrees to be a false idea. He may have gotten this point from reading al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, since the idea of imaginable eschatological promises and the falsity of metempsychosis are discussed in the same entry in al-Ishārāt (namaṭ 8, faṣl 16). The idea is notably absent in Abharī’s (d. 1264) Hidāyat al-ḥikma and in Kātibī’s (d. 1276) Ḥikmat al-ʿayn, but Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274) does discuss it. He uses Rāzī’s explanation and supplements it with extracts from Ibn Sīnā’s al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, to which he explicitly refers.67 The first time it appears in Persian is perhaps in Rīzī’s (fl. 1280) Ḥayāt al-nufūs, where it is introduced as “one of the philosophers says” (chandī az ḥukamāʾ gofte and). He closes the ­passage by saying that utilizing a body to allow the imagination to function does not need to be with celestial bodies, but may perhaps also happen with another animal body or with a body made of vapor and smoke. He does not refute the idea, but neither does he show any interest in it.68 Not much later we see it appear in Shīʿī sources. Ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī (d. 1299) briefly mentions it in his Qawāʿid al-marām.69 al-ʿĀllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 1325), the famous Shīʿī theologian, reports the view in Manāhij al-yaqīn. He uses al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād since he does not only mention celestial bodies, but also bodies made of smoke. Like Āmidī, he rejects the idea, saying that this comes close to metempsychosis.70 A particularly illuminating example comes from Fakhr al-Dīn Isfarāʾinī (d. 1359?),71 commentator on al-Najāt. The style he adopts for commenting on the part of eschatology is to first cite in full Ibn Sīnā’s text, then to propose his own thinking on eschatology, and then to return to the text at hand and comment on specific passages. The cited text includes the idea of using imagination after death, but in the exposition of his own opinion this element has no place. Notably, the term Ibn Sīnā uses to describe souls that may use their imagination,

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from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 37

al-bulh (“the simpletons”), is used by Isfarāʾinī. He equates their state with that of children: in their innocence they should not receive punishment, but neither can they enjoy full intellectual felicity. Instead, they attain only a part of that full felicity, but this is still intelligible and not imaginable.72 Indeed, the word “imagination” is at no point mentioned. When Isfarāʾinī then moves on to comment on specific passages from al-Najāt’s chapter on eschatology, he, significantly, stops just before Ibn Sīnā’s discussion on imagination, and moves on to the next chapter.73 I therefore find Isfarāʾinī’s text a good example of the awkwardness many intellectuals had toward Ibn Sīnā’s idea of using imagination after death, preferring to be silent about it altogether. Finally, ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī (d. 1355) mentions the idea in one sentence of his al-Mawāqif. He says: “perhaps they connect to one of the celestial bodies because of their continuing need to become perfect. Clearly all of that is mere conjecture, presuming that the souls are eternal and immaterial.”74 With this reasoning, Ījī is in line with the earliest critics after Ibn Sīnā, simply rejecting it out of hand. Jurjānī (d. 1413), the famous commentator upon al-Mawāqif, does not say a word about it, and neither does it seem to have played a role in the subsequent commentary tradition.75 From this overview, it becomes clear that in the first few centuries after Ibn Sīnā, the general response toward his idea on using imagination after death was negative. Intellectuals either remained silent on it, rejected it as conjecture, or interpreted it as a soul connecting (tataʿallaqu) to a body, which is tantamount to metempsychosis and therefore to be dismissed.

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Suhrawardī’s Reception and Initial Development

One thinker who did accept Ibn Sīnā’s idea, and even expanded on it, was Suhrawardī. The idea of using imagination after death, as well as the fourfold soteriological division, is referenced in four writings. In al-Lamaḥāt and Partaw-nāmah,76 the location of the somewhat bad souls is described in a conflicting way; the knowledge that they have perfected would allow them to rise up to the “Heavenly Council” Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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(al-malaʾ al-aʿlā). However, their deficient behavior pulls them down to the “lowest of the low” (asfal al-sāfilīn). Both are Koranic terms.77 The first is generally believed to refer to angels, while the latter is explicitly mentioned as the place where unbelievers will go to after death. It could be that Suhrawardī invoked these religious terms to make this intermediate state palatable. Philosophically, they seem to point to both extreme ends of the twofold division of souls. Assuming this to be the case, the description of the place of intermediate souls given here is a first step away from the twofold division. Whereas previously a soul would either go to one of two places, here it is paradoxically stated that it goes to both. We could go two ways with this: either such a soul is indeed in both, but not at the same time but serially, or such a soul is in neither place, which would lead to the conclusion that there must be a third place in between the two extreme ends. When we look at the lower of the intermediate categories, it is not clear in Suhrawardī’s writings which of the two interpretations is ­correct. He describes their punishment as not lasting forever, which could mean that they are in the place of misery for a while and then move to the place of felicity, forgoing the need of a place in between. In the ­discussion on the higher of the intermediate categories it is clearer. In this case, Suhrawardī is advocating that such a soul goes to a place different from either extremes. In al-Lamaḥāt Suhrawardī says that:

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Some of the people of insight have said that the simpletons, the pious, and the ascetics take their connection [to a body] to a celestial body, in which they see all the forms they want, as they would have in the common sense. They enjoy themselves to the extent of [the soundness of] their convictions due to the continuation of their connection to the bodily world.78

And in Partaw-nāmah:

As for the souls of simpletons and the pious . . . they will find salvation and will become attached to the celestial bodies because of the natural inclination of souls for those bodies. There they will behold beautiful forms.79 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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The in-between place that Suhrawardī has in mind, where souls neither have to suffer nor experience true felicity, turns out to be an actual place in the spatial sense: the celestial world. There they will have perception “as they would have in the common sense,” meaning, similar to the sensory perception we have during our Earthly lives. If we compare Suhrawardī’s texts we may observe a distinct evolution from including Ibn Sīnā’s idea (al-Lamaḥāt), to accepting that idea (Partaw-nāmah), to engaging with it (al-Talwīḥāt), to changing it thoroughly (Ḥikmat al-ishrāq).80 The distinction between al-Lamaḥāt and Partaw-nāmah is only a small nuance. Whereas both texts give a straightforward paraphrase of Ibn Sīnā’s idea, the difference is that in al-Lamaḥāt Suhrawardī puts the view into the mouth of “someone of the people of insight” (baʿḍ ahl al-baṣīra),81 while in the Partawnāmah he does not attribute it to someone and thus assumes responsibility for it. This is still significant, as the view that was proposed by Ibn Sīnā was, as we noticed, controversial from its inception. In al-Talwīḥāt, Suhrawardī openly accepts the idea and properly discusses it. Leading up to it, he discusses and dismisses other alternatives, namely, material bodies and bodies made of smoke and vapor. This first alternative, that a soul would transmigrate to another sublunar, material body, is discussed in its own section and meanders between acceptance and dismissal, in the end seemingly resulting in a dismissal. The ambivalence serves a purpose, I propose, for it helps the discussion on souls connecting to celestial bodies. In the section on transmigration (tanāsukh), Suhrawardī says that were bad souls to be allowed to mingle with celestial souls after death, they would surely not experience any punishment. Thus, bad souls ought to transmigrate to “something of the wretched living things.”82 This comment seems to work in tandem with another comment, namely, that if a soul were completely devoid of a body it would not have a faculty of imagination, and thus would not be able to experience punishment.83 How these two comments can be squared with a whole array of arguments against transmigration becomes only clear in the section on the connection with celestial bodies. There, Suhrawardī says that ­somewhat

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bad souls connect to a specific body in between the material and the celestial (ethereal) world, and concludes that this solution “solves whatever was left of the problem of transmigration.”84 The ambivalence thus points to Suhrawardī’s awareness of the accusation made by the likes of Āmidī and Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, that post mortem connection to any other body, sublunar, supralunar, or in between, is tantamount to metempsychosis and should therefore be dismissed. Proper metempsychosis, from one sublunar body to another, is ruled out in al-Talwīḥāt. But Suhrawardī creates some wiggle room so as to allow souls connecting with other bodies, ethereal and in between material and ethereal. Bodies of Smoke and Vapor as Imagination’s Organ

Ruling out sublunar bodies for souls to connect to after death, but keeping the option open for celestial bodies and even non-celestial bodies, the latter being neither fully material nor fully ethereal, brings us to the question of what these latter bodies could be. One candidate are bodies made of smoke and vapor (jirm murakkab min bukhār wa-dukhān), a possibility already mentioned by Ibn Sīnā. The appropriateness of this option can be explained in two ways. One is the difference between bodies of smoke and vapor and other sublunar bodies. The other concerns how the nature of bodies of smoke and vapor could be excellently suited for souls to connect to. The first argument is neatly summed up in Ibn Kammūna’s (d. 1284) commentary on a passage in the Physics of al-Talwīḥāt, in which Suhrawardī discusses bodies made of vapor or smoke:

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Know that created things (al-kāʾināt) are of two kinds: one is what comes to be without an elemental composition, the other is what comes to be with an elemental composition. That which comes to be without elemental composition is either made of vapor, or it is made of smoke.85

Bodies of smoke and vapor therefore require separate attention in this context, as it may be that metempsychosis is not possible only because it concerns a body with an elemental composition. The second Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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argument is given in Ibn Sīnā’s al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād. He points to the similarity of a body of smoke and vapor and the spirit (al-rūḥ). This can be understood when we take into account one of the standard definitions of “spirit,” namely, that of a “subtle, vaporous body.”86 Ibn Sīnā further says that the “Physicists” (al-ṭabīʿiyyūn) say that the soul does not connect to the body but to the spirit,87 the implication being that the soul would likewise be able to connect to a body that is much like the spirit, such as a body made of vapor and smoke. Following Suhrawardī, we can learn of two reasons to rebuke this view. The first is that such a body made of vapor and smoke would not be able to remain stable; if it were to come close to fire it would change into fire. This little argumentation could be read in two ways. Suhrawardī may be saying here that if the body composed of smoke and vapor is of its nature close to fire, that is, that of the four elements the element of fire dominates in its mixture (perhaps because of an abundance of smoke?), then the whole body would soon enough turn into fire. Alternatively, Suhrawardī may have the natural places of the elements in mind, where each element has its own sphere, fire on air on water on earth. Thus, something that is in the sphere of air is in between fire and water. In that case, Suhrawardī is thinking of the case in which this body composed of smoke and vapor is reaching higher in the sky, closing in on the sphere of fire. It then becomes influenced by it, drawn to it, and taken up into the sphere of fire. This second reading finds support when Suhrawardī adds an alternative, which he phrases as “and if it is below it in the air,” where “below” supports the second interpretation. In the case that it is below the sphere of fire, he argues that such a body could still be influenced by heat and decompose, or it would become denser and descend, because of coldness. Ibn Kammūna, in his commentary, adds that the coldness would make this body descend from the sky onto the earth or water, thus ceasing to be a body in the sky. Thus, Ibn Kammūna supports our second interpretation, which relies on the natural places of the elements. In short, this first argument relies on the heat–cold dichotomy present in Aristotelian physics, arguing that a body made of smoke and vapor could not exist permanently in the air, but would either rise, descend, or disintegrate.

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The second argument utilizes the other dichotomy of Aristotelian physics pertaining to the elements, namely, the dry–moist dichotomy. Suhrawardī first argues that there is no skin to such a body made of smoke and vapor. This is necessary to protect the inside, which would be mostly dry, from dissipation. It would also keep all its elements together and prohibit other things from entering its composition. He adds that in order for such a body to be a locus for the faculty of imagination, there must be a dry substance that can retain the images, but it must be moist in order to accept it.88 He does not go into details, but moves on with the discussion about celestial bodies being a locus for imagination. He thus leaves this argument a bit rough around the edges, failing to bring it to a final conclusion. This gives the impression that Suhrawardī is merely citing another source here, but as long as we do not have conclusive evidence for this we cannot be sure. Ibn Kammūna, in his commentary, does not give information about the background of this discussion. What we can learn from Ibn Kammūna, is a more detailed discussion of the second argument. He begins by asserting that our spirit is protected from dissipation and it is impossible to change its mixture, because it is protected by organs, which can protect because they are predominantly dry. Such bodies cannot exist in the air, as they would need to rest on the earth. Ibn Kammūna does not tell us, but we may assume that he means that otherwise such an object would fall out of the sky and onto the earth, because earth would be its natural place because of its predominant dryness. This is why solid objects fall down and flames rise up; they both seek their natural place, according to Aristotelian philosophy. Objects in the sky, says Ibn Kammūna, need to be predominantly moist (mayaʿān), otherwise they cannot stay in that sphere (ḥayyiz). From here, Ibn Kammūna returns to Suhrawardī’s text. Suhrawardī had used the phrase “to be a locus for the faculty of imagination” to argue that a body needs to be predominantly dry. Ibn Kammūna uses the sentence negatively, saying that a predominantly moist body cannot be a locus for the faculty of imagination. He adds that this can come to be only with a dry substance, and then continues with Suhrawardī’s text “to record the imagined form in it.” From

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from ibn sīnā to suhrawardī | 43

this expansion it becomes clear that Suhrawardī’s second argument is primarily about the impossibility of a dry substance in the air. Thus, the last few words “it must be moist in order to accept it” contribute little to the argument. The reason why they are nonetheless there is not explained by Ibn Kammūna, but he does expand on it to make it more understandable. Here he says that another substance, this time moist, is needed to make it possible to receive such forms. In his view, what Suhrawardī is saying in al-Talwīḥāt is that to apprehend forms we need an organ that is predominantly moist, meaning soft, which allows for receiving forms. At the same time, we need an organ that is predominantly dry to retain such a form. Ibn Kammūna finishes by saying that such a combination is found in animals. By expanding and moving and changing Suhrawardī’s text, Ibn Kammūna has made this argument much more comprehensible. It is remarkable that Ibn Kammūna expends this effort, because after this the tone of his text changes dramatically and becomes negative and dismissive. The fundamental contestation Ibn Kammūna raises against Suhrawardī is that he is not supplying an apodeictic argument, but merely one based on barely persuasive arguments and unfounded rhetorics (min al-iqnāʿiyāt al-rakīka wa-l-khiṭābiyāt al-wāhiya).89 Ibn Kammūna proposes several counter-examples. In Suhrawardī’s first argument, the one dealing with heat and coldness, Ibn Kammūna follows the two-way division of the argument proposed by Suhrawardī. First, he argues against the case of a body coming near to fire, then he discusses the case where it is below fire and it might disintegrate or change. Concerning the first part, Ibn Kammūna points out that not every body undergoes change when coming in contact with heat, as is evident in a salamander, who seemingly remains unchanged when it is exposed to heat.90 He similarly objects to the fear of change or disintegration with a counter-example, as he points out that the faculty of nutrition makes an animal or plant constantly change without harming the integrity of that entity, simply replacing elements of the body with their equivalent.91 Significantly, he remains completely silent about the second argument, dealing with dryness and moistness. Since he expanded on this argument in quite some

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detail, it seems that he agrees with the reasoning and simply could not think of a refutation. Celestial Bodies as Imagination’s Organ

After Suhrawardī has given sufficient reasons not to accept the idea that souls can use bodies made of vapor and smoke to activate their imagination, he proceeds to the idea of celestial bodies fulfilling that function. Just like in al-Lamaḥāt, he ascribes the idea in al-Talwīḥāt to someone else (baʿḍ al-ʿulamāʾ, “one of the learned ones”), but after outlining the idea, he explicitly accepts it (fa-kalām ḥasan, “[it is] a sound idea”). He summarizes the idea as that a celestial body can serve as the substrate (mawḍūʿ) for someone’s imagination if they cannot apprehend the intelligible world and are not able to completely abandon their desire for bodies. He then describes what good souls (that is, the category “somewhat good”) can expect. They will “imagine wonderful, delicate images and forms which they may enjoy.”92 Unlike Ibn Sīnā, an express reference to religious promises concerning eschatological delights such as the houris and gardens is not made in al-Talwīḥāt. He continues by explaining why these images are so delightful. It is because they are “nobler” (ashraf) than what we encounter here on Earth, “as these murky things (al-kudūrāt) do not mix with them,” he adds. This may be a reference to the materiality of our Earthly world, which Suhrawardī characterizes as dark and obscure, and contrasts with the immaterial intelligibles, which are light and clear. For Suhrawardī, apparently, even though celestial bodies are still material, their matter, ether (athīrī), is of a finer quality and is less dark and obscure than Earthly, elemental (ʿunṣurī) matter.93 This makes these images not only nobler, but also more endurable (abqā) and less dim and weak (abʿad ʿan kalāl wa-malāl), which, finally, makes them more enjoyable (aladhdh). Suhrawardī also explains how this kind of afterlife can be everlasting; because celestial bodies do not perish, souls can stay forever connected to them. We saw before that Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī argued that an infinite number of souls cannot possibly all connect to a limited number of celestial bodies, thereby refuting the whole idea of souls connecting to

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celestial bodies to activate their imagination. This is an argument that is essentially the same as the classic argument against metempsychosis (tanāsukh), where it is argued that it is impossible to have two souls for one body, as their intentions to move the body may conflict with each other. This issue is raised by Suhrawardī. He asserts that this issue occurs only when one interprets the idea as meaning that each soul takes a patch of the body as its personal substrate. From the way he phrases this, it may already be clear that Suhrawardī does not interpret the idea as such. His interpretation relies on his epistemological innovation of “knowledge by presence” (al-ʿilm al-ḥuḍūrī), on which more in the next chapter. Here he says:94 [Given the idea of knowledge by presence] it is not implausible that there is [only] one body for a large number of souls, each of them seeing forms in them without [trying to] move that body so as to cause a mutual impossibility because of the different desires.

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The first part, in which Suhrawardī introduces the concept of knowledge by presence, is of course a serious and personal ­contribution he makes. Perhaps we can see some semblance of it in Ibn Sīnā’s proposed solution in Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā, where he speaks figuratively of looking into a mirror. With the last part, Suhrawardī echoes Ibn Sīnā’s al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, where Ibn Sīnā states that a connection with a celestial body is not such that a human soul would become the governing soul for the celestial body. Where Ibn Sīnā leaves it open why this is impossible, Suhrawardī points out that if more than one soul were to govern the same body, they would most likely have different intentions of controlling that body and thus would come into conflict with each other. If one wants to go left and the other right, the body remains in the center and neither soul gets their way. When Suhrawardī continues, he is not supplementing Ibn Sīnā’s idea any more, but actually goes beyond it in three respects. Having established that any celestial body can take on an arbitrary number of souls, he now describes how the difference in nobility between celestial bodies can serve as a difference between groups of souls. He

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defends this by tying it to traditional belief, such as where it is said that the Garden is in the fourth heaven.95 He also asserts that human souls may attain knowledge from celestial souls about this world. Lastly, he occupies himself with somewhat bad souls. He denies them the privilege of connecting to celestial bodies; the latter are too noble for such human beings. Since he had ruled out Earthly, elemental bodies and bodies made of smoke and vapor as candidates to which souls may go, and does not want them to connect to celestial bodies, he is basically out of options. As a way out, he introduces a new spherical body situated between the sphere of the moon and the sphere of fire. This is, as he says, right at the boundary (“isthmus,” barzakh)96 between the ethereal world of celestial bodies and elemental world of Earthly bodies. Attached to this new body, the same principle of using that body to activate their imagination applies. Only this time souls imagine images of fire, snakes, scorpions, and other eschatological punishments that tradition describes. In reference to this new sphere, Roxanne Marcotte builds her interpretation of Suhrawardī’s idea that people use their imagination after death. She points to one of the Persian allegories, Rūzī bā jamāʿat-i ṣūfiyān (“A day with a group of Sufis”), where Suhrawardī claims that there are two new spheres in between the Earthly and the heavenly worlds, by the name of Ether and Zamharīr. These spheres are more associated with the Earthly spheres than with the heavenly spheres.97 This last point is not made explicit by Marcotte, which may be because she wishes to interpret these two spheres as being the destination for both the somewhat bad and the somewhat good souls, not just the somewhat bad category. According to Marcotte, somewhat good souls will connect to the sphere of Ether, and somewhat bad souls will connect to the sphere of Zamharīr.98 What would further speak in favor of Marcotte’s interpretation, not mentioned by her, is the otherwise obscure remark of Suhrawardī in al-Mashāriʿ that the Peripatetics “have disregarded two great worlds” (al-mashāʾūn ghafalū ʿan ʿālamayn ʿaẓīmayn).99 In reference to Suhrawardī’s ­statements about souls connecting to a celestial body,100 Marcotte argues that this could also be interpreted as meaning bodies from these two spheres. I think

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this complicates the matter unnecessarily. Reading it simply as one of the celestial bodies, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and so on, seems more likely. None of the medieval commentators argued for the same idea Marcotte proposes, which serves as an indicator that it may not be the correct reading of Suhrawardī’s texts. In short, Marcotte’s interpretation of an independent world of images consisting of two spheres is stimulating, but is based on only a few remarks in Rūzī bā jamāʿat-i ṣūfiyān and perhaps one remark in al-Mashāriʿ, and therefore lacks substantial evidence. What we instead need to do to understand Suhrawardī’s ideas better is look into his magnum opus, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and see how this idea of using celestial bodies as a faculty of the imagination connects with his novel notion of suspended images and his new theory of knowledge called knowledge by presence.

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3 Suhrawardī’s Recognition of an Additional Realm

S

uhrawardī (d. 1191) did not simply embrace Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 1037) idea of allowing people to use their imagination after death. Instead, out of this idea and brought in contact with discussions over epistemology, Suhrawardī made major innovations in his system of thought around a new notion he called “suspended images” (muthul muʿallaqa). Most of these innovations are described in his magnum opus titled Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (“The Philosophy of Illumination”). This chapter collects and analyzes his thought on these suspended images, especially as they relate to eschatology.

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From Celestial Bodies to Suspended Images

Suhrawardī had established in al-Talwīḥāt that souls of somewhat good and somewhat bad people connect to celestial bodies to imagine their eschatological fate, felicitous or miserable, in accordance with what they deserve. He had argued there that this works by the process of knowledge by presence (al-ʿilm al-ḥuḍūrī), which simply requires the celestial body to be present to the soul, and does not require a soul to actually connect to a celestial body in the way a soul connects to a human body, as in the latter case this would imply control of a soul over the body. He further established that the difference among celestial bodies may serve to reflect differences in eschatological fate. As he saw 48 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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it, the higher a celestial body, the nobler and more felicitous the experience would be for a soul. On the other end of the spectrum, to facilitate the wicked souls and grant them their just punishment, Suhrawardī proposed a new body just below the sphere of the moon and just above the sphere of fire, to which these souls could connect and experience terrible things in a degree of misery appropriate to each. In the last chapter of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, a discussion unfolds that is highly similar in content and structure to the discussion in al-Talwīḥāt, albeit in a distinctly different vocabulary. Virtually the only thing that remains verbatim is at the very beginning, where in both texts one of the identity markers of the somewhat good category

Table 3.1 Suhrawardī’s two versions of the same idea Ḥikmat al-ishrāq

al-Talwīḥāt

Those who have attained an intermediate bliss and the ascetics who have surmounted [their bodies] may escape to the world of suspended images, whose locus is one of the celestial barriers.

The simpletons (al-bulh), the pious, and the ascetics . . . The learned man who says that a heavenly body can be the site of the imaginations for groups of felicitous and miserable people, because they cannot picture the world of intellect while they have not ceased their connection to the bodies, making them in potentia afterwards, which, in that regard, makes the soul wish for a connection to a body, his argument is sound.

There they can and do bring images into being. They can call forth such tastes, forms, pleasant sounds, and the like as they desire.

Those forms are more perfect than the ones that we have; for the loci in which these of ours are made evident and their bearers are deficient, while those of the former are perfect.

As for the felicitous, they enjoy imagining amazing and pretty images and forms, and everything else that is enjoyable for us.

Those forms are more noble than those of the perceptible bodies here, as these turbid things do not mix with them, and they are longer lasting and more distant from debilitation in strength. Therefore they are more enjoyable.

But its connection, after it has come to be, There they abide forever; for their does not cease, for a heavenly body knows connection with the barriers and the darknesses is unending, and there is no no corruption. corruption among the celestial barriers.

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is the term al-zuhhād (“the ascetics”). The comparison should show this sufficiently.1 Whereas the similarity shows the continuity in Suhrawardī’s corpus, the difference between these two passages betray a distinct shift. Suhrawardī does not add anything new in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The opposite is in fact true; rather, it leaves out the part about bodies of smoke and vapor (here indicated with . . . in the al-Talwīḥāt passage), and it also, and more importantly, leaves out the reason why souls would connect with a celestial body. This makes the one addition, the term “world of suspended images,” stand out all the more. What Suhrawardī does in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq over and beyond al-Talwīḥāt, is shift his attention from the sites of imagination to the objects of imagination. Together with the vocabulary that is unique to Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, this casts Ibn Sīnā’s ideas on post mortem imagination in an entirely different light. For Ibn Sīnā, the celestial bodies were the solution itself for deceased souls longing for a connection to a body, and the images souls could produce through them was a desirable by-product. Suhrawardī begins with this by-product, shifts it to the solution deceased souls obviously need, and makes celestial bodies only a condition to experience them. What, then, are suspended images (muthul muʿallaqa), and in what sense do they make a world? The gateway to answering that question is the following sentence:2

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Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images.

This sentence, in turn, connects with a number of key passages, not only in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, but also in his al-Mashāriʿ. One such connection is with the previous passage, which is parallel to al-Talwīḥāt. Soon after that passage on using “celestial barriers,” another key sentence comes up that indicates that Suhrawardī himself has “seen that place” and is therefore “certain of its existence.” This sentence says:3 I myself have had veritable experiences that indicate that there are four worlds: dominating lights, managing lights, barriers, and dark and illuminated suspended images. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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The language of this sentence reveals Suhrawardī is thinking of suspended images as an ontological category.4 In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, he adopts a vocabulary that is deliberately different from the one normally used by philosophers of his time, but reading Suhrawardī’s oeuvre and reading his commentators makes it easy to come up with a substitution list. In the case of this sentence, dominating lights is Suhrawardī’s name for intellects, managing lights are souls, and barriers are bodies.5 Suspended images does not have a corresponding term because it is something that Suhrawardī invented himself. If we only consider the division into intellects, souls, and bodies, then “worlds” here must refer to the different things a substance (jawhar) can be, or, in other words, it is a division of existence (wujūd).6 Even Suhrawardī himself oftentimes divides existence into these three categories. Suhrawardī’s Risāla fī iʿtiqād al-ḥukamāʾ is clear about it: “The worlds are three according to the sages, the world of ­intellects – being the world of Jabarūt – the world of souls – being the world of Malakūt – and the world of the Mulk, which is the world of bodies,”7 something similarly repeated in Hayākil al-nūr, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, Partaw-nāmah, and al-Lamaḥāt.8 In other texts, the division is not mentioned explicitly, though the three terms are used next to each other in a way that makes sense only if one assumes the tripartite division, such as in al-Talwīḥāt and al-Alwāḥ.9 Even in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq Suhrawardī relies on this division. In the introduction of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Suhrawardī states that one thing philosophers agree on, ancient and modern alike, is that “all speak of three worlds.”10 The system of thought he expounds in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is primarily determined by a division of all things into “dominating lights” (anwār qāhira), “managing lights” (anwār mudabbira), and “barriers” (barāzikh); intellects, souls, and bodies. Only at the end of chapter four of the second part, does he introduce suspended images, and in chapter five, the last chapter of the book, he includes the sentence above, about four worlds. As such, the suspended images cause a major disruption in ontology. Whereas before, philosophers thought there were three different kinds of things, Suhrawardī now says that we have been overlooking a fourth kind, suspended images.

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The word “suspended,” in “suspended images,” is explained by Suhrawardī as meaning that “they are suspended; not in a place, nor in a substrate (laysa fī makān wa-lā fī maḥall).”11 Suhrawardī offers an elucidating special case of suspended images, saying they are, for example, images that appear in mirrors, such as metal sheets,12 and still bodies of water.13 When we see ourselves in a mirror, we know that the image of us is (1) not in the mirror, because “the thing would not change with your point of view.”14 Meaning that if it were in the mirror, it would be like a sticker and no matter from which angle or distance you looked at it, it would not change, whereas what you see in the surface of the mirror in fact does change when you move around with your head. It is also (2) not in the air. For example, Ibn Sīnā says that if air were not a mere medium of transmission, then “whenever there is commotion or disturbance in the air, sight will be distorted . . . just as when a man runs in calm air his perception of minute things is confused.”15 In other words, if air played an active role in perception, then our eyesight would be fuzzy whenever there was a gush of wind, much like when we look from a train to the trees next to the track we see their foliage as one blur. Further, the images (3) cannot be in the eye, for “when we see a mountain as being large and sight is by and of the form, if the mountain has that magnitude, how would the large magnitude occur in a tiny pupil?”16 This is a significant rejection by Suhrawardī, as it is this theory, the theory of impression of the form of the object of knowledge onto the faculty, that was believed to be true by Ibn Sīnā and virtually all other philosophers contemporary to Suhrawardī. In what follows, I retain Suhrawardī’s suggestion that the image would be imprinted on the crystalline humor (al-jalīdiyya), also known as the crystalline lens, and not on the retina as we now know to be true, because the choice for the crystalline humor serves an important function in Suhrawardī’s thought. His counterargument points out that virtually everything we see is bigger than the crystalline humor in our eye, so how could it be truly impressed onto our crystalline humor? There are, of course, answers to this question, and

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Suhrawardī discusses three, to ultimately reject them. One is to say that our crystalline humor can potentially be sliced up into an infinite number of parts, and the form of any object of sight can likewise be divided. We can end up with an equal number of parts for both the crystalline humor and the form. With a bijective function, a one-to-one correspondence can be established and in this way an object of any size can be imprinted onto the small crystalline humor. Suhrawardī suggests that this does not solve anything, for no matter how you divide both form and crystalline humor, the form or any of its parts will always remain greater. Another interpretation is to say that the form of a big object, for example, a mountain, is indeed reduced to the size of a crystalline humor and then imprinted. Afterwards, the soul is able to interpret this input as actually meaning a huge form, by inference. According to Suhrawardī, this goes against our everyday experience of how sight works. He says that “seeing a large magnitude is through direct experience, not by inference (bi-l-mushāhada lā bi-l-istidlāl).”17 A last objection is stated only vaguely, stating that “some of them allow a single material thing to contain its own small magnitude and another large magnitude that is the image of something else.”18 Perhaps what is meant here is that one part of the crystalline humor may be used multiple times for the reception of the form of the object. This interpretation is suggested by Suhrawardī and subsequently criticized. He says that if that were so, “it would no longer be possible to perceive their arrangement.”19 We can think of a sheet of paper with a drawing on it. If we fold the sheet in the middle, to allow it to fit into an envelop, we can see only half of the drawing and not the whole arrangement of it. Each part of the crystalline humor can therefore receive only one part of the form. Two options remain, either the form’s magnitude is equal to or smaller than the magnitude of the crystalline humor, or it is greater. If the former, then the object is not at all perceived as big, if the latter, then some parts of the form fall outside the surface area of the crystalline humor and are not observed. Both cases, then, are against our common experience and should be rejected, and with that the theory of imprinting a form onto the faculty is discarded.

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Our own image in a mirror (4) cannot be our own form seen by extramission of rays from the eye, reflected in the mirror to capture our own face. This is an older theory of vision, held most famously by Plato, but also defended by Islamic philosophers such as Kindī and Fārābī.20 Suhrawardī counters by showing that no interpretation of this theory can hold. Such a ray cannot be an accident because then it could not move. If it is a body, it would either move by will or by nature. If by will, then we would be able to hold it back and this is patently not the case. If it moves by nature, it would, for example, penetrate earthenware more easily than glass, since it is more porous, and again we know this not to be the case. Further, any such ray would need to travel enormous distances and then we would expect that we would see objects in order of their distance. Even with objects that are huge distances apart, such as planets, we still see them at the same time when we look up to the sky, and this proves we are not emitting rays to see them. Finally, our own image in a mirror (5) is not our own form, seen from another path. This is likely a reference to Ibn Sīnā’s theory of images in mirrors, who claimed that mirrors are only conduits of forms, a middle man, much like air, but with the difference that it changes the direction of sight.21 Suhrawardī retorts that images in mirrors look smaller than they actually are, and are reversed, so the mirror is clearly not a neutral conduit. All of this, images in mirrors cannot be. Instead, Suhrawardī proposes that they exist by themselves (qāʾim bi-nafsihi), and that they are visible in the mirror because it is its place of manifestation. If the image were imprinted on the mirror, the mirror would be “a place of inherence” (maḥall), but now that the image is only suspended, the mirror is merely “a place of manifestation” (maẓhar).22 “Suspended” therefore means that the image has a loose relationship with a thing; the thing makes the image manifest without the image losing its selfsubsistence. The image is, as it were, suspended in mid-air. Suspended images do not only have mirrors as places of manifestation. Suhrawardī says they are also present in the faculty of imagination, located in the brain during life,23 and located among the celestial

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bodies after death.24 He further says he has the same “solution to the problems of vision, forms in mirrors, and the imagination,” and he says that “the form . . . in the crystalline humor must be comparable to the form in the mirror.”25 In other words, any act of seeing involves a suspended image, with the eye as its place of manifestation. What all these places of manifestation have in common is that they are smooth surfaces. Suhrawardī says that “images only occur with smooth bodies,”26 and this is what the crystalline humor is, and also what celestial bodies are, making them perfectly fine candidates for being a place of manifestation. In fact, I would argue that Suhrawardī’s argumentation implies that any sense perception is through suspended images. Before I come back to that, I first want to explain more what suspended images are. From Mere Fantasies to Real Things

Suspended images have characteristics in common with both bodies and intellects, but in the end are neither. This can be learned from the different words that Suhrawardī uses for suspended images. The most common term is muthul and muthul muʿallaqa, but he also uses ṣuwar and ṣuwar muʿallaqa ẓulmāniyya wa-mustanīra; dark and illumined suspended forms.27 Especially the long form is interesting, since it shows the contrast in which suspended images are: on the one hand, they are like forms and therefore abstract; on the other hand, they are “dark and illumined,” Suhrawardī’s way of saying they are like bodies, and therefore material. In general, Suhrawardī does not emphasize the abstractness of suspended images. Only twice does he explicitly qualify them as such.28 Nevertheless, the context in which suspended images are most discussed, that of eschatology, together with the term “images,” muthul, may make one think that these images are Platonic Forms.29 They are not, and Suhrawardī says so by arguing that “Platonic Forms are luminous and fixed, while these suspended images are dark and illumined.”30 Suhrawardī means here that Platonic Forms are immutable, universal forms, whereas suspended images take on particular shapes. An additional difference is that, like bodies, suspended images can come into being and go out of it, whereas Platonic Forms are fixed.31

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Suspended images are much more like bodies, as is expressed in another term he uses, sayāṣī muʿallaqa, “suspended fortresses.” Fortress is a term Suhrawardī uses to denote a body. Therefore, a suspended image may be seen as as a suspended body, presumably in the sense that they are observed similarly as bodies are observed. Indeed, suspended images can be observed like any kind of thing of the bodily world: “tastes, forms, pleasant sounds, and the like,”32 are all able to be perceived when encountering a suspended image. Scent is explicitly mentioned elsewhere,33 and it seems even touch can be presented as a suspended image, as Suhrawardī speaks of “violent attacks and overwhelming seizures by astonishing images and sounds,”34 perhaps later filled in by Suhrawardī “as though the hair of the head is grasped and one is dragged roughly and tormented with a pleasurable pain.”35 To balance out this graphic image, let me also mention a sweeter sensation that Suhrawardī describes, one “like warm water pouring upon the head.”36 Suspended images are therefore not to be limited to visual forms. They are simply any observable representation, in any of the five sensory forms with which we are familiar. There are, further, no restrictions as to what it is: “mountains, seas, lands, amazing sounds and persons are all self-subsistent images.”37 More abstract things are also possible, such as “written lines” or “an image of a sound, which is a sound,”38 but in general the description of suspended images gives the impression of a space in which there is a certain topography. This is chiefly achieved by another set of terms Suhrawardī uses to point to suspended images. We have already noticed the term “world of suspended images” (ʿālam al-muthul al-muʿallaqa), but Suhrawardī also uses the term ʿālam al-ashbāḥ al-mujarrada,39 the world of abstract apparitions, and even the shorthand al-ʿālam al-mithālī,40 the imaginable world. The latter would play an important role after Suhrawardī, but the one time it appears in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq does not make it a prominent term of itself. The former is also used only once, perhaps because Suhrawardī thought the denotation of “apparition” too unreal, as though these images are only a mirage. Its use in combination with the word “world”

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is ­nonetheless significant, for it shows that Suhrawardī wanted to phrase the domain of suspended images in worldly terms. To speak of suspended images in terms of a world gives it spatiality and, arguably, a geography, a suggestion oftentimes promoted by scholars.41 We should resist the temptation to then ask the question where exactly the world of suspended images is. From a point of view within the bodily world, this seems like a reasonable question, but of the other worlds, intellect and soul, we would not ask “where” they are and this we likewise cannot do with the world of suspended images. Intellects and souls are everywhere and nowhere; they permeate the bodily world. These different worlds, of intellect, soul, body, and now also of suspended image, are not separate worlds in the sense of fluids with different densities separating from each other, leaving the fluid with a higher density (e.g., water) below the fluid with a lower density (e.g., oil), constituting a vertical, spatial separation. Rather, these worlds are, if we stick with the simile of fluids, as an emulsion; they form one whole, the one being indistinguishable from the other, yet each stays its own and is not absorbed into the other. The way causality is explained in virtually all texts of Islamic philosophy, including those by Ibn Sīnā and Suhrawardī,42 makes it tempting for us to opt for the simile of fluids of different densities. God is on top, then follow the intellects, below are the celestial souls, then the celestial bodies, then the human souls, and then all the Earthly bodies. This image is efficiently painted with only a few brushes and easily facilitates discussions about it. For example, it connects well with our geo-cosmological view of the Earth being at the center of the universe, with celestial bodies in ever larger spheres around us, with the stability of their motion seemingly being a function of their distance from us. It also makes it natural to speak in terms of God’s will descending, and men, in search of God, ascending, and it gives an intuitive notion of nobility; the higher, the better.43 All of these factors suggest strongly a vertical image. Suhrawardī, in fact, speaks of “vertical” and “horizontal” orders in the cosmos.44 Yet such is not actually, spatially true. That would be to turn around the proper line of reasoning. From the image of a vertical ordering, a mere simile, we

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can understand more easily various phenomena and desired results, most notably the chain of causality of the entire cosmos. But those phenomena and desired results cannot be evidence that the image of a vertical ordering is existentially true. When we speak of intellects, souls, bodies, and now also of suspended images, each of them exists in its proper realm, which should not be seen as a place of existence, but perhaps we can better speak of modes or dimensions of existence. Despite all this, and even if we see the usage of the word “world” as innocent – after all, it is also used as “world of intellects,” “world of souls,” and “world of bodies” – Suhrawardī mentions one term that especially gives the suspended images a sense of spatiality. This is the term “the eighth clime in which are Jabalq, Jabars, and Hurqalya,”45 al-iqlīm al-thāmin alladhī fīhi jābalq wa-jābarṣ wa-hūrqalyā. In ancient and medieval philosophy, the inhabited part of the Earth was divided into seven climes, regions of which each have a particular climate and a certain kind of humans living there.46 Based on this, Suhrawardī cleverly calls the world of suspended images “the eighth clime,” suggesting it is similar to any of the seven climes. It could be that Suhrawardī makes reference to this in some of his Persian treatises with the term Nākojā-ābād (“Nowheresville”).47 In one of the stories he has the protagonist ask “In which clime is that?,” to which it is answered “In the clime to which your index finger cannot point.”48 In one case, an anonymous commentator does not think so and instead proposes that it simply refers to the world of intelligibles: “the absolute spiritual entities who are devoid of both Earthly and celestial matter.”49 However, the term “Nowheresville” and the remark that it is a place that you cannot point out are useful ways to understand the more spatially driven understanding of suspended images. Jabars and Jabalq are names of mythical cities, as explained in a small passage from Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ. This passage is an expansion of the sentence with which I opened my book: “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the barriers, in which are suspended images.”50 As such, it is a crucial passage in understanding that sentence, and we shall return to it often. The context of this passage in al-Mashāriʿ is a discussion on

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the unicity of the world, as a consequence of the discussion on space and void. The unicity of the world was a standard topic in classical and medieval philosophy, most famously argued for by Aristotle in On the Heavens, Book One, chapters Eight and Nine. It attracted a large commentary tradition in late Antiquity and in medieval Europe,51 and, apparently, also received its fair share of attention among Islamic philosophers. The issue at stake is to establish that there can be only one physical world, namely, the one in which we live. This conclusion was crucial support for the geocentricity of classical and medieval cosmology. For Suhrawardī, this discussion on the unicity of the world brought up an association with his idea of a fourth world. At the beginning of his treatment of the discussion, he announces that he will keep himself to discuss the standard account and will only divulge the truth (al-ḥaqq al-ṣarīḥ) in his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.52 However, at the end of his discussion he cannot help but go into his own opinion, which reads:53 If you hear among the statements of the ancients [about] the existence of a magnitudinous world, different from intellect and soul, containing [a number of] cities impossible to count, with among them what the Lawgiver has called Jabalqa and Jabarsa, then do not be too quick in dismissing it. For the wayfarers have seen it and gotten from it what they desire and aim for, even a bit of sorcery and soothsaying. If you were to refute them with a proof, they would refute you with experience. So be quiet and patient, for when you arrive at my book called “The Philosophy of Illumination,” of which the like has not existed before, then perhaps you will understand something about it, if your teacher guides you. If not, then use philosophy to believe in it.

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This passage introduces yet another term for suspended images, namely, “a magnitudinous world” (ʿālam miqdārī). This is in my opinion a good way to describe the world of suspended images, because it is exactly the fact that these images have magnitude without being material that separates them from the bodily world. Even so, the term does not appear in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, where in the central sentence the term “other world” (ʿālam ākhar) is used. Given that this term ʿālam Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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ākhar is used in the chapter on eschatology, and given that the term ʿālam miqdārī is used in the context of a discussion on the unicity of the world, it might be that Suhrawardī was responding to discussions among theologians about the place of Heaven and Hell. For example, Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 1209) relates the argument that Heaven and Hell are not located in “another world” (ʿālam ākhar) for this would imply the existence of a vacuum between the two spheres of this and that other world.54 In this passage from al-Mashāriʿ, Suhrawardī also speaks of “wayfarers” (al-sālikīn) who experience this world. Note that he does not say that these people go in it; they simply experience it. Even though Suhrawardī calls all the suspended images combined a world, he does not say we can enter and leave it, because, as I said before, suspended images are, together with intellects, souls, and bodies, like an emulsion, being everywhere and nowhere specifically. “Separating from the imaginable world,” says Suhrawardī, “goes without motion and without finding it to be in a particular direction.”55 The mention of wayfarers is significant, for it points to uses of suspended images other than simply sense perception and mirrors. Indeed, next to the role suspended images play in ordinary life, Suhrawardī explains through them all kinds of extraordinary things. These fall under four headers: suspended images are experienced after death, in daily life, in dreams, or during meditation.

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Suspended Images after Death

After death, suspended images are witnessed by use of celestial bodies.56 This is the idea that Suhrawardī took from Ibn Sīnā and is likely the point of departure for how he came to embed suspended images in his philosophy. Souls attach to celestial bodies to experience them. Suhrawardī says that these images come into being “in accordance with their moral qualities” when he speaks of those who deserve punishment, but this might equally apply to those who deserve a reward. The difference is that for the good souls, their images are in agreement with their desires, since their character is refined enough to desire and deserve the good. They therefore do not even realize Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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that they are technically not in control of their experience. For bad souls, there is a discrepancy between what they want and what they deserve, and hence the images they experience convey an alarming sense of not being in control. Even though Suhrawardī suggests that souls can climb from this type of experience to the world of intellect, he also argues that souls could have this type of experience forever, since the celestial bodies will never go corrupt.57 For Ibn Sīnā, the experience after death consists of one’s own imagination. It did not bother him that this would result in mere fancies of the imagination, “for [the person] delights, and is pained, in reality by the impression in the soul, not that [the thing impressed] has external existence.”58 An important consequence of Suhrawardī’s thinking is that the post mortem experience is tied to actually existing things, suspended images that are self-subsistent. The imagination is not producing them, but is merely the place of manifestation. This reality of suspended images takes the wind out of the sails of those – theologians, mostly – who criticize the philosophical view on the afterlife for not affirming the reality of the eschatological promises made in the Koran. Be that as it may, Suhrawardī still holds that the entirely good souls go to the world of intellect, and this to him is the ultimate goal for any person.59 Further, Suhrawardī held an ambiguous position on metempsychosis (tanāsukh), an idea virtually unanimously rejected among Muslim thinkers.60 On the fate of the somewhat bad and the bad souls, Suhrawardī wrote in al-Talwīḥāt that they connect to a different sphere, just below the celestial world. In al-Talwīḥāt, he said that “with this [explanation], what was left of the unclarity of the people of metempsychosis is taken away.”61 In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq he argues that the fate for the bad souls “is the same whether metempsychosis is true or false, for the proofs on either side of the contradictory are weak (fa-inna l-ḥujaj ʿalā ṭarfay al-naqīḍ fīhi ḍaʿīfa); . . . they will possess shadows of suspended forms.”62 Perhaps here Suhrawardī is thinking of his suggestion in al-Talwīḥāt that such souls connect to a sphere below the celestial world. This can be seen as part of the material world, which is why it resembles metempsychosis when a human

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soul goes to this place, but since it is at the very edge of the material, it is not metempsychosis in the classical sense. Suhrawardī is simply not saying enough in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq to draw a conclusive interpretation, whether or not he wants bad souls to connect to celestial bodies and whether or not he wants to make a distinction between bad and somewhat bad souls, but it is at minimum unconventional. Speaking even more to the point of classical Islamic eschatology, Suhrawardī rejects the notion of a bodily resurrection and of a Last Day. This becomes clear from Suhrawardī’s argumentation on the recurrence of events. He repeatedly qualifies this recurrence as not meaning “the recurrence of the non-existent.”63 With this, he positions himself in the theological discussion on bodily resurrection. Two interpretations of bodily resurrection (al-maʿād al-jismānī) came to dominate the discussion. These were to see bodily resurrection either as the “gathering of the scattered parts” (jamʿ al-ajzāʾ al-mutafarriqa) or the “return of the non-existent” (iʿādat al-maʿdūm).64 The latter was usually preferred and for Suhrawardī to deny the possibility of the return of the non-existent is therefore tantamount to denying bodily resurrection. In al-Mashāriʿ, Suhrawardī dares to openly make this connection, saying:

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As for those who surmise that a person shall return exactly the same (bi-ʿaynihi), or that a celestial state shall return exactly the same, well, this is impossible. I have mentioned before proofs for the impossibility of this, and I shall further prove that the doctrine (madhhab) of metempsychosis is incorrect.65

Bodily resurrection in the sense of a return of the non-existent is denied and, additionally, it is implied that bodily resurrection is but a form of metempsychosis, which he objects to in this case. His denial of the Last Day (yawm al-qiyāma) is noticeable in the discussion on the recurrence of events as well. Noticeably, Suhrawardī’s arguments in favor of recurrence presuppose the post-eternity of the world.66 This would make it seem hard to conceive of a “Last Day.” Unsurprisingly, then, the notion is mentioned only sparingly by Suhrawardī; and when it is, it is used in a figurative sense, meaning the end of our Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Earthly life. In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq this is not obvious, as all that is said is that people should heed the prophets and not fall for lies before the Moment of Resurrection catches up with them.67 When using other texts from Suhrawardī, we can interpret this sentence as meaning that people should, before they die, come to conclusive proof, that is, intellectual knowledge, not mere conjecture, which is based on the faculty of estimation. For example, in Kalimat al-taṣawwuf he calls the estimation “Satan” (Iblīs), who disagrees with the intellect “until the Day of Resurrection.”68 It is the same in al-Alwāḥ, where he explains the Hadith “whoever dies, his Resurrection has come” (man māta fa-qad qāmat qiyāmatuhu).69 He relates all kinds of apocalyptical events mentioned in the Koran, such as the spreading of the heaven, the dispersement of the stars (Q 82:1), an earthquake (Q 99:1), and the crumbling of the Earth (Q 89:21), to various body parts; the head, the senses, the body, and the bones. He further mentions two verses from the Koran (Q 6:94 and 19:95) to support his view that only the soul remains after death. Hence, the “Day of Resurrection” in the Hadith is most easily interpreted as merely a figure of speech for the end of our Earthly lives. In another passage in al-Alwāḥ, we have Suhrawardī say that there are two births, a smaller and a greater one. The smaller is what we usually call birth, and the greater one is not the Day of Resurrection, but death.70 From the description of what happens after this greater birth, it is clear that Suhrawardī is thinking of a soul attaining the world of intellect.

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Suspended Images in Daily Life

In daily life, an extraordinary way suspended images manifest themselves is when they make jinn and devils manifest in this world. It seems that deceased souls who have lived a bad life play a role in this.71 In most texts, Suhrawardī suggests that demons are figments of our faculty of imagination and then transmitted to our common sense by which we perceive them.72 In the way we perceive them, they are similar to veridical visions, but instead of originating from beyond the physical realm, they are merely from within, from the imagination, thereby the contrary of a veridical vision, but rather “a satanic, Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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false matter.”73 We would thus expect jinns and demons to be witnessed as suspended images. This is indeed what Suhrawardī claims in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, however, he asserts that they could be something that is equally visible for anyone present, even though “the hands of men cannot reach them.”74 This would seem to imply that in this case, demons are, like objects in a mirror, manifest in the physical world and intersubjective. Suspended Images in Dreams and During Meditation

Suhrawardī also uses the suspended images to interpret our experience during dreams and, for some, during meditation (“divine trances,” al-subātāt al-ilāhiyya).75 He places emphasis on two aspects, one that has more to do with dreams, the other more with meditation. The first aspect is that angels can take suspended images to manifest themselves.76 They show themselves to people in “beautiful human forms” or “graven statues,” and speak with them.77 The second aspect is that people who are especially well prepared can be in control over which suspended image they are experiencing. Suhrawardī uses the Sufi term “station” (maqām), saying that such people are in a special station called “Be” (kun), which I take to be a reference to the verse in the Koran (Q 3:47) that says “God is like that: He creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says ‘Be’ to it, and it is.” We do not have these experiences normally, because our body stands in the way, distracting us. The two principal distractions are the processes of sense perception and intellectual comprehension. The disappearance of these two distractions can happen in various ways. Suhrawardī’s description in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is not different from any other of his texts. al-Talwīḥāt gives an exemplary passage on it. He says that such happens:78

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(1) either by innate ability, as with the prophets, (2) or by acquired ability, like [by] the habits of the pious and the saints, (3) or by the obstacle [for comprehending such knowledge] being weakened as a consequence of a necessary matter like sleep, (4) or naturally (fiṭrī) as most who weaken their faculties naturally, (5) or like the Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

suhrawardī’s recognition of   an   additional realm | 65 e­ pileptic or the bilious, (6) or received as . . . the soothsayers . . . which is [in their case] undoubtedly [a form of] natural weakness (fiṭrī) . . . or children and women . . .

This last example is worked out a bit wordily in al-Talwīḥāt, but comes down to the idea that children can be engrossed or fascinated by something, thereby shutting out one after another sense. The mention of women is repeated in Partaw-nāmah, where he explains it by saying that “women and children are specified here because their mind is weak.”79 In al-Alwāḥ and al-Mashāriʿ, the power of the prophets is called fiṭrī, just as it is ascribed to the soothsayers in other texts. al-Talwīḥāt’s fourth category does not find its counterpart in other texts, instead, for this category soothsayers are always mentioned as an example. What seems to be the idea is that both prophets and soothsayers have an innate capacity for receiving knowledge of the unseen, but for prophets this is a capacity by strength, while for soothsayers it is a capacity by weakness. Likewise, both saints and madmen acquire their capacity, but for the saint it is a capacity by strength, while for the madman it is by weakness. Lastly, it can also happen involuntarily, either necessarily as when we sleep, or accidentally, as when women or children become absorbed in what they are doing.

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From Bodily Perception to Spiritual Experience

Suspended images are not exclusive to the imagination, but exist in every bodily faculty we have. This bears pointing out, as one of the leading scholars on Suhrawardī, Henry Corbin, speaks of “the organ that perceives this reality, namely, the imaginative consciousness, the cognitive Imagination,”80 and also speaks of the “Active Imagination.”81 From this remark onward, grasping suspended images is portrayed as an activity solely for the imagination, in dreams, visions, or after death. This interpretation has loomed large over the study of Suhrawardī.82 As we saw in the previous section, the imagination does indeed play a role in dreams, visions, and eschatological experiences. However, this is a receiving role, rather than reaching out. The soul receives something, if in a state in which it is Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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susceptible to receive something from on high.83 The imagination is the first place of manifestation for a suspended image from on high. Exactly who decides what kind of image becomes manifest is unclear, but it seems that it is in this process that the imagination can be said to have some active role. The image may be “transformed into other things resembling it, or opposite to it, or corresponding to it in some respect,” says Suhrawardī.84 It therefore requires interpretation. This is not surprising, as the way Suhrawardī describes how the imagination works is exactly like this, always changing the input it receives. As he puts it in Partaw-nāmah, “the imagination is always moving from one image to another, never at rest.”85 In this sense, the imagination is more an obstacle than a help. It “confuses” or “disturbs” the transmission of knowledge. Suhrawardī uses derivates of the verb shawwasha for this.86 One metaphor Suhrawardī uses is particularly telling: “This imagination is an obstructing mountain between our souls and the world of intellect.”87 Suhrawardī gives a reason why it is for our own benefit that this communication from the higher world to us runs by means of the imagination. He relates this sentence to the Koran verse on Moses, who asks God to reveal Himself to him (Q 7:143). God answers that Moses should look at the mountain, and that God will reveal Himself to the mountain:88

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Do you not see that when Moses requested the vision, it was said to him: “But look to the mountain. If it stands still, you will see Me,” because this obstructing mountain is always moving, occupying the soul, so when the divine omen overtakes the core of the imagination, it overwhelms it, as the Most High has said: “When his Lord revealed Himself to the mountain, He sent it crashing down and Moses fell down senseless.” Human sovereignty ceased by the appearance of the light of the Real.

In other words, for those for whom “the light of the Real” would be too bright, the imagination stands in between to protect the person from obliteration. It changes what is incomprehensible into something comprehensible. As such, it serves an important function, but remains only a conduit. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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The reason why the faculty of the imagination itself does not comprehend the images it makes manifest has to do with Suhrawardī’s innovation in epistemology. This is not just any innovation, but a reconsideration of the very definition of knowledge. Whereas the notion of knowledge that was current at the time is knowledge by correspondence (al-ʿilm al-ḥuṣūlī), Suhrawardī introduces the concept of “knowledge by presence” (al-ʿilm al-ḥuḍūrī). This new definition is summarized as follows: “intellection is the presence of the thing to the self abstract from matter, or, if you want to say, the absence of its obscurity from it.”89 The thing that the object needs to be present to is “the self” (al-dhāt). This self (or, soul) is the kernel of a person. It is what makes the person that specific person, and it is that and only that which apprehends. “That in you, which apprehends is not an organ nor anything concerning a barrier,”90 says Suhrawardī. Instead,  “all of that goes back to the managing light, into one faculty  which is  its luminous self.”91 So, when we imagine something, it is not the imagination that apprehends, but the soul. When we see or smell something, again, it is not the eyes or the nose that apprehend, but the soul. The soul is therefore “the sense of all the senses.”92 The relationship of the soul with the body is therefore much less strict than it is for, for example, Ibn Sīnā. Suhrawardī points this out himself, saying that were it not for the practical aspect of the soul, controlling the motions of the body, it would not be immediately clear which specific body belongs to which soul.93 This is, I think, a major relief for the idea of connecting to celestial bodies in order to imagine eschatological promises. Ibn Sīnā left it unexplained how a soul that is attached to a specific body can, on the one hand, not connect to another Earthly body, but is, on the other hand, allowed to connect to a celestial body and share it with innumerable other souls. He further left it unexplained how continuity of existence is guaranteed between separation from the human body and connection to the celestial body. With Suhrawardī’s idea that personal identity is completely wrapped up in the soul, and that bodily faculties are fulfilling roles only as conduits of perception, it becomes more obvious that it

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is no problem at all for a soul to connect to a celestial body and use it to engage in imaginable perception. Suhrawardī’s discussion of knowledge by presence progressively includes all perception. He starts with self-perception, which is a special case in which knowledge by presence is most easily demonstrated. To stay on topic in this book, I cannot go into the level of detail the topic of knowledge by presence deserves on its own.94 The summary of the idea is in two steps. The first step is that a “self” (dhāt) needs to know itself by itself, not by use of a faculty. The second step is that a self can only know itself simply as its self, not by means of an image or form. For the first step, the most important argument is a reductio ad absurdum of the alternative. The following is Ibn Kammūna’s explanation of Suhrawardī’s argument:95 Something otherB than the selfA, if it comprehendsp the selfA, then itB had comprehended something other than itB, and to everything that comprehends something else applies that it comprehends that its self is what comprehends that other. That is an intellection of itsB self which derives from itp. Therefore, the thingB other than the self of the soulA, if itB comprehends the soulA, itB would [also] comprehended its selfB, which makes that otherB a [kind of] soul about which our discussion is concerned, not a soul which can be supposed to not comprehend its [own] self. So the discussion applies again to the perception of thatB soul of its [own] self; whether it is by its selfB, or by something other than itC. If it is by something other than itC, then that means that it is not the soulB but that otherC, and the issue does not stop regressing like that, which is impossible.

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The subscript and superscript letters are my own doing, to make it easier to follow the argument. Essentially, what this argument says is that if the self had a faculty by which it knows itself, then it would follow that that faculty knows that it knows, which implies that that faculty knows itself, and then we can ask the same question about that faculty’s self-knowledge, arriving at an infinite regress which never actually resolves. The step from knowing a thing to knowing that one is knowing a thing is not argued for and needs to be assumed as Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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i­ ntuitively true. The step from knowing that one knows to knowing the self is, I think, explained by considering that knowing that one knows is a complex thought, consisting of the simple elements of the self and the other. A complex thought presupposes knowledge of the components, and therefore self-knowledge needs to be assumed. We therefore know that self-knowledge is immediate, without the use of a faculty. The most important argument for the second step, that we know our self without the use of an image, is put forward in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq:96 An imageI [= an image] of the I-ness (anāʾiyya) is not itS [= the soul]. It is in relation to itS an “it,” and the thing observed is at that point the image. It follows that the comprehension of I-ness is, in itself, a perception of what makes itI an “it,” and that [such a] perception of itsS self in itself is [actually] a perception of something else, which is impossible. This is in contrast to the externalsE, for the image and what applies to thatE are both an “it.”

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The argument points out that every image we obtain is extra to us and we can therefore look at that image from a first-person perspective and not refer to it as “I,” but by the third-person pronoun “it.” But we know our self to be “I.” Therefore, an image can never give us full knowledge of our self, and we need to conclude that self-knowledge is without an image. The last sentence pointedly remarks that for all things beyond ourselves, an image can perfectly represent the object, as we refer to both the object and the image with the same pronoun, namely, “it.” From the special case of self-knowledge, Suhrawardī expands outwards. He holds that the body of the soul is similarly present to the soul without being impressed onto the soul or represented by an image. Things beyond the body are present to the soul, either directly if they are abstract things, or by meditation of the body, if they are material. Ibn Kammūna (d. 1284) sums it up thusly:97

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The comprehension of the particulars in as much as they are particulars, is not possible by forms in the soul, as they can only be Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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­ niversal. So the conclusion is that the soul comprehends its paru ticular body and its particular faculties and many of the particular comprehensions of these faculties while that is not by the occurrence of a form in it. So it happens due to these things being present to it, either in the external [reality] or in one of the faculties.

And as Suhrawardī says:98

As for [the perception of] the particulars, it is either by the presence of their selfs and an illumination from the soul, or by the occurrence of their form in a thing present to the soul, onto which the soul bestows an illumination. So the soul perceives particulars either by their presence to it, or by their presence in a thing present to it.

This, then, is how Suhrawardī’s definition of knowledge works, as “the presence of the thing to the self abstract from matter, or, if you want to say, the absence of its obscurity from it.”99 Particular things are represented by suspended images in one of the five external senses, through being opposite and being illumined,100 from there, they are present to the self, which perceives them. In this sense, the soul is “without need of a form,”101 that is, no form is pressed upon the soul. But it does need a suspended image, being present to it through one of the bodily faculties.102

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The Detection of Images as Being Suspended

Suhrawardī said that “whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of . . . suspended images.”103 He further said that he saw that place himself, as he says that he came to know about this fourth world of suspended images because of “trustworthy experiences” (tajārub ṣaḥīḥa).104 In the end, after rejecting all other options of how an image can appear in a mirror, this argument from experience is the only statement about the existence of suspended images that is positively stated. This argument is essentially an appeal to authority, but it is not a fallacy, or at least not meant to be so. In the succinct statement in al-Mashāriʿ, translated above, we see this appeal to be an important part of Suhrawardī’s thinking. No less than four Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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different authorities are invoked: “the ancients,” “the Lawgiver,” “the wayfarers,” and “you, if your teacher guides you.” They represent the four categories that Suhrawardī regularly invokes to give support to suspended images, namely, philosophers, prophets, mystics, and actual experience. For philosophers, he favors ancient philosophers, especially Plato, but also Socrates, Empedocles, and Pythagoras. Iranian philosophers are mentioned too, such as Jamasp, Frashostar, Bozorgmehr, and “the sages of Persia and India.”105 For prophets, he chooses not only Muhammad, but also mythical figures such as Hermes, Agathadaemon, and Asclepius, and the Iranian Zoroaster and Kay-Khusraw.106 Mystics he seldom calls by name, although he does mention Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 874) and Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 896).107 Besides wayfarers he also refers to mystics as “those who have traveled the path of God,” “those who have ascended into the soul,” and “the visionary.”108 The heavy amount of name-dropping is Suhrawardī’s strategy to give overwhelming evidence for the veracity of the notion of suspended images. To experience any perception as involving suspended images is, however, not easy, and Suhrawardī hints at that such a realization basically only happens with a veridical inspiration during sleep or meditation.109 In the passage from al-Mashāriʿ this comes out in the sentence “For the wayfarers have seen it and gotten from it what they desire and aim for, even a bit of sorcery and soothsaying,” which hints at an extraordinary experience. In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq we know of course that he says that “whoever sees that station [of ‘Be’] knows with certainty the existence of a world other than that of the barriers.”110 Such experience is to Suhrawardī just as valid as any other kind of empirical evidence. “If the observations of one or two individuals are to be given weight in astronomy,” says Suhrawardī, “how then may we ignore the testimony of the pillars of philosophy and prophecy as to that which they beheld in their spiritual observations?”111 In other words, if we are to trust only a handful of ordinary people on observational data in astronomy, all the more should we take heed of a vast number of people who are among the great minds of history when they all acknowledge the existence of suspended images.

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In fact, experience is so conclusive, for Suhrawardī, that he gives it precedence over intellectual argumentation. This is reflected twice in the passage from al-Mashāriʿ. In the middle, it says “If you were to refute them with a proof, they would refute you with experience,” which implies that experience (al-mushāhada) trumps proof (ḥujja). Then, at the very end, it reads “perhaps you will understand something about it, if your teacher guides you. If not, then use philosophy to believe in it.” A more literal translation of the last part is “If not, then be a believer in it through philosophy (wa-illā fa-kun muʾmin bi-lḥikma).” Agreeing to something’s existence based on rational inquiry is thus equated with belief, and only first-hand experience makes a convincing decision possible. More so, Suhrawardī says that oftentimes it is experience that comes first, and only then an intellectual inquiry is undertaken to rationally make sense of the experience, and to explain it to others.112 It is in fact in this way that Suhrawardī opens his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, saying about the contents that “it did not occur to me at first through cogitation, but rather it occurred through something else and subsequently I sought a proof so that would I cease contemplating the proof, nothing would make me fall into doubt.”113 Suhrawardī, then, counts himself among those who can rely on experience for the assurance of the existence of certain things. This includes the suspended images, as he said himself: “I myself have had trustworthy experiences indicating that there are four worlds.” We are in the lucky position of having a description the moment he began to understand the value of experience, and its precedence over rational inquiry. He writes: “The author of these lines was once zealous in defense of the Peripatetic path in denying these things. He was indeed nearly resolved upon that view, ‘until he saw his Lord’s demonstration’ (Q 12:24).”114 It therefore seems that Suhrawardī was seized by a veridical experience in a dream or meditation, and that this experience was so real to him that he immediately understood from it the value of experience itself. Suhrawardī thinks we do not have to rely on rational inquiry to know about about suspended images, but each of us can know about them through experience. In the passage in al-Mashāriʿ, he closes with

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an encouragement to us the readers to seek such an experience out. In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, he gives a similar encouragement, and also says that everyone who does his best can make progress in this regard.115 Sources and Issues Left Undone

Suhrawardī plays his cards close to his chest when it comes to his sources. Henry Corbin argued for influences from Ancient Iranian spiritual traditions, that is, Zoroastrianism. One such attempt is his “Imago Terræ Mazdéenne.”116 Unfortunately, it is unclear where his source texts stop and his own voice starts and vice versa. In addition, he merely claims, but gives no evidence, that it was exactly this from  which Suhrawardī developed his suspended images.117 Ismāʿīlī and Sufi influences have been suggested as well. Regarding the first, Hermann Landolt suggests that Suhrawardī’s use of barzakh is preceded by Sijistānī,118 and he writes that “the notion of imagination (takhayyul) as a privileged tool of meditation . . . was even more systematically developed as such by Kirmānī than by Suhrawardī.”119 Unfortunately, Landolt does not elaborate further. Similarly, for Sufism Landolt merely points out that Sufis before and after Suhrawardī held similar ideas. He mentions by name Shams al-Dīn Daylamī (d. 1197?) and his student Maḥmūd-i Ushnuhī, as well as Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 1220) and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240).120 Arguing for this influence, Landolt does not go beyond assertions that similar ideas are possibly present in texts from around the same time or slightly earlier. The same goes for Fazlur Rahman, who connects Suhrawardī’s idea of a fourth world with the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and merely asserts that this fourth world “is a specific product of Medieval Muslim mysticism,” without providing intertextual evidence.121 What we perhaps may learn, then, is that Landolt and Rahman both had a hunch that Suhrawardī was not operating in a void on the idea of suspended images, and that we should not rule out influence from the Sufi and Ismāʿīlī discourse. Among the theologians, some have pointed to Ghazālī (d. 1111) as an influence.122 Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār features light as a primary ontological entity, and this is remarkably close to Suhrawardī’s

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ontology in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The usage of the word “imaginal” by ­translator David Buchman is a clear attempt to connect Ghazālī’s Mishkāt to Corbin’s interpretation of Suhrawardī,123 but it is a vain attempt as the Mishkāt does not discuss the role of imagination after death and affirms only sensory and intelligible realms.124 I find the context of philosophy most helpful. The relationship with Ibn Sīnā has been discussed in the previous chapter. Beyond Ibn Sīnā, it is pseudo-Aristotle’s Uthūlūjiyā (a free translation of Plotinus’ Enneads IV–VI) that most obviously influenced Suhrawardī.125 Rüdiger Arnzen claims that the central term of this chapter, mithāl muʿallaq, stems from the Uthūlūjiyā, meaning “the connection of different entities with their higher Hypostasis.” Four instances in Uthūlūjiyā allow this meaning, as they discuss how particular entities attain their characteristics.126 But in two other cases, mutaʿallaqa is used to describe that a soul, even when connected to a body in this world, remains in contact with the higher world.127 In two other cases, it is used to describe a state of proximity to the First Cause.128 In another case, it is used to express the dependence of particular entities on primal matter.129 Assuming one consistent meaning for muʿallaq/mutaʿallaq in Uthūlūjiyā, I consider it to mean something more general, such as “the derivation of certain characteristics.” This is far from the way Suhrawardī uses the word, who instead glosses muʿallaq as meaning “not in a place nor in a locus.”130 I therefore think it is unlikely that Suhrawardī derived the term mithāl muʿallaq from Uthūlūjiyā. One other philosopher requires discussion, Abū l-Barakāt Baghdādī (d. 1164?), who seems to have been an immediate source. He does not speak of suspended images, and neither does he accept the idea of using celestial bodies for imagination, but his discussions on knowledge show similar concerns to those of Suhrawardī. Since it is just as much the discussion on knowledge as it is the discussion on eschatological imagination that led Suhrawardī to his innovative ideas, Baghdādī is in my opinion an important interlocutor for Suhrawardī. I will here touch on a couple of issues on which Baghdādī and Suhrawardī show a remarkable similarity.

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A central suggestion in Suhrawardī’s philosophy, that it is the soul itself which is the actual perceiver of all perceptions, can also be found in Baghdādī. He concludes that:131 In short, the perceiver of the existents in the concrete things and the imagined forms in the minds is, according to us, one, and it is the self of the human being. As it is for each of us cognizant of our self (dhātihi), so it is the thing that sees, hears, understands, imagines, memorizes, remembers, knows, ponders, and decides between confirmation and denial, and between truth and lie.

It is, then, the self which is in control over all of this, and Baghdādī is arguably bolder and clearer about this than Suhrawardī. Note that both philosophers use the same term for “self,” dhāt, an immaterial entity that is independent from its body. Because of the dhāt’s immateriality, Baghdādī argues that the self is aware of itself by itself.132 This is close to what Suhrawardī argues for, but with a difference which I think is important. Whereas Suhrawardī speaks of “knowledge” (ʿilm) and “perception” (idrāk), Baghdādī consistently uses “awareness” (shiʿr). Considering that Ibn Sīnā also makes reference to such awareness, which is quite different from knowledge, Suhrawardī made a significant departure from his contemporary philosophers by changing awareness to knowledge.133 When it comes to the theory of vision and images in mirrors, Baghdādī shows again a great similarity. He mentions the same argument against the extramission theory of vision, and, more importantly, mentions the same argument against the theory of impression.134 Significantly, he makes this argument both in the context of the external faculty of vision and the internal faculty of common sense. From this, Baghdādī draws the same conclusion as Suhrawardī, namely, that images are not really in a mirror, and he adds that this counts too for images in our eyes.135 His discussion is similar, but not exactly the same. The arguments both philosophers mention are: (1) the argument that if images were in a mirror, we would see the same image no matter from which direction we were looking at the mirror; (2) the argument that if the image were of the form itself, the image in the

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mirror would not be smaller than it is in reality; (3) the argument that the distance of the image is greater than the thickness of the mirror, indicating that the image cannot be in the mirror; (4) the argument that the image cannot be in the air, to which Baghdādī adds that if that were so, other people who are not looking at the mirror but at the air in between the mirror and us could see the same image; and (5) the argument that the image cannot be in the eyes for they are too small. Suhrawardī has two more arguments, concerning extramission and using the mirror merely as a different path to see the actual form. Baghdādī’s arguments appear in nearly the same order as they appear in Suhrawardī, with the exception of Baghdādī’s argument number two, appearing in Suhrawardī’s text a page after the other arguments. Notably, their phrasing of the arguments is entirely different and so Suhrawardī did not simply copy and paste Baghdādī’s arguments. A good example is argument three. Baghdādī writes: The mirror is like a a deep window,136 through which you can see [something] at a distance. Then you cannot say it [what you see] is in it [the window], because it [what you see] is much farther from its [the window’s] surface than its thickness.

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Whereas Suhrawardī writes:

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If with your finger you touch a mirror a cubit’s distance from your face, you find that the distance between the form of your finger where it meets the glass and the form of your face is greater than the thickness of the mirror. Were the form actually in the mirror, it would be in its visible surface since that is its polished part, but this is not so.

The same logic is presented, but with an entirely different example. The key words that construct the argument are nonetheless present in both Baghdādī and Suhrawardī: “distance” (musāfa), “its surface” (saṭḥihā), and “its thickness” (ʿumqihā). Finally, in Abū l-Barakāt Baghdādī’s text we find a similar account of what perception amounts to. It is the mere presence of the object,137 together with its illumination.138 Baghdādī does not use the term Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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“presence” (ḥuḍūr) for this, but uses the expression “meeting the observer itself” (liqāʾ dhāt al-mudrik), and glosses this at one point as “the arrival, obtainment, and meeting of the self” (wuṣūl wa-nayl wa-liqāʾ al-dhāt). In short, then, a number of significant parallels can be found in Baghdādī’s al-Muʿtabar, which provides us an insight into the philosophical environment in which Suhrawardī was able to come up with his idea of suspended images. Issues Left Undone

I wrote this chapter with the assumption that a cohesive, non-contradictory account should emerge from Suhrawardī’s corpus, covering nearly all topics one would wish to see covered. The fact of the matter is that interpreting Suhrawardī’s discussion on suspended images is troubled by a dearth of material.139 On many occasions, one wishes he had written more to explain exactly what he was thinking of, and had he lived longer than thirty-six years, he might very well have done so. The most obvious discrepancy is that suspended images are discussed and assumed in his last chapter, whereas they are forgotten in the rest of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. We can only speculate why this is so, but two reasons seem plausible to me. It could be that he applied autocensorship, judging the idea not ripe enough to infuse its ontological implications into earlier chapters. Or it may have been conventional to discuss certain particular ideas only in particular contexts. In this case, this would be eschatology, because these suspended images are part of an idea he had that was developed from reflecting on Ibn Sīnā’s idea of using a celestial body to activate the imagination after death, which Ibn Sīnā discusses in his chapter on eschatology. For Suhrawardī, then, the proper place to present his own, new insights into Ibn Sīnā’s theory, would have been the chapter on eschatology. Among other issues that are markedly left undone, is the question of whether all sensory perception is by suspended images or not. I have argued that this is what Suhrawardī had in mind, but it would have been convenient to see an explicit mention of it. For those who witness suspended images in meditation, how much of their appearance can be commanded? Speaking of such visionary experiences,

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78 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

how much of Suhrawardī’s descriptions of extraordinary experiences involve suspended images, and how much have to do with the world of intellect? In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, descriptions of the two are used next to each other, and oftentimes it is not clear about which domain the description is supposed to apply. Further, Suhrawardī says that suspended images can give shape to “lordly forms,” does he mean that God can manifest Himself by a suspended image, or only angels? If jinns are to be explained through suspended images, how are they manifest in the Earthly world, such that they are intersubjectively perceived? What is the role of the bad and somewhat bad souls in the making of jinns, and what is their ultimate fate? Further, how do suspended images come into and go out of being? If they exist on their own, can they keep existing after observation? Such questions go unanswered in the writings of Suhrawardī, and we need to turn to his commentator Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288) to find out what happens to the idea of suspended images when these questions are discussed.

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4 Shahrazūrī on Suhrawardī’s Suspended Images

A

fter Ibn Sīnā and Suhrawardī, it was Shahrazūrī who continued to work on the idea of using celestial bodies as a faculty of imagination after death. Whereas Suhrawardī had introduced suspended images, thereby spiritualizing and ontologizing Ibn Sīnā’s ideas, Shahrazūrī turned this notion into the idea of a world of image, making Suhrawardī’s suggestions more independently real, more abstract, and more extraordinary. To provide context to Shahrazūrī’s thoughts on the world of image, I begin with a section on his life and works. I then present the main passages by which Shahrazūrī established and gave expression to the world of image. I close with an analysis of these passages, thereby providing a full description of this world of image, and its philosophical ramifications.

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Introduction to Shahrazūrī’s Life and Works

Shams al-Dīn Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288) was a thirteenth-century philosopher who penned five big works, some of which received attention in the centuries after him, whereas others were largely neglected. He has so far not been identified in the bio-bibliographical literature, which makes him a rather enigmatic figure. One match seemed promising at first: a Shams al-Dīn Shahrazūrī is known to have been a Shāfiʿī scholar from Damascus, who died in 674–5/1276–7.1 However, in 79 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

80 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

the v ­ arious accounts of this Damascene scholar, no mention is made of him being interested in philosophy. Further, manuscripts suggest that two works by Shahrazūrī were finished in 1282 and 1286.2 Additionally, in one manuscript, copied in 1288, Shahrazūrī is celebrated with the invocation “May God grant him adequate [provision] for the duration of his life” (mattaʿa Allāh al-kāfa bi-ṭūl baqāʾihi),3 an invocation appropriate for a person who is still alive. The identification with this Damascene scholar should therefore be rejected. What else we know of Shahrazūrī’s life is that he was old enough to finish a text in the year 665/1267.4 At the other end of the spectrum, he had definitely passed away by 14 Shawwāl 704/May 9, 1305.5 As for his whereabouts, it may be inferred from his name that he lived at least part of his life in Shahrazūr. This place is in the border region of present-day Iraq and Iran, approximately halfway between Baghdad and Tabriz.6 It was, and is, part of a Kurdish region, and must have known a great variety of religious experiences, similar to Suhraward, which is roughly 200–300 km east of Shahrazūr. The comments Corbin made about Suhraward, namely, its eclecticism and vivid elements of old Persian religious and cultural views, may therefore equally apply to Shahrazūr.7 None of the other commentators come from this region and this perhaps should be taken into consideration as to why Shahrazūrī was, of the commentators, the only enthusiastic follower of Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) thought. Considering the wide array of sources Shahrazūrī cites from, it is further likely that he visited a big city. Especially notable is his use of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s (d. 1274) and Ibn Kammūna’s works (d. 1284).8 Given 1267–86 as Shahrazūrī’s heyday, the fact he was able to obtain their writings suggests he was rather closely connected to them. Shahrazūrī was an enthusiastic follower of Suhrawardī, as is clear from all five major texts he wrote. The earliest dated work (1267) is his Nuzhat al-arwāḥ wa-rawḍat al-afrāḥ fī taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ. It is a history of philosophy, stretching from Adam (the first man) to Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Dāʿī, a Jewish physician who worked for Hulegu.9 It draws heavily on earlier histories of philosophy. Significantly, among the new content there is a long entry on Suhrawardī, with extensive

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shahrazūrī on suhrawardī’s suspended images | 81

biographical information, a list of texts attributed to Suhrawardī, and a selection of poems attributed to him.10 Another text of Shahrazūrī is Kitāb al-rumūz wa-l-amthāl al-lāhūtiyya fī l-anwār al-mujarrada al-malakūtiyya. Privot, who has edited this work, says that “Kitāb al-Rumūz is a genteel study of some noetical problems in what may be a neo-Pythagorean perspective.”11 I would propose that all these “noetical problems” combine into one long essay on the perfection of the soul with the identification with the intelligible world as the supreme goal. Since the text does not specifically refer to Suhrawardī, Corbin thought that it does not promote Suhrawardī’s philosophy at all.12 Privot corrected this view.13 For our purposes I wish to note that the afterlife and the world of image are touched upon in this work, but not in any great detail. Precisely since it touches on the idea of a world of image in such a casual way, simply taking it for granted, this work is perhaps not as early as is suggested.14 Three other texts are clearly linked to Suhrawardī’s philosophy. Two are commentaries on Suhrawardī’s al-Talwīḥāt and Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The third is proposed as an independent title, Rasāʾil alshajara al-ilāhīya fī ʿulūm al-ḥaqāʾiq al-rabbāniyya. In fact, the Rasāʾil relies heavily on Suhrawardī’s writings to the point of also becoming a commentary. This is definitely true for the subject under consideration here, the world of image. In these three writings, especially Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and the Rasāʾil, Shahrazūrī shows himself to be a highly original thinker who takes the loose ends of Suhrawardī’s thinking and develops it further. This brings us then to the question of chronology. Based on a preliminary study, Ziai concluded that the Rasāʾil was composed after the two commentaries. “Its style and content reflect the maturity of an advanced scholar,” Ziai writes.15 But Pourjavady and Schmidtke point to a manuscript which states that Shahrazūrī finished Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq in 20 Rajab 685/September 11, 1286, whereas the Rasāʾil was finished on 23 Dhū al-Ḥijja 680/March 5, 1282. Since Shahrazūrī refers to the Rasāʾil in his commentary, they infer that “there cannot be any doubt that Shahrazūrī wrote his commentary after having completed the Rasāʾil al-Shajara.”16

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82 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

It definitely cannot be that Shahrazūrī wrote his commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq strictly after he completed the Rasāʾil. Rather, the two texts must have been written concomitantly. The same holds true for his Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, for which there was no edition at my disposal. All three texts show evidence of relying on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and the notes Shahrazūrī made on this text. The picture that emerges  – admittedly preliminary since it only takes into account the part on eschatology and the world of image – is one in which Shahrazūrī read Suhrawardī’s texts, prepared notes on them, then drew from those notes while preparing these three different works, in the meantime also drawing in one draft (e.g., Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt) from another (e.g., Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq). The moment at which Shahrazūrī wrote the concluding words of each text and considered it to be finished may still be years apart, as the evidence presented by Pourjavady and Schmidtke suggests, but the writing process of these different works should not be seen serially, but in parallel and informing one another. In each of his three texts, there are two places in which he significantly discusses the world of image.17 In Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, it is around the topic of the void and the unicity of the world, and around the topic of souls attaching to celestial bodies after death. In the Rasāʾil, it is around the topic of the void and the unicity of the world, and in a dedicated chapter. In Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, it is around the topic of images in mirrors and in the imagination, and around the topic of souls attaching to celestial bodies after death. Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt and the Rasāʾil show textual correspondence on their discussion around the topic of the void and the unicity of the world. Both texts base their discussion on Suhrawardī’s discussion of this topic in his al-Mashāriʿ. The other place in Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt shows textual correspondence with the second place in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and is therefore reliant on Suhrawardī’s al-Talwīḥāt and Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The other place in the Rasāʾil, the dedicated chapter, shows textual correspondence with both places in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and therefore relies on Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and also makes use of the passage in al-Mashāriʿ mentioned earlier, but in a different way. In short, all three texts lock into each other, drawing

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shahrazūrī on suhrawardī’s suspended images | 83

from Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ, al-Talwīḥāt, and Ḥikmat al-ishrāq in a style that may be characterized as: (1) it is neither indicated that Shahrazūrī is citing Suhrawardī’s text, nor is it clear just by looking at the text where the citation begins and stops; (2) comments are inserted wherever desired; (3) longer digressions are likewise not indicated; (4) the source text is not always followed to the letter. This results in a text in which source text and commentary are indistinguishable, giving the impression we are not reading a commentary at all but simply reading the author’s own thoughts, which is most acutely clear when Shahrazūrī at one point changes a reference to Ḥikmat al-ishrāq to make it refer to his own book. Only by critically comparing the two texts does it become clear that he is using a source text on which he is expanding. This counts for all three texts, including the Rasāʾil; text from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is taken, without mentioning of the source, and expanded in exactly the same style as his Sharḥ. This shows that Shahrazūrī had already studied Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and had drafted a commentary on it by (or during) the time he was writing his Rasāʾil. In fact, the textual differences that do exist between the Rasāʾil and Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq make more sense when we assume that the Rasāʾil antedates the Sharḥ. A snippet of this is given in Table 4.1. Suhrawardī’s text is given at the top of the table. The first block analyzes how the text would have to be altered were it to be the case that Shahrazūrī first wrote Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, then Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya. The second block gives the analysis reversing this order. This means that in the second row of each block, Suhrawardī’s text has been ignored and the text has only been compared against the first row of that block. For understanding chronological order we may look at the rate of inclusion and the proximity to the mutual source text. At first, it seems that based solely on the rate of inclusion we would have to favor a Sharḥ-to-Rasāʾil influence. But if we look at the proximity to the mutual source text, it becomes clear that the Rasāʾil is closer in both parts and thus deserves priority. For example, Suhrawardī uses the plural al-qudamāʾ for “the ancients.” Al-qudamāʾ is also used in the Rasāʾil, but in the Sharḥ Shahrazūrī uses a different plural, al-aqdamīn.

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‫‪Shahrazūrī - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫‪I:‬‬

‫(‪ )470.8‬وإذا سمعت في كلام القدماء أن في الموجودات عالما مقدار يا ٭ غير هذا العالم الحسي وغير العقل والنفس فيه‬ ‫مدن لا ٭ تحصى أو أنها غير متناهية من جملة ذلك ما سماه الشارع جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان في مدن عالم المثال لكل‬ ‫واحد منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق إلا اﷲ تعالى لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فالأفاضل من الأنبياء‬ ‫والحكماء يقرون بوجود هذا العالم فالعاقل لا يبادر إلى تكذيب هؤلاء من غير برهان‬

‫(‪ )554.5‬وإذا سمعت في كلام الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير ٭ العالم الحسي ٭ والعقلي ٭‪( 2‬لا تحصى) ↔‬ ‫(\مدته\) ٭‪ 2‬ولا تتناهى من جملتها ٭‪ 3‬جابلقا وجابرسا وهما مدينتان من مدن عالم المثال لكل ٭ منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما‬ ‫فيها من الخلائق ٭‪ 3‬لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به ٭‪ 2‬والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون‬ ‫‪9‬‬ ‫يعترفون بهذا العالم ٭‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Rasāʾil al-shajara‬‬ ‫‪al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫‪II‬‬

‫‪II‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Rasāʾil al-shajara‬‬ ‫‪al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬ ‫‪I‬‬

‫(‪ )470.8‬وإذا سمعت في كلام القدماء أن في الموجودات عالما مقدار يا ٭ غير هذا العالم الحسي وغير العقل والنفس فيه (\‬ ‫مدن\) ↔ (لا تحصى) أو أنها غير متناهية من جملة ذلك ما سماه الشارع جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان  في  مدن عالم المثال‬ ‫لكل واحد منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق إلا اﷲ تعالى لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته ٭‪ 6‬فالأفاضل‬ ‫من الأنبياء والحكماء ٭ يقرون بوجود هذا العالم فالعاقل لا يبادر إلى تكذيب هؤلاء من غير برهان‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )554.5‬وإذا سمعت في كلام الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير العالم الحسي والعقلي ٭‪( 2‬لا ٭ تحصى) ↔‬ ‫(\مدته\) ولا تتناهى من جملتها ٭‪ 3‬جابلقا وجابرسا ٭‪ 3‬وهما مدينتان من مدن عالم المثال لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما‬ ‫فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون يعترفون‬ ‫بهذا العالم‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Suhrawardī - al-Mashāriʿ‬‬

‫‪Table 4.1 Chronological analysis of Shahrazūrī’s works‬‬

‫وإذا سمعت في أقوال القدماء وجود عالم مقداري هو غير العقل والنفس فيه مدن لا يكاد تحصى من جملتها ما سماه الشارع‬ ‫جابلقا وجابرصا فلا تبادر بالتكذيب‬

‫‪II‬‬

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‫‪Shahrazūrī - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )554.5‬وإذا سمعت في كلام الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير ٭ العالم الحسي ٭ والعقلي ٭‪( 2‬لا تحصى) ↔‬ ‫(\مدته\) ٭‪ 2‬ولا تتناهى من جملتها ٭‪ 3‬جابلقا وجابرسا وهما مدينتان من مدن عالم المثال لكل ٭ منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما‬ ‫فيها من الخلائق ٭‪ 3‬لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به ٭‪ 2‬والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون‬ ‫‪9‬‬ ‫يعترفون بهذا العالم ٭‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Rasāʾil al-shajara‬‬ ‫‪al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫‪I‬‬ ‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫(‪ )470.8‬وإذا سمعت في كلام القدماء أن في الموجودات عالما مقدار يا ٭ غير هذا العالم الحسي وغير العقل والنفس فيه‬ ‫مدن لا ٭ تحصى أو أنها غير متناهية من جملة ذلك ما سماه الشارع جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان في مدن عالم المثال لكل‬ ‫واحد منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق إلا اﷲ تعالى لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فالأفاضل من الأنبياء‬ ‫والحكماء يقرون بوجود هذا العالم فالعاقل لا يبادر إلى تكذيب هؤلاء من غير برهان‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Rasāʾil al-shajara‬‬ ‫‪al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫(‪ )470.8‬وإذا سمعت في كلام القدماء أن في الموجودات عالما مقدار يا ٭ غير هذا العالم الحسي وغير العقل والنفس فيه (\‬ ‫مدن\) ↔ (لا تحصى) أو أنها غير متناهية من جملة ذلك ما سماه الشارع جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان  في  مدن عالم المثال‬ ‫لكل واحد منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق إلا اﷲ تعالى لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته ٭‪ 6‬فالأفاضل‬ ‫من الأنبياء والحكماء ٭ يقرون بوجود هذا العالم فالعاقل لا يبادر إلى تكذيب هؤلاء من غير برهان‬

‫‪I I‬‬ ‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )554.5‬وإذا سمعت في كلام الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير العالم الحسي والعقلي ٭‪( 2‬لا ٭ تحصى) ↔‬ ‫(\مدته\) ولا تتناهى من جملتها ٭‪ 3‬جابلقا وجابرسا ٭‪ 3‬وهما مدينتان من مدن عالم المثال لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما‬ ‫فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون يعترفون‬ ‫بهذا العالم‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫‪Suhrawardī - al-Mashāriʿ‬‬

‫وإذا سمعت في أقوال القدماء وجود عالم مقداري هو غير العقل والنفس فيه مدن لا يكاد تحصى من جملتها ما سماه الشارع‬ ‫جابلقا وجابرصا فلا تبادر بالتكذيب‬

‫‪I‬‬

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86 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

Then, Suhrawardī says that this world “is different from the intellect and soul.” It is arguably implied for Suhrawardī that this world is different from the material, sensory world, and he thus only feels the need to remark that it is also different from world of intellect and soul. Shahrazūrī makes this difference with the material world explicit. In Rasāʾil he keeps Suhrawardī’s original words, writing “[it is] different from this sensory world and different from the intellect and the soul.” In the Sharḥ, these words are dropped and he simply states that the world is different both from the sensory and the intelligible world. Lastly, there are two cases in which the Rasāʾil presents text from al-Mashāriʿ which are not in the Sharḥ. All this evidence is more easily explained if we assume the Rasāʾil to have been completed prior to the Sharḥ, and against this we can only propose one textual argument that would imply it is the other way around. Suhrawardī writes about the “existence (wujūd) of a dimensional world,” but Shahrazūrī introduces an “in” in the Sharḥ: “in existence (fī al-wujūd) there is a dimensional world.” In his Rasāʾil it reads “among the existents (fī al-mawjūdāt) there is a dimensional world.” It would be a simpler explanation to assume that the text of the Sharḥ was first, and since “in existence” is a bit awkward we see this change to “among the existents” in the Rasāʾil. Still, the majority of our clues point in the direction of a posteriority of the Sharḥ as against the Rasāʾil. In a passage from Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, edited as passage 5 in Appendix A, a crucial sentence about the world of image from Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is used (without acknowledgment).18 That same passage is, when textually compared, clearly either an early sketch or a late paraphrase of a paragraph from Shahrazūrī’s own Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.19 Passage 1 clearly shows textual correspondence with the Rasāʾil. With Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt unedited it is hard to go into a detailed analysis to argue for a certain chronology between Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt and Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and the Rasāʾil. The textual correspondence is messy, and based on the evidence I have seen so far an argument could be made either way. Passage number 5 also shows textual correspondence with Ibn Kammūna’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Based on this and other passages

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shahrazūrī on suhrawardī’s suspended images | 87

where this textual correspondence is undeniable, my impression is that Ibn Kammūna wrote his commentary before Shahrazūrī. This would put the project of writing the three texts, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, and the Rasāʾil, between 1268 and 1286.20 After Shahrazūrī completed his history of philosophy, in this eighteen-year window he worked on a unified project to continue to develop Suhrawardī’s thought. Shahrazūrī’s Establishment of the World of Image

Shahrazūrī developed Suhrawardī’s ideas on suspended images into a bigger idea, namely, that of a world of image. I identify two stages in this development: a first move to the formulation of a proof for the existence of another world and the establishment of technical terminology to describe this world; and a second move to color in that other world with a description of what it is and what it is not. Let us consider now the first move.

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Shahrazūrī’s Proof for the Existence of Another World

University Press

The existence of another world, and the proper terminology for it, is perhaps best illustrated with a passage in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, around § 225 of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, in the final subchapter of chapter four, on images in mirrors and the imagination. He writes:

-

This is an eminent discussion and extensive topic that requires an exhaustive treatment over many pages. Most discursive philosophers21 have neglected it, as it is among the well-kept secrets and hidden knowledge. We shall give a hint of it by saying: it is known from what came before22 that none of the perceived forms are in the brain, in bodily faculties, or in mirrors. After all, impression of something big onto something small is not possible. Those forms are not existent in the sensory world, for otherwise everyone with sound sense perception would see them. Neither are they absolutely nonexistent, for [the absolutely non-existent] cannot be witnessed or imagined, while forms in mirrors and imagination are witnessed and are distinguished amongst each other and they can be judged with Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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different judgments. Nothing that is absolutely non-existent is like this. Therefore, forms in the imagination and in dreams, as they are not absolutely non-existent, nor in a part of the brain, nor in something else, it remains that they are existent in a different world, called the world of image and imagination. It is above the world of sense in rank, and below the world of intellect, being in between them. All imagined shapes and magnitudes and bodies and the movements, rests, places, and states, etcetera, that belong to it are existent in the middle world, being an image. All the forms in mirrors exist on their own in this world, the mirrors being their places of manifestation, while they are suspended, not being in a place, nor in a locus. Forms of the imagination are not in the brain, rather, the cerebral spirit is its place of manifestation, while they are suspended, existing on their own, not in a place, nor in a locus.23

Shahrazūrī’s argumentation follows an elimination strategy by considering the object that is perceived. From Suhrawardī’s ­discussion in the first part of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, it becomes clear that objects of perception are not present in the thing. Suhrawardī made clear this is the case for mirrors, faculties of sense perception, and for our imagination. Alternatively, it could be outside the thing that perceives, but, says Shahrazūrī, in that case everyone should be able to see it. Some things, like things we only imagine, are not seen by others. Thus, it is not in the material world. But neither can it simply not exist, for whatever does not exist obviously cannot be perceived. As Shahrazūrī concludes, if it is not non-existent, nor part of the sensory world, we are left with the only alternative: it is in another world, that is, it holds a different ontological status. We saw that Suhrawardī’s argumentation in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq implied something similar, but he never put in as concrete terms as Shahrazūrī is doing here, nor did he emphasize its place between the sensory and the intelligible world as Shahrazūrī does. Shahrazūrī’s argument from exclusion is, of course, not complete, as he only suggests such images cannot be non-existent nor can they be part of the sensory world, his reasoning about the brain and mirrors being merely special cases for the argument that such images

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cannot be part of the sensory world. To fully appreciate that such images ought to be in a fourth world, we would have to realize that such images can neither be in the world of soul, nor in the world of intellect. The latter is explicitly mentioned by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1310) when he incorporates this passage from Shahrazūrī in his own commentary,24 though he does not give a reason. This is, however, not difficult to understand, as both intelligibles and souls do not have accidents such as color, length, and so on, and are therefore qualitatively different from such images. Shahrazūrī seems to simply assume that the difference with souls and intelligibles is self-evident, in no need of explanation. In the case of the sensory, material world, this is different, as such images are visible in it. That they are visible in this material world is because some objects, such as mirrors and our faculties of perception, are their place of manifestation. Concerning the functions located in the brain, like our imagination, Shahrazūrī is even more specific, saying that it is our spirit (rūḥ) that is the place of manifestation. To understand Shahrazūrī’s argumentation, it is worthwhile to compare it with the version in his Rasāʾil al-shajarat al-ilāhiyya, at the beginning of his chapter on the world of image. The two passages have such a messy textual relationship with each other that it will be of little use to go over each difference in minute detail. Instead, we are perhaps better served by simply looking at the translation of the passage in the Rasāʾil, and compare that passage analytically with the translated passage above. A translation of the passage in Rasāʾil al-shajarat al-ilāhiyya is the following:

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You know from the book on the soul, which belongs to Physics, from the inquiries about the faculties, and from the forms in mirrors, that imaginable forms which a person imagines while awake or sees while asleep, are not at all in the brain, nor in any of its parts whichever part it may be. This is because of previously explained proofs that a big thing like half the globe of the world or an immense mountain cannot possibly be imprinted in a small part of the brain. [The imaginable forms] are neither in the sensory world, otherwise Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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everyone with sound sense perception would see them, while this is not the case. They are [also] not purely non-existent, as the pure non-existent cannot be pictured or imagined. But we conceive of these imagined forms in a sound and complete way, and we distinguish them from other sensory and imaginable forms or judge them to share [something with] other sensory and imaginable forms. No pure non-existent shares something with something else or is distinguished from it, so nothing from imagined forms or forms that people see in their sleep are purely non-existent. If they are not purely non-existent, nor in one of the parts of the brain, nor in the sensory world, they are identified to be undoubtedly in another world. That world is called the imaginable, imaginative world (al-ʿālam al-mithālī al-khayālī). It is above the world of sense and space, and below the world of intellect. So it is in between these two worlds. All the shapes, magnitudes, and bodies that the masters of mathematical knowledge imagine, and all the moments of motion

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and rest, places, states, planes, lines, and points, etcetera, that are connected to it, are existent in this middle world. This is why the philosophers call it “middle wisdom” and “middle knowledge.”25 Likewise, the forms in mirrors – as you know – do not inhere in the mirrors, due to proofs we have explained in the Physics. Neither are they imprinted in the air, nor in the eye, nor are they purely nonexistent after they have been witnessed. So, undoubtedly, they are in the afore-mentioned imaginable world.26

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This passage is much longer than the one from Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, but if we compare the content we see that there is little difference. What moved Shahrazūrī to write two such different passages with nearly exactly the same content is unclear to me. More important to note is actually not the content of the passage in the Rasāʾil, but its place. In Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Shahrazūrī is neatly keeping to Suhrawardī’s sequence of topics. Shahrazūrī only discusses the world of image where Suhrawardī’s text naturally allows a discussion of it. But in his Rasāʾil, the discussion of the world of image, of which the Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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translation above is the opening paragraph, is found in its own chapter, in the part on ontology, not eschatology. The importance of this decision cannot be overemphasized; this crossing of chapter boundaries is unusual and therefore shows Shahrazūrī’s determination to allow a wider ontologization of the world of image, giving it a proper place in his cosmology. Shahrazūrī’s emphasis on the independent status of this world, over and beyond what Suhrawardī was arguing for, is largely achieved by Shahrazūrī’s establishment of certain technical terms for this other world. As we noticed before, Suhrawardī did not settle on one name for this fourth world, nor did he use only one term to denote the entities of this world. A term that Suhrawardī used frequently was “suspended images,” muthul muʿallaqa, from which he derived the term ʿālam al-muthul al-muʿallaqa, “world of suspended images,” which he uses once. He also once used the term al-ʿālam al-mithālī, “the imaginable world.”27 Shahrazūrī changed that uncommitted usage of terminology in his commentary. Although his text shows an equal variety of terms, he clearly shows preference for “world of image” not only in the form of al-ʿālam al-mithālī, but also in the form of ʿālam al-mithāl, and at the same time discontinues the usage of the adjective muʿallaq. This compact formulation of ʿālam al-mithāl cannot be found in Suhrawardī’s corpus and should be considered Shahrazūrī’s personal contribution, directing the reader’s attention to the ontological status of this world. It is notably found at the pinnacle of the passage above, when Shahrazūrī concludes that “they are existent in a different world, called the world of image and imagination (ʿālam al-mithāl wa-al-khayāl).” It seems to me this term was developed from the one-time usage by Suhrawardī of the term al-ʿālam al-mithālī. Al-ʿālam al-mithālī appears twenty-one times in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.28 In an additional six instances, it appears with another adjective, such as al-rūḥānī, spiritual, or al-shabaḥī, apparitional.29 In contrast, ʿālam al-mithāl, world of image, is used fourteen times.30 It is used once in combination with al-khayāl, the imagination,31 and once in combination with al-nūrī, the bright.32 Only in two instances is it used in combination with al-muʿallaq,

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suspended.33 The Suhrawardīan term ʿālam al-muthul al-muʿallaqa, only appears three times in Shahrazūrī’s commentary.34 Only one term that Shahrazūrī uses to refer to the same phenomenon is somewhat different from any term used by Suhrawardī; al-ʿālam al-falakī al-khayālī, the imaginable, celestial world.35 Leaving this last term out of our analysis, we notice that time after time Shahrazūrī brings together the two terms ʿālam and mithāl, world and image, while at the same time discontinuing the use of muʿallaq. He tries out different permutations of these two words, but his intention is clearly to establish the terms al-ʿālam al-mithālī and ʿālam al-mithāl as the definitive technical terms for the fourth world that Suhrawardī introduces in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. Since the adjective muʿallaq always implies that the image is attached to something, the dropping of this adjective shifts the focus on the attachment of the image to its existence on its own. This independent existence is then supported by the introduction of the term ʿālam al-mithāl. The discontinuation of muʿallaq is reinforced by qualifying objects from this world with the adjective mithālī, imaginable. Thus, we see Shahrazūrī variously speak of ajsām, umūr, maʿlūmāt, ashbāḥ, and ṣuwar that are mithālī.36 If he does not use mithālī to indicate objects from this world, he is also seen using qāʾim bi-dhātihā, independently existing. Suhrawardī at one point glosses “suspended,” muʿallaqa, with “not being in a place or locus” lā fī makān wa-lā fī maḥall.37 Where Suhrawardī uses muʿallaq or muʿallaqa, Shahrazūrī either drops this adjective or adds this gloss ad nauseam, presumably to keep reminding his readers that such images are not connected (which would be the apparent meaning of Form II of ʿ-l-q), but independently existing.38 This is in fact made explicit many times over by adding qāʾim bi-dhātihā, existing on its own.

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Shahrazūrī’s World of Image: the Central Passage

The second move, to color in that world with a description of what it is and what it is not has as its nucleus a passage that finds four different expressions in Shahrazūrī’s writings. The version of this passage in Shahrazūrī’s commentary on the chapter on eschatology of Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Ḥikmat al-ishrāq became the foundational passage for interpreting what this world of image exactly is for the ensuing discourse in the centuries afterwards. The transmission of this passage is so intricate that I devote a later chapter solely to teasing out the various relevant cases of intertextuality. Here I shall provide a translation of the passage, as well as the other versions, with the words from Suhrawardī’s text placed in bold.39 In the next section we shall analyze the content, drawing from other passages as well. This passage comes shortly after Shahrazūrī has commented on Suhrawardī’s statement that “I myself have had trustworthy experiences indicating that there are four worlds.” Although commenting on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Shahrazūrī’s key passage does not include any bits from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, but instead he is drawing from al-Mashāriʿ (without indicating this himself). It reads:40 If you hear of the discussion of the ancients that there is a magnitudinous world in existence, which is not the sensory world nor the intelligible. Its cities41 are countless without end. Among them are Jabalqa and Jabarsa, which are two of the cities of the world of image, both having a thousand gates and uncountable creatures are in it, who are unaware that God created Adam and his offspring. [If you hear all of that,] Believe in it and let your faith in it not be hard on you, as the prophets and the divine sages recognize this world. For the wayfarers there is, among the manifestation of wonders and cases where the natural order is interrupted, what they desire and aim for.42 Those who excel in sorcery and soothsaying see and bring out wonders from it. The world of image is parallel to the evermoving world of sense. As the elements are constantly receptive of what is appropriate from the spheres and stars, so the spheres and the stars of the world of image are [also] constantly in motion. The elemental apparitions and its composites are receptive of the influence of the imaginable spherical motions and the illuminations of the intelligible worlds. From that occur endlessly different kinds of forms.

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The same thought also occurs in the dedicated chapter on the world of image in his Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya. In fact, it is slightly Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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more elaborate in the Rasāʾil than it is in the Sharḥ, especially toward the end. A translation is the following:43 If you hear of the discussion of the ancients that there is among the existents a magnitudinous world, which is not the sensory world nor the intellect or the soul. In it are cities, countless, without end. Among them are what the Lawgiver has called Jabalqa and Jabarsa, which are two of the cities of the world of image, both having a thousand gates, and creatures are in it, uncountable except for God, who are unaware that God created Adam and his offspring. [If you hear of this then know that] The noble ones among the prophets and the sages confirm the existence of this world. So someone using his intellect should not rush into disbelieving them without proof. Further, all the powerful wayfarers see this world in the course of their journeys. In it, they receive, among the manifestation of wonders and cases of grace and miracles where the natural order is interrupted, what they desire and aim for. Indeed, the group44 [busy with] soothsaying and sorcery, and the masters of the spiritual sciences may witness it and make forms manifest from it and wondrous animals, marvelous plants and fruits, at will,45 by [use of] contraptions and talismans that produce them. If you were to refute them with a proof, they would refute you with experience. So if you journey, and tend to spiritual matters with care, and if you devote yourself to looking into this book of mine, of which the like has not existed before, especially on this issue, then perhaps you will get to understand something about it.46

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The passage occurs in a different place of the Rasāʾil as well. This other place is in the Physics, when discussing space (al-makān) and void (al-khalāʾ), which is the topical place where the original passage in Suhrawardī al-Mashāriʿ is located. In the Rasāʾil it reads:47 The intuitive philosophers, like Hermes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and other excellent and ancient men, have said that there are other worlds with magnitude in existence, different from this world in which we are in, and different from soul and intellect. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

shahrazūrī on suhrawardī’s suspended images | 95 In it are wonders and marvels such as places, people [lit. servants], rivers, oceans, trees, and pleasant and repulsive forms without end. These worlds occur in the eighth clime wherein are Jabalqa, Jabarsa and Hurqalya, containing wonders, being in the middle of the order of the world. This world has two horizons; the lowest is more delicate than the farthest sphere which we are in, but is beyond perception by [our] senses. The highest horizon is close to the rational soul, though being more coarse than it. Between them are endless degrees with different kinds of delicacy and coarseness, enjoyable and delightful, and painful and unpleasant. Undoubtedly will the wayfarer come across it, though [most] excellent is the one among them who goes forth from it onto the space of the luminous lights. Some [people of] soothsaying and sorcery, and the people of spiritual knowledge can witness these worlds. So you can believe in it, and be wary of denying it. Perhaps you will become convinced by one of my epistles that I prepared on this matter, God willing. The First Teacher refuted this by only paying attention to the superficial meaning of their remarks, not by paying attention to their intentions.

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In the same topical context the passage appears in Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, but it should come as no surprise that it is not exactly the same as this one from the Rasāʾil, differing in a synonym here and there, a few words added and a few words dropped, and some changes in word order. The biggest change is in the description of the “wonders and marvels” at the beginning. The passage in al-Talwīḥāt reads:48

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This [i.e., the foregoing] is what the First Teacher and his Peripatetic followers say. Hermes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and the excellent among the ancients say that there are other worlds with magnitude in existence, different from this bodily world and different from soul and intellect. In it are many wonders such as spheres, stars, elements, composites, climes, cities, oceans, mountains, people, trees, minerals, and pleasant and repulsive forms without end. All of this occurs in the eighth clime, in which are Jabalqa, Jabarsa, and Hurqalya, containing wonders, being in the Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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middle of the order of the world. This world has two horizons; the lowest is more delicate than the farthest sphere and contains it, but is beyond perception by [our] senses. The highest is close to the rational soul, though being more coarse than it. Between them are endless degrees with different kinds of delicacy and coarseness, enjoyable and painful. Undoubtedly will the wayfarer come across it, though [most] excellent are the ones who go forth from it onto the space of the luminous lights. Some [people of] soothsaying and sorcery, and the people of spiritual knowledge can witness these worlds. The First Teacher refuted this by only paying attention to the superficial meaning of their remarks, not by paying attention to their intentions.

This passage succinctly describes Shahrazūrī’s view on the notion of a world of image. Why Shahrazūrī chose to base this passage on a relatively insignificant snippet from Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ is unclear to me. Its inclusion in Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt and the Rasāʾil, in the section on the void, is easy to explain. Shahrazūrī was in both cases already using Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ to construct his own chapter on the void. When he came to the end of that discussion he noticed Suhrawardī’s reference to the discussion in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and included it in his own texts, albeit thoroughly reworked and stripped off of the reference to Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. If we compare these two versions with the other two then we notice that the reference to the “two horizons” is gone. They have not been deleted, but moved elsewhere in the text.49 A similar fate befell the mention of several Greek philosophers,50 the enumeration of all kinds of things present in the world of image,51 and, in a more camouflaged way, the encouragement to go beyond the world of image to the world of intellect.52 Two elements pertinent to the Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt/Rasāʾil version are to be found only in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, not the Rasāʾil. These are the use of the term “eighth clime,”53 and the mention of the city Hurqalya.54 Another notable difference is that in the Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt/Rasāʾil pair it describes the cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa simply as “containing wonders,” whereas the Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq/Rasāʾil pair includes

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an elaborate description of what is so wondrous about these cities. Another distinct difference is that the Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt/Rasāʾil pair uses “the eighth clime” as the name, whereas the Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq/Rasāʾil pair uses “the world of image” as the name. We may also notice that both versions in the Rasāʾil contain a self-reference. Lastly, whereas the two versions in the Rasāʾil and the version in Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt have a clear ending, the version in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq does not have a clear ending. Perhaps the passage properly stops after the sentence “Those who excel in sorcery and soothsaying see and bring out wonders from it.” However, since in the ensuing discussion in the centuries after, the text immediately following it is also used, I have included it here. The version in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq was the most impactful in the history of the idea of a world of image. This should perhaps come as no surprise as this version is located in the key place of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq where Suhrawardī discusses suspended images as a fourth ontological category. Of the other versions, it is especially the one in the dedicated chapter that merits pointing out. The very fact that Shahrazūrī dedicated a chapter to the world of image, and did not place this chapter in the section on eschatology but in the section on cosmology, is of great significance. By ordering his discussion this way, he signals the importance of the topic and he also signals his desire to push the notion of a world of image out of the context of eschatology and into the context of cosmology, arguing that the world of image is not only a notion relevant for the afterlife but stands on its own and can be reached while alive.

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The Main Features of Shahrazūrī’s Interpretation

Six points in particular connect all four versions of the passage of Shahrazūrī. They concern the name of this world, its position within the cosmos, its topography, the means of entering it, the assurance we can believe it to be real, and the attribution of the idea to ancient philosophers. When taking into account the whole of Shahrazūrī’s writings on the world of image, they prove to be the main features of Shahrazūrī’s interpretation of the world of image in general. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Name The standardization of the terms al-ʿālam al-mithālī and ʿālam al-mithāl have already been discussed and only two comments remain. First, Suhrawardī remains silent about any name to such a world in his passage from al-Mashāriʿ, which makes it that much easier for Shahrazūrī to introduce his own terms. Second, whereas I argued before that the two terms are broadly established as the preferred technical terms of Shahrazūrī, in the Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt/Rasāʾil version he does not use it, but instead uses the term “the eighth clime” (al-iqlīm al-thāmin). This is a term used by Suhrawardī in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,55 and is synonymous to the term “world of image,” as made explicit at one point by Shahrazūrī.56 Suhrawardī had coined the term “eighth clime” to illustrate the nature of suspended images as being, on the one hand, not part of this sensory world (hence, “eighth”), yet, on the other hand, much like sensory objects in terms of perception (hence, “clime”). Shahrazūrī gives a new twist to the term by making it not an illustration of the nature of suspended images, but making it an illustration of the nature of the world of image; it is a region like any other, a true addition to the seven standard climes. His inclusion of it in this passage that proved to be one of the most central passages on the world of image is highly significant. It illustrates how the same term can be used to illustrate a different point. His ultimate decision to change it into “world of image” for the much more prominent places of the Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq/Rasāʾil version is even more significant. It ensured that the term “world of image” was soon recognized as the true technical term for this notion.

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Position Within the Cosmos

That this world has an independent status is reinforced by the comments that Shahrazūrī makes on its position within the cosmos. He is keen on emphasizing its middle position, in between the sensory and the intelligible world.57 This would seem to affirm a tripartite division of the cosmos, not a fourfold one, but that is not the case. As I explained in the previous chapter, the four worlds of body, image, soul, Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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and ­intellect should be pictured as an emulsion, each permeating the others. The reason why Shahrazūrī does not refer much to the world of souls seems, to me, to be because he is writing from the perspective of the world of soul: what matters most is the interaction the human soul can have with the three other worlds of matter, image, and intellect. Better put, Shahrazūrī is interested in how the soul can traverse through the worlds of matter, image, and intellect. Needless to say, he pictures an upward motion, from matter, through image, to intellect. On the position of the world of image within the cosmos, he also reflects on how the world of image fits into the grand scheme of causation, a downward motion. Through the mouth of Greek philosophers, he explains that in principle the world can be divided into two: meaning and form, intellect and body. The world of forms can subsequently be divided into sensory forms and imaginable forms.58 This would suggest that the world of image is equally caused by the world of intellect as is the world of sense. This is, indeed, what he suggests in another place, arguing that in the sequence of causation things can be caused by two different things; from the aspect of vision (min jihat al-mushāhadāt) or from the aspect of illumination (min jihat al-ishrāqāt). This is a principle that Suhrawardī introduces in his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq to explain the multiplicity in the cosmos. As Suhrawardī says, “Since there is no veil between the lower and the higher light, the lower light beholds (yushāhidu) the higher and the higher shines (yushriqu) upon the lower.”59 From such events other things come to be.60 Using this principle, Shahrazūrī argues:

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Since the lights occurring from the aspect of vision are nobler than the ones occurring from the aspect of illumination, and since the imaginable world is nobler than the world of sense, it is necessary that the world of image proceeds from those lights occurring from the aspect of vision, and the world of sense from what occurs from the aspect of illumination, as the nobler is the cause for the nobler, and the baser is the cause for the baser.61

This comment is one of the clearest statements by Shahrazūrī that the world of image is created independently of us, by the intelligible Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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world, similar to how the sensory world is created but nonetheless as something more noble than that. Things below the world of intellect are caused by either an upward relation, called vision, or a downward relation, called illumination. Whereas the material world is caused by this second type of causation, the world of image, Shahrazūrī argues, is caused by the first type. This is a departure from Suhrawardī, who did not exactly speak of how suspended images are caused, but implied that they existed on an ad hoc basis whenever there is an epistemological need for them. The independent status of the world of image, and its nobility over the material world, is similarly expressed in the case of the Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt/Rasāʾil passage, where Shahrazūrī describes how the lower strata of the world of image reach the threshold of the sensory world and how the higher strata reach the threshold of the intelligible world. In between the two boundaries, Shahrazūrī proposes a further division into layers (ṭabaqāt). From other passages, it becomes clear that Shahrazūrī envisions a hierarchical division, extending from the lower ones, which hold things that are the closest to the material world, but are at the same time described as dark, vile, and causing displeasure, to the higher ones, which are increasingly more immaterial, light, delicate, and causing pleasure.62 Within the realm of the world of image, then, there is a natural order based on the nobility of a thing. The more noble a thing, the closer it will be to the intelligible world of intellect and the further it will be removed from the bodily world. It will be in a designated layer, from which it cannot spontaneously go down or up. This facilitates Shahrazūrī’s interpretation of the soul’s life as as a life of traversing upwards, as I shall explain when I discuss his eschatology. Suhrawardī’s idea that suspended images need places of manifestation, in particular celestial bodies, is challenged by Shahrazūrī. To be fair, in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq he uses Suhrawardī’s passages that make mention of celestial bodies, and even expands on it by saying that the different celestial bodies are ordered in rank equivalent to the different layers of the world of image.63 But this expansion is gone in the chapter on the world of image in the Rasāʾil, and celestial bodies

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as places of manifestation only gets one passing mention.64 This may not be immediately clear, because there is a significant discussion on celestial bodies.65 This time, however, its purpose is entirely comparative; if celestial bodies have, in comparison with the Earthly world, such superior qualities, how much more superior is the world of image. In other words, the idea of suspended images is detached from the idea of using celestial bodies, turned into the world of image, which is then argued to be far superior to celestial bodies. For Shahrazūrī, places of manifestation in the sense that Suhrawardī used that technical term, are needed only for perceiving images in the Earthly world. An enlightening passage is the following:66 When the imaginable apparitions appear in polished mirrors and in acts of the imagination . . . they are not in mirrors, nor in the cerebral faculties . . . as they are able to exist by themselves in the imaginable, spiritual world. The sensory faculties can only comprehend them in places of manifestation, so it is conceivable that they have a place of manifestation in this world in which they occasionally appear.

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For comparison, here is the equivalent from Suhrawardī:67

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You know that forms cannot be imprinted in the eye and that, for similar reasons, they cannot be imprinted somewhere in the brain. The truth is that the forms in mirrors and the imaginative forms are not imprinted. Instead, they are suspended fortresses – fortresses not in a locus at all. Though they may have loci in which they are made evident, they are not in them.

Suhrawardī merely wanted to solve an issue in epistemology. He found the dominant concept of knowledge problematic, which argued that knowledge is the imprinting of an image of the object onto the appropriate faculty of the knower. To solve the problem, he made a small adjustment; instead of the image being imprinted, the image now resided in the faculty, suspended in mid-air if you will. Though Shahrazūrī does not want to challenge this suggestion, he comes at it from a different angle which shifts our attention. He does not take the process of knowledge as his starting point. Rather, the images Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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t­hemselves are the starting point, of which he asserts that they exist in a different world. Almost coincidentally do these images appear in the Earthly world, when they have a place of manifestation in which to appear. From here, Shahrazūrī uses the concept of a place of manifestation (maẓhar) in ways unimagined by Suhrawardī, basically flipping it around. Instead of suspended images being in need of a place of manifestation, images in the world of image becomes themselves places of manifestation. Speaking of dreams, Shahrazūrī argues in the Rasāʾil that images in dreams “are places of manifestation for sleepy souls,” and that when the person wakes up “the soul returns to utilize the place of sensory manifestation, and the imaginable manifestations disappear, remaining fixed in the imaginable world.”68 And in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq he says that “The place of manifestation for [the soul] can be a bodily isthmus, as is the case for souls connected to bodies by which they are clearly visible, or their place of manifestation is a spiritual, bodily suspended image, as is the case during sleep.”69 This way of arguing affirms what I pointed out before, namely, that Shahrazūrī has the soul at the center of his attention, and considers the ways the soul can traverse through the different worlds. It is the soul that manifests itself, expressing itself in each world according to the conventions of that world. When the soul enters the world of image, “the soul puts on one of the images that exist over there as a place of manifestation, which befit the states of the soul and its preparedness for that.”70 In exactly the same way God and the intellects can manifest themselves in the world of image, controlling an imaginable body just like human souls can do.71 Shahrazūrī even uses the notion of a place of manifestation in a double way. Human souls and divine intellects can use an imaginable body to manifest themselves in the world of image. Then, with that imaginable body, they can become manifest in the Earthly world, by using a place of manifestation in the traditional sense that Suhrawardī proposed. This is how Shahrazūrī interprets the existence of jinn and demons. They are wretched human souls that therefore take on a wretched imaginable body. Those bodies subsequently “have places

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of manifestation in this world, in which they occasionally appear.”72 Sorcerers can manipulate images from the world of image similarly, making them manifest in this world.73 Divine entities such as intellects can do so too: they first become manifest in the world of image, and through that manifestation become manifest in the world of body.74 Topography

On the topography especially, Shahrazūrī went far beyond Suhrawardī. Admittedly, Suhrawardī mentioned the cities Jabarsa, Jabalqa, and Hurqalya, he made use of the term “the eighth clime,” and he asserted that everything could exist in this other world, from mountains to animals. However, these were all passing mentions and in Shahrazūrī’s writings they take central stage and are more fully described, giving them a more lively quality. A passage that has been brought to our attention before by Corbin, in which Shahrazūrī brings all of the above elements together is the following:

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As the Earth is divided into seven climes, so there is an eighth, the world of suspended image, which holds the bodies ascended to heaven (al-abdān al-ṣāʿida ilā l-samāʾ), as the ascent of Earthly bodies is impossible. Wonders and marvels that become visible to prophets and saints are mostly due to reaching that world and knowing about their places of manifestation and their characteristics. Jabalq, Jabars, and Hurqalya are names of cities of the world of image which  the Lawgiver has mentioned. Now, Jabalqa and Jabarsa are cities of the Earthly world of suspended images, whereas Hurqalya is part of the celestial world of image. So take heed of this.75

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The terms casually used by Suhrawardī, are here brought together to form a more coherent picture. Jabarsa, Jabalqa, and Hurqalya are not cities in general any more, but are assigned a place and a rank. Of the passage translated earlier, the version of Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, his insistence that the world of image is parallel to our world (yaḥdhū ḥadhwa) is especially striking in evoking a sense of similarity.76 At the same time, there is a clear difference between the two worlds. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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As pointed out before, the world of image is better than the world of sense, because of its immateriality and subtlety. Thus, everything in the world of image is better and more enjoyable than its counterpart in the world of sense.77 There are, according to him, in fact an infinite number of things existing in the world of image, albeit in a finite number of layers.78 The infinity and the wondrousness of the creatures of this world is something emphasized by Shahrazūrī, who states at one point that he could “fill many tomes” with descriptions of them.79 Next to the causative force from the world of intellect, it is the movement of celestial bodies in the world of image that allows creatures to exist, similarly to how it works here on Earth.80 Some of these creatures, animals and human beings, are endowed with a soul.81 Some of these souls come from this Earth, others are presumably created specifically for these bodies in the world of image. Shahrazūrī does not mention any other type of soul qualified for this ascent other than human beings. This, most likely, stems from Shahrazūrī’s agreement with the idea – attributed by Suhrawardī to Buddha – that the human being is “the gate of gates,” that is, only as a human soul can one escape the Earthly life and all other creatures need to be reincarnated.82 At the same time, it is also possible that souls are emanated from the intelligible world directly to the world of image. Shahrazūrī imagines that just as there are bodies in the world of sensory forms to which souls can attach, so there are also bodies in the world of imaginable forms, imaginable bodies (badan mithālī), to which souls can attach.83 The variety of things existing in the world of image gives such souls, whether they come from the sensory world or the intelligible world, the possibility of connecting to an appropriate body. The appropriateness is largely determined by our habits and character.84 Shahrazūrī does not give examples in this context, but does give examples in his discussion of metempsychosis, which, I think, can be used here as well. Such examples include someone with a habit of roaming about deserves to be a fox, whoever has a judging and mocking character gets to be an ape, and a vain person becomes a peacock.85 Other things in the world of image, like minerals and plants, are said not to

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have souls in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.86 In Rasāʾil, however, Shahrazūrī repeats the sentence but adds before it “It would seem” (fa-l-aẓhar annahā). He then says that those things that are lifeless here on Earth could also be susceptible to a soul. The possibility of this is argued for by saying that the world of image does not need to follow the same conventions as our world, and he argues for the actuality of it by saying that one could see “lifeless things move in a dream, and talk, and [in general] act like a living thing.”87 One remarkable consequence is that according to Shahrazūrī, since all things exist on their own in the world of image, everything in the world of image is a simple substance. Thus, what would be accidents here are simple substances there.88 Normally, accidents inhere in a thing, qualifying it in someway, for example, giving it a certain color or taste. Since everything exists on its own in the world of image, nothing inheres in something else, hence accidents actually being substances. Then the question is, how can accidents still qualify something in the world of image? Strictly speaking, they cannot, but Shahrazūrī says that they do so nonetheless. His writing on it is terse,89 and the only argument that I see him making is that we know this from experience. We know that in a dream we enjoy, for example, the taste of food and so we should have no doubt that this taste is shaping the food. A supporting argument is that things in the world of image do not need to go the way they go in the Earthly world. Material body and spiritual form are two completely different things, and so requirements for one are not of immediate consequence for the other. Since the Earthly world is grounded in matter and the world of image is completely spiritual, the world of image does not need to run according to the rules of the material world.90 This last point, that the world of image can run differently from the world of body, is exemplified in another consequence of accidents being simple substances. Things on Earth are material, and therefore require a certain area in the physical space that makes up our Earthly world. Since in the world of image everything exists on itself, there is no competition over space. Space in the world of image is therefore a fluid concept: it can be extended or retracted as necessary to

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a­ ccommodate everything that needs to exist (this last implication is not made explicitly by Shahrazūrī, but is easily inferred). Further, such a lack of competition extends to the make-up of any object. Think of opposite accidents: black and white. In the world of image they exist independently, and qualify an object in an inscrutable way. But since they are not strictly accidents of that thing, and since they do not vie over preponderance, the color of an object cannot be said to change gradually from white to black. Shahrazūrī uses the (admittedly odd) example of a man changing into a horse before our eyes: “the human form swiftly becomes absent and the form of a horse becomes visible, as quickly as sudden lightning. The seeing person imagines that the first, human form has shifted into the form of a horse, but this is not the case.”91 A consequence of this view, not drawn explicitly by Shahrazūrī, is that anything is possible in the world of image, even things that would seem to defy the normal laws of Physics. Eschatology

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For Suhrawardī, the fourth world was primarily a way to understand perception in general, with almost as a corollary solving issues in eschatology and mysticism. He did speak of leaving and entering this world, but this could also have been meant as a metaphor. For Shahrazūrī, leaving and entering is anything but a metaphor and it has far less to do with perception in general. In general, people may enter it after death, though mystical experience while alive on this Earth may give us experience of the world of image as well. Shahrazūrī’s mysticism and prophetology are, however, still quite close to the way in which Suhrawardī explains them. The main difference is that while Suhrawardī simply used the fourth world as a way to gain mystical experience, for Shahrazūrī, the mystical experience itself takes place in this world, as a meeting point between human beings and God and the intellects, who can make themselves apparent in the world of image in various forms.92 The method for entering the world of image is the same as the one that Suhrawardī had proposed: the outer and inner senses need to be subdued, which happens to all of us in sleep but may also happen by an inner capacity or by training.93

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shahrazūrī on suhrawardī’s suspended images | 107

Shahrazūrī’s eschatology is different from that of Suhrawardī. To quickly recall Suhrawardī’s position, he adopts a fourfold division of mankind and assigns different fates to different classes. The best go to the intelligible world, the intermediate go to celestial bodies to enjoy or suffer from their imagination, and the worst either go to a place below the moon or go to a celestial body. In the latter case, the difference is that at one point intermediate souls have the prospect of still entering the world of intellect, whereas the class of utterly bad souls suffers eternally from vile and painful imaginations. A different approach to eschatology is at play in Shahrazūrī’s writings. Rather than thinking about end-stations for different groups of people, he starts from assuming one goal for all of mankind; reaching the world of intellect, that is, being as close to God as possible. For him, there are no specific places where human beings go to after death, such as a dichotomy between heaven and hell, rather, there are stages, which together seem to form a continuum from bad to good, dark to light. Every time the soul has become pure enough to ascend to a higher stage, it does, otherwise it will redo the stage it is in.94 These stages are: (1) as a soul for a sublunar physical body; (2) as a soul for a sublunar demon or jinn; (3) as a soul for a supralunar imaginable body; and (4) as an intellect.95 The aim for any soul is then to ascend to the world of intellect. All corporeal rewards and punishments are experienced in the world of image. As he puts it, “the imaginable body (al-badan al-mithālī) which the soul controls, gives it the sense of a sensory body in that it has all the external and internal senses with the perceiver of them being the rational soul.”96 Though the world of image can therefore provide for scriptural eschatological promises, a resurrection in the true sense, let alone a Day of Resurrection, is out of the question. At the core of Shahrazūrī’s eschatology is therefore the idea of metempsychosis (tanāsukh). Not only does he allow transmigration for souls in the physical world, he also allows it for the souls who are demons and jinn, for souls in the world of image, and even for souls in the intelligible world. Each of these stages is again divided into a hierarchical set of layers. The physical realm has as its best creature the

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human being, and animals can each represent a different character trait representing a viler or nicer state.97 The imaginable bodies in the sublunar world are subdivided into jinn, shayāṭīn, ʿafārīt, and ghūl.98 The world of image, as we noticed before, has in fact many layers, with the lower layers offering different degrees of misery and the higher layers different degrees of felicity.99 For the world of intellect it is less clear, but perhaps here too one may imagine a hierarchy in terms of closeness to God.100 In Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Shahrazūrī does not always have the opportunity to present this view, being straitjacketed by the format of the commentary, which forces him to follow the source text. He can merely do his best by implying that metempsychosis is also what is supported by Suhrawardī, and by proposing that he and previous philosophers from all corners of the world agree that pure souls go to the intelligible world, intermediate souls go to celestial bodies, and wretched souls go to animal bodies.101 In Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya, when he has full control over the composition, he is unremitting in his insistence on explaining exactly how metempsychosis works and why it is correct, more or less devoting the entire chapter on eschatology to it.102 This emphasis is in fact so heavy that the world of image is virtually not mentioned at all in that chapter. When it does get mentioned, he simply paraphrases parts of Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, not even advancing any of his own terminology, but simply mentioning the “world of suspended images.”103 This view of progressive ascent is possible only if Shahrazūrī lets go of Suhrawardī’s suggestion that people who have done great evil can be punished eternally. This is indeed Shahrazūrī’s intention. In Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Suhrawardī says that some people will be punished forever, and Shahrazūrī comments that “forever” (bi-khulūd) might just mean “a long time” (al-makth al-ṭawīl), “just as,” Shahrazūrī says, “it is said ‘May God lengthen (khallada) his reign.’”104 People deserving eternal punishment are characterized by Suhrawardī as having “compound ignorance,” jahl murakkab.105 Shahrazūrī virtually never uses this term, and when he comes across it in his commentaries on Suhrawardī’s works he remains silent on it. I think this is a deliberate move by Shahrazūrī to downplay the stern ­soteriological theory that

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Suhrawardī proposed. This is especially clear in his Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Downplaying the sternness is visible already as early as when he lists the different groups of people in the afterlife, for there he stresses that the third group is far less in number than the other two groups (fragment 3 in Appendix A). When he comes to discussing the fate of those in the third group, he inserts two remarks to tone down Suhrawardī’s text (see fragment 4). First, after Suhrawardī’s comment that “for the compound ignorant there is no hope for redemption,”106 Shahrazūrī inserts “according to them” (ʿinda hāʾulāʾi), which is a common way to indicate that this statement is made by others and is not supported by the author. It is important to note here that the manuscripts used in this study do not show what is Suhrawardī’s text and what is Shahrazūrī’s text. If it was indeed the intention of Shahrazūrī to disguise where source text stops and commentary begins – and this is likely since the same style is applied in his Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq – then little comments like these can become highly effective as from the surface they appear to come from the original author, not the commentator. The second remark inserted by Shahrazūrī builds onto this idea that the term “compound ignorance” is not supported by the author, giving the alternative vision, functioning as the response of the author to the vision of the others. Here Shahrazūrī says:

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If you reflect on earlier principles such as that every soul has a general perfection, this is “becoming abstract from matter.” Now the divine mercy necessitates that each perfection it [potentially] has, [actually] reaches perfection, through the regenerations [that take place] in that world. Even if this would only happen through the mutual connection of souls and the emanation of lights, that would suffice to have the wrong dispositions cease, whether these dispositions be intellectual or practical.

Shahrazūrī’s response is rather subtle since he cannibalizes the crux of the matter – that souls in the afterlife are not in a static state but undergo regenerations – from Suhrawardī’s text. Suhrawardī uses that part of the argument to argue that souls who have wrong Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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dispositions but not wrong convictions will not be punished eternally, but only temporally. Suhrawardī here makes a distinction between dispositions and convictions. However, Shahrazūrī infuses that argument with the idea that wrong convictions are nothing but dispositions as well, but this time not practical but intellectual dispositions. That he mentions this premise only at the end makes it less prominent and therefore not immediately visible to a reader. Especially here in the discussion of those with wrong convictions, it is this premise that turns Suhrawardī’s stern vision into a much more forgiving view of the afterlife. That Shahrazūrī brings in the term “divine mercy” is indicative of this, for the argument in which it appears is a strict logical-metaphysical argument (“all potential perfections will be actualized”) and does not need the term “mercy”; it could be exchanged with a term like “principle” or “necessitation” without loss of comprehension.107 To use “mercy” instead gives the whole passage a “merciful” tone, directing the reader to the idea that not all hope is lost for those who hold wrong convictions in this life.

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Assurance of its Existence and Attribution to the Ancients

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The last two points – the assurance to believe in it and the attribution to Greek philosophers – may be conveniently treated together. They are striking features of Shahrazūrī’s central passage and are also referenced elsewhere more than once.108 They have their roots in Suhrawardī’s writings, but, as with other aspects, it is Shahrazūrī who makes a bigger and more explicit point of it. For example, he also strengthens the connection with ancient Iran by including a reference to the prophet Mani’s philosophy, describing how the creation undergoes a purification process that could, according to Shahrazūrī, be a reference to the world of image.109 Shahrazūrī’s interest in classical philosophy goes beyond his commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. He wrote a sizable history of philosophy, Nuzhat al-arwāḥ, in which he collected information and sayings of philosophers, all the way from Adam until his own time.110 Remarkably, despite his insistence on the attribution of the world of image to Greek philosophers (“The divine sages, like Hermes, Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and other excellent and ancient men, have said . . .”), the statement or anything resembling it cannot be found in Nuzhat al-arwāḥ. Only a twofold division into intelligible and sensory, high and low, pure and stained, can be found.111 It seems therefore unlikely that the attribution is correct. Instead, it seems to me that they were put in place to counter those who are weary or even hostile toward the idea, which would not be uncommon considering its unique character, when compared with other philosophical texts of that time. Considered in this way, the attribution should be seen as only a rhetorical device to convince the reader of the veracity of this idea. Further, in the Rasāʾil, Shahrazūrī not only wishes to make arguments from authority by referring to ancient philosophers and prophets, but also refers to the Sufis. He does not mention them by name, but at one point he is clearly referring to Ibn ʿArabī when he says that “one of the shaykhs” speaks of the “dependent imagination” (al-khayāl al-muttaṣil), equal to the faculty of imagination, comparable with a creek, and the “independent imagination” (al-khayāl al-munfaṣil), which is equal to the world of image and can be compared with a mighty river.112 Beyond this remark, his comparative analysis does not go. Lastly, and quite remarkably, a self-reference is missing, as far as I can tell. With all the enthusiasm that Shahrazūrī shows for the world of image, and with all the detail that he describes this world, saying he could “fill many tomes” about this, at no point does he clearly state that he has had first-hand experience of this world. In this regard a curious commentarial intervention should be noted. Suhrawardī clearly said he did have an experience, “I myself have had veritable experiences . . .,”113 and for him it was an important part of his argument from authority: “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images.”114 Shahrazūrī, however, when he comes to use Suhrawardī’s sentence “I myself have had veritable experiences . . .” in his Rasāʾil, distances himself from it by beginning the sentence with “He said” (thumma qāla). This is a significant act of distancing himself

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from the statement, for we know him to be comfortable with obfuscating authorship of texts, using snippets from Suhrawardī’s corpus as though they are from his own pen. The most brazen example of that is when he uses Suhrawardī’s sentence from al-Mashāriʿ “when you will come to our book called Ḥikmat al-ishrāq – the like of which has not existed before – then perhaps you will get to understand something about it,” and changes this into “if you devote yourself to looking into this book of mine, of which the like has not existed before, especially on this issue, then perhaps you will get to understand something about it.” Shahrazūrī’s refusal to say openly that he has had first-hand experience with this world of image is remarkable for a philosopher who is developing Suhrawardī’s ideas in a highly original way, and is writing on it in such great detail.

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5 Suhrawardī’s Lukewarm Commentators

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n this chapter I discuss if and how Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) commentators engaged with his ideas about suspended images. The main conclusion to be drawn is that virtually all commentators were not enthusiastic about suspended images or the world of image, and show little signs of wanting to be part of a “school of thought.” Notably, a number of commentators never touch on the subject. Others who do can be divided into two groups. A first group covers the first 150 years or so after Suhrawardī death, and shows a remarkable hesitation in discussing his ideas. A second group consists of intellectuals from Shiraz, around the turn of the sixteenth century, who expand on Suhrawardī’s discussion by including counterarguments. Special attention needs to go to Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), as he uses Suhrawardī’s ideas, but in a different way than they were intended. Among the commentaries that do not include a discussion on suspended images or the world of image are the five commentaries on the Persian literary treatises.1 The Persian commentary on Hayākil al-nūr also does not discuss the world of image at all.2 Ḥillī’s (d. 1354) glosses on Ibn Kammūna’s (d. 1284) commentary show no comments at all on eschatology, let alone the world of image.3 Similarly, two commentators from the Ottoman Empire do not have anything to say on the world of image;4 in the case of Ḥasan al-Kurdī’s (d. 1630)

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­ ersification, we do read the term ʿālam al-mithāl twice, but it is used v to denote the sensory world.5 Three other commentaries mention the suspended images and the world of image only in passing. A certain ʿUbayd Allāh Khān Tarkhān Ḥasanī wrote a commentary on Hayākil al-nūr in which he does not make mention of the world of image, but at a point where Suhrawardī says “the number of worlds is three,” a note in the margin adds “and one of them says that the number of worlds are four.” The note does not elaborate on it, but this is, of course, a reference to Ḥikmat al-ishrāq’s discussion of suspended images.6 Similarly, a certain Muḥammad Bāqir al-Jīlānī wrote a gloss on the last chapter of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq in which he focusses on the issue of metempsychosis (tanāsukh). In a section on resurrection more generally, he mentions that Suhrawardī and his followers argue that a soul connects with an imaginable body (jasad-i mithālī), in the world of image (ʿālam-i mithāl), which they also call Hurqalya.7 But beyond this casual reference he does not go, interested more in Suhrawardī’s discussion on metempsychosis. Lastly, we have what appears to be study notes on Hayākil al-nūr and its commentaries. If the “Mīr Zāhid” that is referred to is Mīr Zāhid Harawī (d. 1689), the treatise should be dated to the early eighteenth century. In it, we find several mentions of the world of image, but without elaborations.8

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A Hesitant First Reception

Between Suhrawardī’s reflections and Shahrazūrī’s (d. ≥ 1288) bold development of them, there lies about a hundred years. It does not seem to be the case that Suhrawardī’s writings were only gathering dust before Shahrazūrī snatched them up. On the issue of eschatology  and the suspended images, we can find hints in a few texts that these ideas were circulating. The general impression, however, is that this was done hesitantly. On the one hand, they seemed keen to discuss it, while at the same time they wanted to distance themselves from it or did not want to go into great lengths about it. Some who hesitated were tending toward acceptance, others toward rejection. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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An important example of the latter is Ibn Kammūna (d. 1284), who adamantly refused the idea of a world of image, or even the idea of using the imagination after death. He calls the idea “a feeble contention and baseless rhetoric,”9 and does not seriously engage with it. At the same time he does spend some time unpacking Suhrawardī’s discussion in al-Talwīḥāt on using the imagination by use of bodies made of vapor and smoke and celestial bodies, and he is in fact the first to make reference to Suhrawardī’s passage in al-Mashāriʿ. He does that in a different place, when Suhrawardī relates a story about Hermes. In the story, Hermes implores God to raise him up to “the elevated places of the throne” (sharafāt al-kursī, interpreted by Ibn Kammūna as the immaterial world, ʿālam al-mujarradāt). He is indeed lifted up, and it is said that “under his feet were heaven and Earth.”10 Ibn Kammūna first interprets this as meaning the bodily world. He then strengthens this interpretation with a citation from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq where Suhrawardī relates that “Plato said: ‘When I left matter behind I beheld luminous spheres.’”11 He then says that perhaps (laʿalla) what Suhrawardī refers to is the “world of images” (ʿālam al-muthul, he later uses the term ʿālam al-muthul al-muʿallaqa), and adds the passage from al-Mashāriʿ to make a stronger case for this. However, after this reference he concludes that passage saying “In summary, the truth of his intention with this paragraph is very problematic to me, as earlier mentioned in other parts of this chapter.”12 A less negative reception, though with clear reservations, is visible in the earliest commentary, by Tūdhī (d. ≥ 1252). He disregards the more intricate theory of a world of imaginable, suspended images, and only introduces Ibn Sīnā’s idea of using celestial bodies as the substrate for the imagination to interpret al-Lamaḥāt.13 He introduces it with “perhaps,” and refers to al-Talwīḥāt to point out that this is what Suhrawardī may have been thinking of. Further, he does not think that any other category than the somewhat bad souls make use of this solution. Around the same time as Tūdhī, we can find other cases of reception of Suhrawardī’s eschatology. A more positive hesitation, tending toward acceptance, is found in al-Aqṭāb al-quṭbiyya by Aharī

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(d.  1259). After an introduction on why people who know through inspiration (aṣḥāb al-ʿirfān) are better than people who know through reasoning (aṣḥāb al-burhān), who are in turn better than people who know through faith (aṣḥāb al-īmān), he proposes that the people of inspiration know that there are four kinds of existents: intellect, soul, images, and suspended forms (al-ʿaql, al-nafs, al-muthul, al-ṣuwar al-muʿallaqa).14 “Images,” muthul, seems to be used here to mean “bodies.” Suspended images he calls “as though shadows of the images,” in correspondence with images (or, bodies) themselves, which he calls “as though shadows of the soul.” Though he does not call soul “as though a shadow” of intellect, it is nevertheless clear that he tries to establish a strict hierarchy with these remarks. He does not go much more than this into the philosophical dimensions of the notion of suspended images. Instead, he acknowledges that Suhrawardī proposed this fourth kind of existent, and embellishes his name with much praise and epithets. He then paraphrases Ḥikmat al-ishrāq on two points. The first is where Suhrawardī speaks of his own experience and that of the people of Darband. The second is where Suhrawardī argues that suspended images are different from Platonic Forms, because Platonic Forms can only be luminous, whereas suspended images can also be dark.15 We may find a case of an even greater positive attitude, yet still with a certain hesitation, in Abharī’s (d. 1264) Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī taḥrīr al-daqāʾiq.16 In it, Abharī seems to be drawing from Suhrawardī for the entire part on eschatology. In this context we may in particular note Abharī’s argumentation in favor of suspended images. Characteristic of his hesitation, he never mentions “suspended images” (al-ṣuwar al-muʿallaqa), nor a related term, simply because he renders the standard argument in favor of suspended images in his own words, only to stop short before the conclusion:17

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Paragraph five, on the forms that the soul sees when it is sleeping. These forms are either existent in the external world, or they are not. The first is incorrect, for otherwise everyone who has sound sensory perception would see them. So the second is established, Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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which must either [mean that they are] existent in the soul or in another faculty. The first is incorrect, since it is perceived and none of the existents in the soul are like that. So the second is established.

That they must be in such a faculty, for example, the imagination, in “suspense,” that is, as Suhrawardī would have it, “not in a place or locus,” is something Abharī refrains from concluding. Further, the conclusion that it is such perception that is also possible after death is something Abharī only wishes to cite in a separate paragraph, which he begins with the disclaimer “Paragraph seven on eschatology according to the opinion of the author of al-Ishrāq. He says that . . .”18 According to Abharī, Suhrawardī’s eschatology has three categories. The best, who have purified themselves from bad, bodily dispositions, are to go to the World of Dominion (ʿālam al-malakūt). Notably,  Abharī does not use the word or a derivative of “intelligible” (ʿaqlī) at all. People who have not purified themselves at all will be punished through a connection with an animal or human body. This is tantamount to metempsychosis, but Abharī does not make the accusation. In between the best and the worst are the intermediate people, who have not been able to purify themselves completely:19

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They connect with one of the celestial bodies, which becomes a substrate for their acts of imagination, out of which occurs a kind of felicity. Afterwards, they are freed from this and connect to the locus of [true] felicity.

As is clear from this passage, Abharī noticed the correspondence of Suhrawardī’s ideas and Ibn Sīnā’s ideas, and chose to phrase the idea as it is in Suhrawardī’s texts in terms closer to Ibn Sīnā’s idea. To distance himself even more, he ends the chapter on eschatology with the words: “A proof has not befallen for either the correctness of these things or its falsity, so refraining from it is necessary (fa-yajib fihā ­al-tawaqquf). And God knows best. The Metaphysics of the book of Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq has ended, and it is followed by the Physics, with the aid of God and His good mediation.”20 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Abharī, then, in the end refrained from supporting the idea. We see a similarly hesitant approach in Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1310), the well-known commentator on Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The Case of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī

Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī simply incorporated Shahrazūrī’s commentary. This means we do not have to go over each and every detail of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s interpretation of the world of image, because, simply put, he does not have a personal one.21 What we see at work is an adaption process, in which the few decisions that he makes are only to smoothen things out. Four points, however, emerge. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī assigns proper places for each category of human beings, which are, to him, five in total, whereas Shahrazūrī only counts three,22 and Suhrawardī counts four.23 For Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, the best go to the world of intellect, all the other categories have “suspended images.”24 Later on when he takes over different parts of Shahrazūrī’s texts, he has no problem in using the term “world of image.” On demons and jinn, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī also thinks that these could come to be from souls that are present in the world of image, but these souls are not a special part of the world of image, their form just happens to be manifest in the sensory world.25 The most striking difference with Shahrazūrī is his lack of enthusiasm for metempsychosis. He does not think Suhrawardī argues in favor of it, and gladly makes use of Suhrawardī’s ambivalent sentence that adds the conditional “whether metempsychosis be true or not.”26 Quṭb al-Dīn is also the author of an epistle on the world of image, of which Walbridge prepared an initial edition and translation.27 We can be equally brief about this epistle as it, in large parts, depends on his own Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, thus relying mostly on Shahrazūrī. Two points are worth making concerning this epistle. First, Quṭb al-Dīn’s discomfort with Shahrazūrī’s acceptance of metempsychosis is continued in this epistle. Nowhere does he explicitly accept metempsychosis, although he does explain in detail how different animals represent different bad habits, and how people may assume the form

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of an animal equivalent to their character. This, it seems, applies only to the fifth category, the utterly bad people, who, he says, attain dark suspended images. Categories two–four attain luminous suspended images. He leaves it to the reader to work out the consequences, but it seems that he tacitly assumes that categories two–four attain human forms in the world of image, and category five attains animal forms in the world of image.28 He has thus accepted Shahrazūrī’s proposal that bad souls connect with animal bodies, but moved those bodies from the sensory world to the imaginable world, to avoid having to support metempsychosis. Second, whereas I was only able to point to a relatively small reference to Ibn ʿArabī in Shahrazūrī’s writings, in this epistle Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī inserts a sizable citation from the sixty-third chapter of al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya to show that next to the ancient philosophers and the prophets, the “mystics” (al-awliyāʾ) too have ascertained the existence of the world of image.29 The very existence of this epistle perhaps gives the impression that Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī was a staunch supporter of the world of image, but, as I have pointed out, it contains virtually no new information but is merely an appropriation and reorganization of Shahrazūrī’s writings. I was unable to find traces of the idea of using the imagination after death in other writings of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, such as his Sharḥ al-Najāt and his Durrat al-tāj. Had the idea been present in these other writings of his, it could indicate that it was after all his personal belief.30 The fact that it is absent from these texts is all the more strange since in both cases he is explicitly invited to do so. Ibn Sīnā’s al-Najāt has, as we have seen in Chapter 4, a discussion of the idea of using celestial bodies to activate the imagination, but he simply steps over it. The chapter on eschatology in Durrat al-tāj is a Persian translation of Ibn Kammūna’s al-Kāshif (also known as al-Jadīd fī l-ḥikma),31 which in turn incorporates the same discussion from al-Shifāʾ/al-Najāt,32 and again he steps over it, merely translating what Ibn Kammūna had written. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s work on the world of image therefore illustrates well the hesitant lukewarmness that I think is characteristic of many intellectuals from this first period.

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An Anonymous Contribution The hesitation that these texts show seems to have continued also after Shahrazūrī proposed his interpretation of Suhrawardī’s ideas and after Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī made Shahrazūrī’s ideas more well known. A fine example of this is in an epistle by an anonymous author, written between 1329 and 1339, which features a whole chapter on “suspended images” (al-ṣuwar al-muʿallaqa) and includes argumentation not seen elsewhere.33 This chapter is divided into three sections: an introduction, a discussion on the existence of suspended images, and a discussion of arguments against suspended images. The hesitance is thus shown in the very structure of the chapter; from introducing, to discussing, to doubting it. This structure is repeated within the second part, in which the noun used to indicate a new argument is at first suʾāl, “question,” but later changes into iʿtirāḍ, “objection.” The introduction draws from Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī, and Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, though only Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is acknowledged as a source. Notably, suspended images are defined as “a form of a thing that is a body or bodily, existing outside all the faculties of perception being partially abstract from its matter (mujarrada ʿan al-māddatihi tajrīdan nāqiṣan).”34 The second section is structured around three major arguments in favor of the existence of suspended images. The first goes as follows. If we can imagine an image that is partially abstract from matter, then this requires it to possibly exist. And with God’s benevolence, its possibility can be counted as a surety. The independent existence of images that are partially abstract from matter has thus been proven. As far as I am aware, this is an argument uniquely present in this treatise. It is worthwhile, then, to discuss the questions that follow it. One question, the first, asks why this possibility needs to be essential and cannot be merely intellectual, that is, as a mere doubt (al-shakk). The answer given is that if something is possible for a thing, it must be possible for all things of that species. Thus, the possibility is present for all, and can be said to be part of the essence. Another question,

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raised in numbers two and three, asks how an accident could exist on its own. The author states that an image, in its correspondence to the object, can be a substrate, even if the object is itself an accident. More information on this answer would be desirable, but is not given. In questions four and seven, the goodness of suspended images is put in doubt, which would put in doubt whether God’s benevolence would need to create them. The answer the author gives seems to me merely rhetorical, simply stating that suspended images are more noble than bodily things, and therefore better. Questions five and six, finally, ask why a thing that is stripped from its specifics would not be a universal. The author answers by saying, simply, that in order to create a suspended image from a thing not all specifics are stripped and the image remains only partially abstracted. The second argument is the argument from authority: prophets and philosophers attest to the reality of such images. A curious objection and answer are included in this part. The author says that if the world of suspended images indeed works to realize certain prophetic promises, such as the embodiment of our behavior after death, that means that what are accidents here would be substrates there.35 This is exactly what Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī argued for, and although the author thinks that such is possible, the author claims that this is not what both thinkers said. Suhrawardī is supposed to have said that “the image of an accident is an accident,” and Shahrazūrī is supposed to have said that “the image of something that inheres (al-ḥāll) is something that inheres.”36 He subsequently says that Suhrawardī’s statement is unfounded, and that Shahrazūrī means something else. Why the author bent the facts only to arrive at the same conclusion is unclear to me. Additionally of interest for this argument is that the author includes a long citation from Ibn ʿArabī’s al-Futuḥāt al-makkiyya to show that the mystics (al-awliyāʾ) also argue in favor of the world of suspended images.37 The third argument follows Suhrawardī’s reasoning about images in mirrors and eyes. Since they cannot be imprinted, cannot be seen by emission of rays, and cannot be in the air, they must exist on their own. The anonymous author includes a number of interesting ­additions to

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Suhrawardī’s argumentation. Most importantly, the author expands on the similarity between mirrors and eyes:38 The layer of the crystalline humor is also a mirror for the soul, by which it sees the forms of visible objects. The forms which the soul sees by means of the sensory eyes are not in the crystalline humor. Rather, they come to be, at the moment of being opposite, when from the soul a present illumination comes about for the illuminated thing, if it is sensory. If it is purely an apparition, it needs another place of manifestation, like a mirror. Then, when the crystalline humor comes to be opposite to the mirror, a present illumination comes about from the soul, and it sees the reflection by means of the mirror of the crystalline humor and the external mirror.

Here, this author unequivocally states that eyes function exactly as mirrors are said to function; they are merely a place of manifestation, in which a suspended image can appear if the object is opposite to the eye and an illumination shines upon the object. Then, since the eye is present to the soul, the soul apprehends the suspended image. This time, the argument is not followed by “questions,” but by “objections.”39 I find the last six objections, out of eleven, in particular engaging. Among them (objections six, seven, and eleven) is that if vision is not by occurrence (ḥuṣūl), then neither is knowledge. And if that is so, then there is no difference between a learned and an ignorant person, which makes no sense. Thus, if knowledge is by occurrence, so should vision be. The author retorts that there is a marked difference between vision and other types of knowledge, such as intellection. For example, sight is sensory and material, whereas intellection is psychological and immaterial. Another objection (number eight) is that we sometimes come across optical illusions, which cannot be explained if neither the theory of extramission or impression is accepted. The author explains that the normal rules still apply, only the theory behind vision is changed. Another objection (nine and ten) points out that suspended images are supposedly created at the moment of seeing them, which would seem to imply that we could forever see them thereafter, which is not the case. On

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the other hand, if one accepts that these images also go out of being, how is the independent, continuous existence of this world of image safeguarded? The author answers that such images exist only under the right circumstances, and that the continuous existence depends more on images from the imagination than from vision. In general, the argumentation of the author is rather dry and technical, preferring to nitpick at the logic of the argumentation rather than exploring the broader implications of the idea. Any sense of mystery around the suspended images is absent. The third section proposes to offer seventeen arguments against the existence of suspended images. They boil down to two strategies, both playing into the definition of a suspended images as “being partially abstract from its matter.” First, it is said that if suspended images are particular and not fully abstract, they must have spatiality to them, which makes them material.40 For example, different parts of the image can be placed next to each other, which is a characteristic of space. Likewise, judging one part to be smaller than another requires the space of one part to be smaller than the other, presupposing space. The other strategy points out that if these images are indeed without matter, they can only be intellects and need to be characterized as such.41 To the first argument, it is said that there is indeed spatiality to suspended images, but only imaginable spatiality (al-waḍʿ al-khayālī) not sensory spatiality, and only the latter would imply materiality. To the second argument, it is said that suspended images are not fully abstract, only partial, and only if they were fully abstract would they have to be intellects. The entire chapter on suspended images, then, can be characterized as a sober discussion of suspended images, with an emphasis on discussing technicalities about the soundness of the argumentation. The author, in the end, remains uncommitted. A final note for this first period may be made about Lisān al-Dīn ibn Khaṭīb (d. 1374), from Muslim Spain. In his Rawḍat al-taʿrīf he gives a summary of Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and cites the passage in which Suhrawardī says that intermediate souls connect with celestial bodies to imagine suspended forms.42 He does not engage with the text.

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The Cautious Commentators from Shiraz From around the sixteenth century, from Shiraz, we find a group of intellectuals who show great interest in Suhrawardī’s writings and Suhrawardī’s and Shahrazūrī’s ideas on the world of image. Their engagement with the material shows itself through a critique on the philosophical soundness of it, and their perceived contradiction with traditional thought, in particular the scriptural promises concerning bodily resurrection. An early expression of the latter point is Ibn Abī Jumhūr’s (d. ≥ 1500) Mujlī mirʾāt al-Munjī. On the one hand, it includes a chapter on the world of image, which is virtually entirely based on Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya.43 On the other hand, as for Ibn Abī Jumhūr’s own eschatology, it seems to disregard the world of image entirely, instead being much more in tune with orthodox ideas on the resurrection.44 Ibn Abī Jumhūr’s text is a stepping stone to the commentators from Shiraz. As Sabine Schmidtke suggests, it is likely that Ibn Abī Jumhūr acquired his knowledge of Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil in Najaf when he was studying with Sharaf al-Dīn Ḥasan al-Fattāl Najafī (fl. 1465). This is the same Najafī with whom Dawānī (d. 1502) studied Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, as Schmidtke points out.45

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An Uncommitted Commentator: Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī

Dawānī, in his famous commentary on Hayākil al-nūr titled Shawākil al-ḥūr fī sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr, gives suspended images and the world of image only a passing mention in four passages. The first mention occurs when Suhrawardī’s Hayākil al-nūr describes the different outer senses and inner faculties. Here Dawānī summarizes Suhrawardī’s exposition on suspended images from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq in two or three sentences, introducing this by saying “according to him.”46 A second time the world of image is mentioned by Dawānī occurs when he comments on a passage in which Suhrawardī discusses the impossibility of the pre-eternity of the soul. Suhrawardī argues that there are no distinguishing features to souls before they enter the body, and if there is no distinction, there cannot be multiplicity. In other words, human souls do not exist as individuals before their body comes to Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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be.47 Among the distinguishing features that Suhrawardī mentions, there are “acquired dispositions” (hayʾāt muktasaba), which seem to be equivalent to character traits. Suhrawardī says that souls do not have such acquired states before natural birth. However, they can have them after natural death. This is not further worked out by Suhrawardī, and Dawānī adds that “according to them . . . those traits solidify (tatajassadu) in the world of image and become a body for the soul, which may be called an acquired body.”48 More than this Dawānī does not say in this particular part of his commentary. In a next passage, Dawānī notably does not attribute the idea to someone else. This occurs in a passage where he comments on Suhrawardī’s description of the order of beings. Here he describes in a few sentences the way the world of image and the world of body are both caused by the world of intellect.49 After this he simply continues his train of thought without mentioning the world of image again, as though it does not require any further explanation. The fourth and final place where Dawānī mentions the world of image in his commentary is when Suhrawardī argues that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Evil only pertains to the sensory world, and Suhrawardī says that “the world in which defects do not take place is another world.” Dawānī casually notes that “that is the world of image, and the world of celestial bodies, and those worlds of souls and intellects that are above it.”50 As is the case with the other three passages, Dawānī does not discuss what he means by mentioning the world of image (ʿālam al-mithāl) and instead simply continues commenting on the next part of Suhrawardī’s text. When commenting on the chapter on eschatology Dawānī makes no attempt to introduce the world of image. When he mentions the “acquired states” (hayʾāt muktasaba), he does make a passing mention that vile states take on eerie, imaginable forms (ṣūra mithāliyya mūḥisha),51 but leaves it unexplained. Instead, Dawānī gives a rather straightforward interpretation, emphasizing that a release to the world of intellect is the ultimate goal of mankind. We can safely conclude, then, that in his commentary, Dawānī shows himself to be not interested at all with the idea of a world of image. As far as I have been

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able to establish, he equally does not discuss suspended images or the world of image in other works. When, for example, in the super-gloss of Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1498) on the commentary by Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī Taḥtānī (d. 1364) on Maṭāliʿ al-anwār by Sirāj al-Dīn Urmawī (d. 1283) mention is made of the world of image in relation to suspended images, Dawānī does not comment on it in his super-super-gloss.52 Enthusiast and Critic in One: Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī

Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī’s (d. 1542) commentary does include a discussion of the world of image. It is in fact substantial and quite interesting. I have investigated in detail this substantial passage elsewhere.53 Some of the main findings can be summarized as follows. The discussion in his commentary is about twenty pages long and is not located in the chapter on eschatology, but rather in the chapter on ontology. A translation of the sentence in which he announces the discussion is the following, in which Suhrawardī’s text is given in bold:

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Know that the worlds are four according to the author and those of the Ishrāqīs and Ṣūfīs who follow him, and three according to the majority of the sages.54

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After this, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī first continues to comment on Suhrawardī’s text. When he is finished doing this, he says: “but as for those who maintain that the worlds are four . . .”55 What follows turns out to be a copy of a part of an epistle by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī on the world of image.56 Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s epistle includes questions sent to him, which he then answers. Of his answers, the first is by far the longest, and it is this answer which Dashtakī cites in his commentary. As I have shown in my article, Dashtakī adopts an intricate way of appropriating Quṭb al-Dīn’s text: he discards bits of Quṭb al-Dīn’s text in about a hundred places, at one point running up to seventy-seven words.57 There are also places where Dashtakī adds texts, which is the case in about forty places. This is usually limited to one or a few words, but three of them are quite large and seem to be, at least partially, genuinely from the pen of Dashtakī himself.58 In many other places, he slightly alters words, changes word order, or provides a synonym. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Of the three passages added, the first merely gives an additional citation from Ibn ʿArabī’s (d. 1240) al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya. Since one manuscript does not have this passage, it is uncertain whether it is a genuine part of Dashtakī’s text. The second passage is a citation, properly announced as such, from Qayṣarī’s (d. 1350) Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ.59 In that citation, we see Qayṣarī speak of the world of image, comparing it with the independent imagination (al-khayāl al-munfaṣil), a notion that was developed in the commentary tradition on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. From the citations of Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators by Suhrawardī’s commentators, we may learn that Suhrawardī’s commentators saw Ibn ʿArabī as a witness to the existence of suspended images. Their repeated reference to him as a mystic puts him at a distance from themselves, writing from within the philosophical discourse. The third passage that was added by Dashtakī is about four pages long and likely to be his own reflections. It first gives three arguments in favor of a world of image. These are simply drawn from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and its commentaries, by considering mystical experience, mirrors, and dreams, respectively. More interesting are the five objections he reports. They seem to boil down to two main arguments. The first, second, and fourth objections address the characteristics of images and what this implies for their ontological status. The third and fifth objections deal with how different worlds, or modes of being, can be intertwined. The first main argument is perhaps most simply stated in the fourth objection, on which the first and second objection are built. In this fourth objection, Dashtakī considers the difference between bodies and suspended images. If they are indeed ontologically different, then clearly images cannot have the qualities of bodies (kayfiyyāt al-ajsam), for otherwise they would simply be bodies and part of the world of body.60 It is said that suspended images are involved in dreams and mirrors. But, as Dashtakī argues, “were the thing seen in a mirror or a dream of this type of form, then it would be visible in its subtlety, not by the coarseness of bodies.”61 This is clearly meant to be a reductio ad absurdum, under the assumption that we do see images

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in mirrors and dreams with the “coarse qualities” of bodies. Therefore, they cannot be suspended images. Building forth on argumentation based on the qualities of bodies, the first objection points to a specific quality, namely, magnitude. Suspended images are said not to be in a locus (maḥall), but Dashtakī maintains that “we know that everything having magnitude is in a locus” (naʿlamu anna kull miqdār fī maḥall).62 Suspended images would then be required not to have magnitude, yet they are said to do so, which is an inconsistency. It likewise leads to an inconsistency, as the second objection argues, to suggest there are an infinite number of suspended images, for then there would exist dimensional infinity (abʿād ghayr mutanāhiya). It is silently assumed that the actual infinite is impossible.63 The main argument proposed by these three objections goes to the core of one of the difficulties of the theory of the world of image. Shahrazūrī already figured out that what we would call accidents in the Earthly world, would have to be self-subsisting substances in the world of image. We saw that he could not propose a water-tight argumentation why images in the world of image could still have all kinds of particular characteristics, and Dashtakī exposes this weakness by unremittingly demanding that spiritual and material aspects are strictly different and cannot be comprehended as the other. So how can the world of image, which is supposedly spiritual, be comprehended in material terms? Of a different category are objections three and five. They both argue that if the image were truly in another world, it would not be possible to see it in this world. Dashtakī argues that since we see images in mirrors, and mirrors are part of our world, then clearly such an image is a part of (mutaqaddir fī) this world too, the world of body, not some other world, the world of image. This argument works best against Shahrazūrī, who insists on such images’ simultaneous existence in the world of image and manifestation in the world of body. For Suhrawardī the point is not that such images are in another world, but that they cannot be truly part of the mirror but need to be suspended in it. Dashtakī refers to his al-ḥikma al-manṣūriyya for more information, which appears to be lost to us. Notably, the world of image is

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absent in the rest of his commentary on Hayākil al-nūr.64 Also in his other writings we rarely see the world of image appear.65 The text that does mention it occasionally is his Mirʾāt al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-mujlī al-daqāʾiq. In this text he makes mention of a mystical vision he had, which according to him took place in Hūrqalyā.66 It seems it was this vision that inspired him to write Mirʾāt al-ḥaqāʾiq, which he finished in 895/1490.67 It seems that Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr was finished before this date.68 Having been born in 866/1461–62, we may infer that the idea of a world of image was on his mind in his late twenties and that his interest waned quickly afterwards. This is evidenced by the fact that the concept is almost completely absent from his later writings, and also because he never accepted the world of image as a valid solution for eschatology, notably not even in his commentary on Hayākil al-nūr. He is quite explicit in stating that bodily resurrection must mean the return of the body exactly as it is here on Earth.69 He even goes so far as to draw the conclusion that anyone who thinks otherwise is an apostate and unbeliever.70

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Najm al-Dīn Nayrīzī

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Nayrīzī (d. ≥ 1536), a student of Dashtakī’s father, also shows a generally negative attitude toward the notions of suspended images and the world of image. Notably, his glosses on Dawānī’s Shawākil al-ḥūr cover the chapter on eschatology, but show nothing on suspended images or the world of image.71 His glosses on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq stop short before the chapter on eschatology.72 In other parts of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, we can find some terse notes on suspended images and the world of image. Such notes are critical of these ideas. One such note, and a crucial one for that matter, is on the central innovative idea of Suhrawardī, namely, that images are “suspended” (muʿallaq), meaning that they are “not in a substrate (maḥall) or a place.”73 Nayrīzī dryly states:74 Would these image [really] exist without being in a place or substrate, then they would have to be perceived as such, but this is not the case. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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This is because, as Nayrīzī insists in the next gloss, anything that is perceived as magnitudinous, has to occupy a place. So if it does not occupy a place, it cannot be perceived as magnitudinous. This seems to be his central argument in his glosses on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. His commentary on al-Alwāḥ, a work much bigger than his glosses, contains some more notes on the world of image, which deserves closer attention.75 Nayrīzī’s Critique on the World of Image

There is one place at which Nayrīzī more extensively engages with the notion of a world of image in his Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ.76 His verdict is negative. This happens in a discussion on vision. Nayrīzī reports  Suhrawardī’s arguments that vision is not by impression and that Suhrawardī thinks it functions by using the world of image. In a very summary fashion, Nayrīzī argues against the world of image, with argumentation that seems to be close to Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī’s objections, though no intentional textual correspondence can be established. For example, where Dashtakī objected to suspended images having “the qualities of bodies” (kayfiyyāt al-ajsām), Nayrīzī objects to suspended images “being of the genus of body and corporeality” (kāna min jins al-jism wa-al-jismāniyyāt). Clearly, the same idea is expressed, but in distinctly different terms. The crux of the objection in Nayrīzī’s text is similar to Dashtakī’s argument. Nayrīzī sees two alternatives, both untenable, if such images are indeed of the genus of body. For, if they were, they must have existence that enters in this world, which implies “either the permeation of bodies or supposing that what is not existent in this world [in fact] does exist in it.”77 The untenability of the second alternative is clear; to say something that does not exist in this world exists in this world is a flagrant contradiction. The first alternative, though, is less clear. I would propose two interpretations of “the permeation of bodies” (tadākhul al-ajsām). Nayrīzī could mean that if suspended images are of the genus of bodies, and if they appear in mirrors and in our eyes, then they interfere and permeate the body of the mirror or the eye, which apparently is not allowed.78 It could also be meant

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to refer to the fuzziness of the ontological distinction between suspended images and bodies that arises when one allows suspended images to have bodily qualities. This is something that Dashtakī points out as well, when he says that were suspended images to be ontologically different from bodies, they should be “visible in their subtlety, not by the coarseness of bodies.”79 Nayrīzī continues his argumentation, saying that if suspended images are not of the genus of body, they can perhaps be of the genus of abstract things. This also leads to an untenable result, in fact, Nayrīzī can think of two. First, what we see in mirrors and in dreams are clearly not abstract things, so if suspended images were to be involved in mirrors and dreams, they could not be of the genus of abstract things. Second, even if we were to accept that they were, then it remains the case that whatever perceives suspended images (Nayrīzī is not specific, but he means the faculty of sight and the faculty of imagination) is in this case perceiving abstract things. If it can perceive abstract things, why does it not, then, perceive all abstract things? Nayrīzī concludes:

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The truth is, then, that sight is by impression, and none of the aforementioned arguments can refute it.80

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The gravity of this conclusion should not be overlooked; we saw in a previous chapter that Suhrawardī builds his idea of suspended images in large part upon his reflections on the theory of vision, and to see Nayrīzī explicitly discard Suhrawardī’s theory of vision, in a direct context of a discussion of the world of image, shows that Nayrīzī thought little of the idea of a world of image. Pourjavady interprets a passage in Nayrīzī’s text to argue that the idea of a world of image is plausible if one modifies Suhrawardī’s ideas. However, if we take the context of the passage into account, I believe we could arrive at a different interpretation. The remark in question comes at the end of a paraphrase of Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil, which relates that there is a world that knows magnitudes yet is not our world. Nayrīzī announces that he is citing the Rasāʾil, and his paraphrase is quite faithful.81 However, when one reads, in Nayrīzī’s text, the pages Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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that precede this passage, and compares them with the pages that precede the passage in Shahrazūrī’s text, it is obvious that Nayrīzī had been following Rasāʾil’s text for quite some time and quite faithfully. I think this shows that Nayrīzī did not want to take responsibility for the idea of a world of image, and therefore wanted to make clear to his readers that he is merely citing someone else. From the remark that Nayrīzī makes right after this paraphrase, Pourjavady suggests that Nayrīzī introduced “a barrier (muḥaddid) [to] separate the two worlds from each other,” because Nayrīzī did not want the world of image to be “overlapping in some occasions with the sensible world.”82 But instead Nayrīzī’s remark is merely to summarize the two arguments about the impossibility of multiple worlds being in different delimitations and the impossibility of multiple worlds being in one delimitation. To reflect this difference in interpretation, I offer here my own translation of the passage that Pourjavady translates:83

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Were it not for fear of making the discourse too long, I would have informed you about it, in as much as that if these worlds are inside a single delimitation,84 they should be part of this world, and if they are not inside a delimitation,85 then either it necessitates a vacuum, which is definitely false, or there is another delimitation, of which it is necessary that [this] assumed [delimitation] cannot be making a gap with the world without making a gap with it. This is what we sought to establish.

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Admittedly, Nayrīzī’s language is succinct to the point of being elliptical, but with some effort, every statement can be mapped to a part of the argumentation that Shahrazūrī had expounded concerning the unicity of the world. I think Nayrīzī is therefore not suggesting that with a “barrier” in between this and the world of image he would agree to a world of image. In fact, he does not seem to engage with the idea at all. First, when, in his paraphrase of Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil, he reaches the comment on the world of image, he distances himself from it. Afterwards, he merely reminds the readers of the counterarguments against a multiplicity of worlds holding magnitude. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Eschatology in Nayrīzī’s Commentary Since Suhrawardī does not mention in al-Alwāḥ the middle categories but uses only a twofold classification, there is no mention of involving the imagination for eschatological experience. Nayrīzī does not remediate this. At one point, he does introduce a fourfold soteriological division, but he only goes so far as to say that the middle categories belong to the celestial bodies (al-aflāk) until they are completely cleansed and go to the world of intellect.86 The category of bad souls are said to be forever among these celestial bodies. However, he explicitly denies that Suhrawardī ever believed in a special function for the celestial bodies after death:87 It is clear from the author’s statement that he does not want to argue for this, or [at least] does not point to a proof. For him, their [i.e., the deceased people’s] pleasure is purely intellectual, though [all of them] differently, depending on their disposition for [intelligible matters].

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Later, Nayrīzī repeats his point:88

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This and what preceded it was about the state of the felicitous, perfect people, and the miserable, deficient people. As for the simpletons, the pious, and the ascetics, it is clear from the statements of the author in this and other books that their pleasure is also from the species of intellectual pleasures, nothing else.

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He then commits a most interesting and rather astonishing act of fraud. He, naturally, wants to convince his readers that Suhrawardī indeed does not admit anything else than intellectual pleasure, equivalent to saying Suhrawardī only argues for a twofold division of souls. To do this he cites Suhrawardī himself. What he cites is Suhrawardī’s summary of the idea that souls can connect to bodies made of smoke and vapor.89 As we noticed before, this is an idea that Suhrawardī dismisses (“it is unfounded,” lā aṣl lahu). Nayrīzī acts like this is all that Suhrawardī is saying about using the imagination after death, ending with “these are his words” (hādhā kalāmuhu).90 What Nayrīzī conveniently leaves out is what follows directly in Suhrawardī’s Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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al-Talwīḥāt, namely, a summary of the idea that souls can connect to celestial bodies, which Suhrawardī accepts (“[it is] a sound idea,” fa-kalām ḥasan).91 After having commented on Suhrawardī’s chapter on eschatology in al-Alwāḥ, Nayrīzī continues to explain his own position. Noticeably, he finds the philosophical position on the afterlife, with its emphasis on the unique survival of the soul and its purely intellectual pleasures, too meager. According to him, this approach only provides general knowledge (maʿrifa ijmāliyya).92 As with ethics, philosophers on their own lack (mutanāqiḍa) sufficient knowledge on the afterlife, and we must turn to prophets who can teach us enough about these matters.93 Nayrīzī sets out to give a straightforward, orthodox description of the afterlife. At the same time, he makes decisions that seem to deviate from orthodoxy. In essence, even though he assents to an orthodox view of the afterlife in its narrative and imagery, he still spiritualizes it, for “were it material in the way it is here in this world, it would be subject to change, [like] gaining or losing weight, or becoming healthy or sick . . . and that is not a description [worthy] of the people of the Garden, as that world is either pure reward or pure punishment with no mixing in it.”94 Instead, the way Nayrīzī explains resurrection is that we are resurrected according to our inner state (maʿnā), not our outer shape (ṣūra). He compares this with our birth on Earth; where human beings on Earth are created from clay (ṭīn), human beings in the eschaton are created from religion (dīn). The Koranic notions that describe the stages of human development, a drop, cloth, lump, bones, and flesh (Q 23:14), are compared with Islamic notions that describe basic principles of the religion: purity, prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage, and holy war. From our good and bad deeds in our Earthly life, a new body is constructed in the afterlife.95 All the while, Nayrīzī asserts that this spiritualization is far from assenting to the philosophical, purely intellectual, view on the afterlife.

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Harawī

A last intellectual to be mentioned here is Harawī (≥ 1599). He did not live in Shiraz, but instead supposedly hails from Herat and may have Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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lived in India. He wrote a Persian commentary on parts of Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, relying heavily on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary and therefore is also indebted to Shahrazūrī. His writings show no knowledge of the Shiraz circle, and I include him here more for chronological reasons than any other. In his commentary, he is in some aspects closer to Shahrazūrī than to Quṭb al-Dīn. This is most clear in the structured layering Harawī envisions for the cosmos. Not only is the world of image divided into layers, also the world of intellect knows a hierarchy, with the First Intellect being best.96 These layers can similarly be distinguished by the forms they take in the world of image, says Harawī.97 He further explains in more detail than the others did the equivalence between the different layers of the world of image and the different celestial bodies, with Saturn as the highest stage.98 Related to this is his insistence that utterly bad people do not go to one of the celestial spheres, but instead connect with the “atmospherical sphere” (jaw-i falak). There they attain dark images from which jinn and demons originate.99 As a consequence, Harawī is more favorable than Quṭb al-Dīn to the idea of continuing ascendance, for example, asserting that even the category of perfect people have to connect first to the atmospherical sphere, then to the celestial bodies, and only then to the intelligible world, “as every soul, as it departs from this world, cannot be devoid of some vile states, even it would be only little.”100 Lastly, Harawī also invokes Ibn ʿArabī as a witness for Sufis. However, this is not to attest for the world of image, but for the idea that all things in the cosmos are nothing but an expression of God.

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An Alternative from Mullā Ṣadrā

Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635) builds forth on the commentary chain of Suhrawardī–Shahrazūrī–Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, and his intellectual lineage connects him with the people from Shiraz.101 His thinking on the world of image, however, is distinctly different from both groups.102 Around the same place in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq as Shahrazūrī gave his proof for the existence of the world of image, Mullā Ṣadrā also gives such a proof, which is textually independent.103 What is interesting Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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about Mullā Ṣadrā’s proof is that he includes ideas that are foreign to Shahrazūrī’s position. For example, he refuses to use Shahrazūrī’s name “world of image” for this other world. Instead, he calls it “the world of forms with magnitude, devoid of passive matter and movements.”104 He further argues for the immateriality of the faculty of imagination within this proof for another world. He says: [The imagination] is either receptive or productive (qābil or fāʿil). If it is receptive for [those images], well, the inability of inhering (al-ḥāll), being a sensory indication, implies the inability of being a place of inherence (al-maḥall) for it.

In this sentence Mullā Ṣadrā equates receptivity with inherence and further suggests that inhering implies a “sensory indication,” that is, something that has to do with the sensory world. In this case, it can either be interpreted as meaning that inherence implies some sort of location (since the ḥāll is in the maḥall), or some sort of substance–accident relationship (since the ḥāll depends on the maḥall). Both implications are explicitly addressed by Mullā Ṣadrā as being part of the sensory world earlier in the proof. Mullā Ṣadrā continues:

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If [the imagination] is productive for [those images], well, the producer of immense bodies cannot be a material, bodily, passive faculty, as should be clear for those who have a firm grip on philosophy. So it is undoubtedly abstract from the matter of this world, even though it has some sort of connection with some parts of the body, first by mediation of its connection with the mental spirit (al-rūḥ al-nafsānī) that is formed by it in the brain, then by mediation of the nerves and the veins to all the places of the body.

The imagination is, for Mullā Ṣadrā, an active, immaterial faculty.105 This has major implications and basically announces a fundamental shift in thinking about the world of image. First and foremost, if the imagination is an immaterial faculty, it has no problem surviving death. Suhrawardī argued that some specific brain tissue is the place of manifestation for the faculty of imagination. Shahrazūrī had assigned the cerebral spirit to be the place of manifestation for Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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suspended images, due to its subtle nature that is close to celestial bodies. With Mullā Ṣadrā, it is the immaterial imagination itself where suspended images become manifest,106 and the spirit only serves as an intermediary between the imagination and the body. As Mullā Ṣadrā explains elsewhere, just as it is normally said that between soul and body there is spirit as an intermediary, so there is the “imaginable isthmus” (al-barzakh al-mithālī) between spirit and soul, and so there is blood between spirit and body.107 This means that the soul can continue to operate its faculty of imagination after separation from the body. The need for celestial bodies, as was first conceived by Ibn Sīnā, is no longer there. To Mullā Ṣadrā, Ibn Sīnā’s idea is tantamount to metempsychosis, and in his commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and also several of his other works he vocally opposes the idea as well as Suhrawardī’s adoption of the idea.108 He also, more generally, opposes the idea of a resurrection body as an imaginable body, as was proposed by the commentary tradition on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.109 This is, as he understands it, tantamount to metempsychosis.

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Between Resurrection and Metempsychosis

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At the core of Mullā Ṣadrā’s reflections on eschatology is, in fact, a sharp distinction between resurrection (maʿād) and metempsychosis (tanāsukh).110 This may have been partly rhetorical, meaning to suggest that his own position, to be understood as resurrection, is compatible with Islamic dogma and thus to be accepted, whereas all the other interpretations are associated by him with metempsychosis, which was generally held to be incompatible with Islamic dogma.111 At the same time, it may also have been a genuine intellectual concern, based on the idea that any involvement of matter – regardless of how material descriptions of the afterlife are – is to be avoided as it inevitably implies metempsychosis. This would, for example, explain why he spends a considerable amount of effort to show that Heaven and Hell cannot be located on Earth.112 It seems that understanding this part of Mullā Ṣadrā’s argument has caused some confusion among modern scholarship, the origin of which is to be found in Corbin’s article on Mullā Ṣadrā’s ­eschatology. Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Corbin discusses Mullā Ṣadrā’s issues with metempsychosis and comes to the conclusion that Mullā Ṣadrā’s own position can be called metamorphosis.113 This is not a bad interpretation of resurrection (maʿād), but it may have made people believe that Mullā Ṣadrā interpreted metempsychosis (tanāsukh) as metamorphosis. This we see reflected in Kamada’s assertion that Mullā Ṣadrā allows for “vertical transmigration.”114 Likewise, Jambet asserts that for Mullā Ṣadrā there is a “correct meaning” (vrai sens) of metempsychosis, which can be called “ascending transmigration” (transmigration ascendante).115 Both interpretations are, in my opinion, unlucky coinages of technical terminology at the very least, if not a downright misunderstanding of Mullā Ṣadrā’s aims, who wishes not to distinguish between a “good” and a “bad” metempsychosis, but between metempsychosis (tanāsukh) and resurrection (maʿād). A related case where Corbin’s writings may have been cause for a misinterpretation is to be found in a study by Rahman. Rahman misreads Mullā Ṣadrā’s objection against Suhrawardī and his commentators and thereby grants him a false position within the commentary tradition. He asserts that Mullā Ṣadrā thinks that “even the illuminationists like al-Suhrawardī believe in ‘suspended’ images and symbols and not in actual existents.” He then goes on to represent Mullā Ṣadrā’s position: “The world of images and its contents are real” (emphasis in original).116 But for Mullā Ṣadrā the difference is not about reality. (What is reality anyway?) With this emphasis on reality, together with the heavy use of the term ʿālam al-mithāl in his discussion of Mullā Ṣadrā’s eschatology, Rahman is clearly reacting to Corbin’s instead of Mullā Ṣadrā’s texts, trying to establish more firmly the interpretation of Corbin as the dominant interpretation.117 Notwithstanding, the result is that Rahman would like to see in Mullā Ṣadrā the philosopher who took Suhrawardī’s quasireal, semi-independently existing suspended images to their more radical real, self-subsisting things existing in the world of image. As I argued before, the task of ontologizing the suspended images is properly Shahrazūrī’s. In fact, as the foregoing discussion shows, Mullā Ṣadrā is not ontologizing Suhrawardī, but rather responding

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to Shahrazūrī’s interpretation, in a way ­de-ontologizing the world of image, denying the independent existence of imaginable things which human beings could use to express their eschatological fate. For Mullā Ṣadrā, only denying the independent ontological status of such things would avoid any association with metempsychosis. If by “reality” we mean only that which is intersubjective, independently existing of any observer, then Shahrazūrī argued for a “real” world of image while Mullā Ṣadrā did not. We can find a hint in Corbin’s text suggesting he was aware of this, and would not agree with Rahman. He refers in passing to Leibniz’ theory of monadology.118 The comparison with monadology is quite apt when it comes to explaining the idea that every man constitutes his own afterlife, created by his imagination. This created world is what Mullā Ṣadrā means by “another world,” versus the material world. This other world, since it is actively created by the human being, is unique to that human being, and so Mullā Ṣadrā is sure that each soul has an entire world to itself.119

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An Empty World of Image

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Mullā Ṣadrā’s interpretation is in sharp contrast to Shahrazūrī’s interpretation of a world of image that is independently populated, to which souls can go and connect to one of the available bodies. For Mullā Ṣadrā, on the other hand, this other world is completely empty, only filled by things that are attached to the very imagination that produces them.120 As he says, “the imagination is an active, immaterial substance which produces magnitudinous forms in its world.”121 It seems that the impetus for this alternative view came from Mullā Ṣadrā’s reading of Ibn ʿArabī. This is clear from the following passage, which he cites several times in various writings:

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What indicates that the soul is the producer for those images, not the receiver, is the statement of the shaykh, the one conversant with the divine, Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Aʿrābī [sic]: “Every man creates by virtue of his spiritual energy (bi-l-himma) in his faculty of imagination that which only exists in it. The one who is aware (al-ʿārif) [on the other hand] creates by virtue of his energy that which exists outside of Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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the seat of his energy [= the faculty of imagination]. His energy continues to preserve it [i.e., preserves its continued existence], and this preservation of what it has created does not burden it. When, however, the knower is overtaken by forgetfulness regarding the preservation of what he has created, then that created thing will cease to be.” [Here] ends [his statement].122

What has been dubbed the “creative imagination” by modern scholars, in relation to Ibn ʿArabī,123 is now brought in by Mullā Ṣadrā to explain what he thinks is the true meaning of suspended images and the world of image. He thus still happily incorporates the idea of a world of image in his thought,124 but uses it for his own purpose, namely, to argue that the body we obtain there is obtained actively, that is, created by ourselves, according to our states and habits that we acquired in life,125 and also in accordance with scriptural promises about the afterlife.126 In another text he says, provocatively, that as the soul is first the form for our Earthly existence, it becomes after death the matter on which a new form comes to be.127 The ultimate principle behind this process is to assign personal identity squarely to the soul. “Every reality is as such by its form, not its matter,”128 says Mullā Ṣadrā. Thus, the resurrection body is “the individual, substantial form existing in external reality, which is not this material world but another world.”129 In his commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, he assents to Suhrawardī’s suggestion that the world of image is primarily for the somewhat good and the somewhat bad.130 He seems to suggest that we shall be resurrected in the world of image in roughly one of four categories: as an angel if we have been busy mostly with our intellect; as a demon if mostly our faculty of estimation; as a wild animal if mostly our anger; and as a dumb beast if mostly our appetite.131 These categories also establish a certain hierarchy; the dumb beasts are close to the sensory world, and the angels are close to the intelligible world.132 This should already suggest that the world of image is in between the sensory and intelligible world. This is correct; the other world is not simply the hereafter, ākhira, in opposition to the here, dunyā.

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Table 5.1 Related triades in Mullā Ṣadrā’s eschatology Realm

here isthmus hereafter

Mode

body soul intellect

Announcer

Angel of Death Blow of Terror Blow of Stunning

Comparison

night dawn day

Neither does Mullā Ṣadrā follow Suhrawardī’s fourfold ontological division. Instead, he adheres to a cosmology of three worlds.133 Next to the sensory world of material bodies, there is also the imaginable world of imaginable apparitions and the intelligible world of immaterial forms. It is worth pointing out that Mullā Ṣadrā calls these latter two the “two great worlds” (ʿālamayn ʿaẓīmayn) which, he says, most people deny.134 I think this is a reference to Suhrawardī’s comment in al-Mashāriʿ about the Peripatetics having forgotten “two great worlds.”135 These three worlds form a triad that knows several parallel triads. Table 5.1 gives an overview.136 With Table 5.1 we can interpret previous comments on the way in which the soul becomes the “matter” of the next abode. Just as in this abode we find visible expression through our body, so we find imaginable expression through our soul in the next abode. More importantly, it should also be clear from this overview that this next abode is but a way station toward the intelligible world. In fact, it seems that with the “Blow of Stunning” (nafkhat al-ṣaʿq) even that stage of our life can come to an end. Mullā Ṣadrā hints at this when he says that “This is the end of only the first journey, after which there are many more degrees and stations to be reached when one returns from effacement to clarity, but here is not the place to explain that.”137

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6 The Reception of Shahrazūrī’s World of Image up until the Present Day

C

orbin was eager to assert that the philosophical heritage of Suhrawardī (d. 1191) was kept alive in Shīʿīte Iran “jusqu’à nos jours.”1 As we shall see in this chapter, in the case of the notion of a world of image, it was indeed handed down from generation to generation, all the way up to authors who are at the moment of writing alive and well, who are indeed for a significant part Shīʿīte thinkers living in what is now Iran. To understand this history, we cannot rely on only searching for the term “world of image,” ʿālam al-mithāl. Although the term is a technical term within the context of Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288), it is too generic to carry over this characteristic to all contexts. For example, in Ṭāshkubrīzāda’s (d. 1561) Miftāḥ al-saʿāda mention is made of an ʿālaman mithāliyyan,2 in a passage ascribed to Ghazālī (d. 1111). This passage contrasts this imaginable world with a bodily world and is similar to Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār in equating this adjective mithālī with the adjective rūḥānī. In Mishkāt al-anwār, the terms jismānī and rūḥānī are interpreted as ḥissī and ʿaqlī,3 bringing us back to a simple division between the sensory and the intelligible world without any connection with Shahrazūrī’s world of image. Besides, even in cases where Shahrazūrī’s world of image

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 143

is r­ eferenced, without an explanation of what that world of image is, there is no transmission of knowledge. To counter these issues, I shall focus on the one passage that was central in Shahrazūrī’s writings, and the intentional textual correspondence it shows with texts from later centuries. The choice of this passage is deliberate; its omnipresence attests to it being crowned by the wider community of Islamic intellectuals as the the quintessential passage to represent the idea of a world of image. Collecting all instances of intentional textual correspondence, as this chapter does, provides us, then, with a measure of the scope of the influence Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī had, summarized in Figure 6.1 below. As we shall see, there are surprising parts to the dissemination of this idea, parts that would not have been identified had this chapter not been structured around finding this same passage over and over again. A drawback is that this approach is less successful in pointing out innovations. Seeing repetition of the same passage over and over again may lead us to believe that this post-classical period is empty of original thought. This need not be so. We have already seen in the previous chapter that there is plenty of critical and original thought in the centuries after Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī, based on their idea of a world of image. Further, some discussions in post-classical Islamic philosophy seem related or are a clear tangent to the discussion of Shahrazūrī’s world of image, but are so big and rich in and of themselves that they cannot be adequately covered in this book. I will explain how this is the case for Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī and his commentators and for Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators. Lastly, the following should be seen as an exercise in defining the general structure of the transmission of the idea of a world of image, not as a picture that is complete in every detail. It is exactly the omnipresence of this passage that should indicate to us that it likely remains hidden in many other texts, published and unpublished, which remain to be explored at a later date.

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Twelfth–Thirteenth Century: The Acceptance by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī The passage with which it all begins is, of course, the sentence in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, in which Suhrawardī writes that “whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images.”4 In al-Mashāriʿ, he expands this to the following:5 If you hear among the statements of the ancients [about] the existence of a magnitudinous world, different from intellect and soul, containing [a number of] cities impossible to count, with among them what the Lawgiver has called Jabalqa and Jabarsa, then do not be too quick in dismissing it.

The first to refer to this passage is Ibn Kammūna (d. 1284), citing it to the letter in his Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt and noting that it is a citation.6 Shahrazūrī uses it four times in two different versions, without mentioning the source, rephrasing it dramatically to give expression to his own idea of the world of image.7 Suhrawardī’s, Ibn Kammūna’s, and Shahrazūrī’s texts continued to be copied and read through the centuries,8 and it is true that in this way the knowledge about the world of image was transmitted. However, in this chapter I want to pay attention to another way, namely, through authors who included this passage in their own texts, virtually always without referring to the source and sometimes changing the wording. This is a much stronger form of transmission, one that attests that the idea was in some way important to the author and needed to be kept alive. Beyond these first two commentators, the first such inclusion is in Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s (d. 1310) Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq.9 A comparison is given on the next page, from which it is obvious that he did not add anything significant to the phrasing of the idea (see Table 6.1). The work done by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, to get from Shahrazūrī’s text to his own, is still no less impressive. To appreciate this point, we should look at the relationship of both texts to Suhrawardī’s original Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. Shahrazūrī adopted a paraphrasing style, which means he

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‫(‪ )493.14‬عالم الأشباح المجردة وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما‬ ‫مقدار يا ٭ غير العالم الحسي [لا تتناهى] عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ‪ +‬ومن جملة تلك المدن‬ ‫جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان ٭‪ 4‬عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من‬ ‫الخلائق لا يدرون أن ﷲ خلق آدم وذريته ٭‪ 31‬وهو يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī (1286) – Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )556.10‬عالم الأشباح المجردة (‪ )554.6‬الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير‬ ‫العالم الحسي والعقلي لا تحصى مدنه ولا تتناهى من جملتها جابلقا وجابرسا وهما مدينتان من‬ ‫مدن عالم المثال لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن ﷲ خلق‬ ‫آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون يعترفون بهذا العالم‬ ‫وللسا�لكين فيه مآرب وأعراض من إظهار العجائب وخوارق العادات المبرزون من السحرة‬ ‫وا�لكهنة يشاهدون و يظهرون منه عجائب والعالم المثالي يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫‪Q. D. Shīrāzī (1295) – Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )493.14‬عالم الأشباح المجردة وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما‬ ‫مقدار يا ٭ غير العالم الحسي [لا تتناهى] عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ‪ +‬ومن جملة تلك المدن‬ ‫جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان ٭‪ 4‬عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من‬ ‫الخلائق لا يدرون أن ﷲ خلق آدم وذريته ٭‪ 31‬وهو يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫(‪ )556.10‬عالم الأشباح المجردة (‪ )554.6‬الأقدمين أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا هو غير‬ ‫العالم الحسي والعقلي لا تحصى مدنه ولا تتناهى من جملتها جابلقا وجابرسا وهما مدينتان من‬ ‫مدن عالم المثال لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن ﷲ خلق‬ ‫آدم وذريته فصدق ولا يتعسرن عليك الإيمان به والأنبياء والحكماء المتألهون يعترفون بهذا العالم‬ ‫وللسا�لكين فيه مآرب وأعراض من إظهار العجائب وخوارق العادات المبرزون من السحرة‬ ‫وا�لكهنة يشاهدون و يظهرون منه عجائب والعالم المثالي يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫‪Q. D. Shīrāzī (1295) – Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī (1286) – Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫‪Table 6.1 Changes made to the passage by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzi‬‬

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146 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

first cites a whole chapter and then writes his commentary on it. The commentary part is not exclusively his own ideas about the previously cited text. Rather, he goes through the whole chapter again, but this time explains terms, comments on some subject or another, digresses, and occasionally simply drops a few words or even ­sentences from the source text. Because the source text is not left intact, I call it a paraphrase. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, however, wrote a running commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, meaning that he inserted his comments directly into the original text, making original and commentary blend into each other. Syntactically and semantically, the reader has no idea which words belong to which author. In manuscripts the two are usually distinguished by using different ink colors or overlining the original text. The contents of the text is similar to the paraphrase, only this time the reader is guaranteed that not a single word from the original is dropped. In the case of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, it seems that he ­constructed his entire Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq on the basis of Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, without acknowledgment. In the case of this particular passage, we see that he did so in an intelligent manner: he did not use the passage in the place in which it is found in Shahrazūrī’s commentary, but saved it for a couple of pages later, to interpret the term “the world of abstract apparitions.” Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī does not add anything significant to the discussion on the world of image, and textual changes are few. At the beginning he adds “and that is what is pointed to by . . .” He further changes Shahrazūrī’s slightly awkward “Its cities10 are countless without end,” which had a double expression of infinity. By introducing “its wonders” this phrase now becomes “there is no end to its wonders and its cities are countless.” This requires Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī to explicitly start the next sentence with “among its cities,” instead of the generic “among them.” He shortens the next sentence slightly and adds the adjective “great” to “cities.” Interestingly, he then drops no less than thirty-one words, before using a few more words from Shahrazūrī. Since we shall be looking at many comparative tables, I shall briefly recapitulate the formatting I apply. Text in bold is exactly the same, which is the second time whited-out for an easier grasp of the

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 147

differences. Whatever is underlined is basically also a verbatim copy, using the same root letters but in a different inflection. Double underline indicates a synonym. The asterisk * means that the target text has omitted a word. If the target text skips more than one word from the source text, the number of words is indicated with a number in superscript. In case of text displacement, the words are marked by square brackets, [ ]. A plus sign, +, is placed in the target text where those words would actually belong in comparison with the source text. Word order switching is indicated with round brackets, ( ), or curly brackets, { }, with a double-headed arrow in between. In brackets are page and line number. In the heading, the name of the author, name of the text, and year (only in ce) is given. If the text has no certain year of completion, the death year of the author is given. The same passage appears in an epistle on the world of image by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī.11 The epistle is divided in two parts; he first relates some questions he received and then sets out to answer them. The answer starts exactly with this passage, taken from his Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq in a most intricate manner. A reader of the epistle unfamiliar with the commentary would not suspect that the epistle is in fact derived from another text. The passage in his epistle is primarily based on a passage in his commentary related to § 247 of Suhrawardī’s text. But in the middle he inserted the passage with which we are familiar, which in his commentary comes two pages (one paragraph in Suhrawardī’s text) later. The beginning of that passage from § 247 ends with “and this is is the world of image and imagination.” This is, of course, not what Suhrawardī called it, who did, however, call it at one point, in § 248, “the world of abstract apparitions.” This is then what Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī mentions in his epistle right after “the world of image and imagination.” This allows him to continue to cite our passage from his commentary on § 248. This passage then ends with “it runs parallel to the sensory world” (yaḥdhū ḥadhwa l-ʿālam al-ḥissī). He had written the exact same phrase in his commentary in § 247, so at this point he takes the opportunity to switch back quietly12 and finishes the passage with a sentence more from that page. Thus, the transition from § 247 to § 248 runs smoothly based on content. The second Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

148 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

t­ ransition, because of the double appearance of the “runs parallel” phrase, is even smoother, a convenient opportunity for Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī to come back to his commentary in § 247. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, then, masterfully weaved Shahrazūrī’s passage into his writings. Fourteenth Century: Taftāzānī as an Important Transmitter

The most important aspect of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s version of the passage is the impact it had on later intellectuals. While Suhrawardī sowed the seeds for the idea of a world of image, and while Shahrazūrī made the seeds sprout and blossom, it is Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, in particular his Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, who ensured that the idea was actually harvested and distributed, far beyond the confines of commentaries on Suhrawardī’s corpus, up until today. The first instance happens early on, by an anonymous author in a treatise on Platonic forms, dated to 1329–1339. In its second ­chapter on “suspended images” (al-ṣuwar al-muʿallaqa), the passage as it appears in Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s epistle is used.13 The textual contribution of the anonymous treatise is not more than a mere wa (“and”). The author did skip a few words in two places. The first place might have been an unconscious decision; the text has “the sensory world” (al-ʿālam al-ḥissī) two times after each other, separated by “but parallel to” (yaḥdhū ḥudhū), so perhaps the author read the text until “the sensory world” appeared for the first time, copied it, looked again at the text, searching for the words he finished with (al-ʿālam al-ḥissī), and his eye caught the second instance of it, skipping the few words in between, and continued copying. As discussed in the previous chapter, this text does have original arguments to make about the world of image. A more important case of reception of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary, however, is the one by Taftāzānī (d. 1390).14 He discusses the world of image in his commentary on his own al-Maqāṣid, written in the period 1382–1389. It appears in the part on ontology, at the very end of his discussion on “abstract things” (al-mujarradāt) (see Table 6.2). His discussion is more extensive than given here, and shows parts that textually cannot be traced back to Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī

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‫(‪ )3-372.11‬وبالجملة هو عالم عظيم الفسحة غير متناه [يحذو حذو العالم الحسي] في دوام‬ ‫حركة أفلاكه المثالية وقبول عناصره ومركباته آثار حركات أفلاكه وإشراقات العالم العقلي‬ ‫وهذا ما قال الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا‬ ‫تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف‬ ‫باب لا يحصى ما فيهما من الخلائق ٭‪+ 8‬‬

‫‪Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1295) - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )493.14‬عالم الأشباح المجردة وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما‬ ‫مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق‬ ‫آدم وذريته وهو يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫‪Taftazānī (1382–9) – Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid‬‬

‫(‪ )3-372.11‬وبالجملة هو عالم عظيم الفسحة غير متناه [يحذو حذو العالم الحسي] في دوام‬ ‫حركة أفلاكه المثالية وقبول عناصره ومركباته آثار حركات أفلاكه وإشراقات العالم العقلي‬ ‫وهذا ما قال الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا‬ ‫تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف‬ ‫باب لا يحصى ما فيهما من الخلائق ٭‪+ 8‬‬

‫(‪ )493.14‬عالم الأشباح المجردة وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما‬ ‫مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من الخلائق لا يدرون أن اﷲ خلق‬ ‫آدم وذريته وهو يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬

‫‪Taftazānī (1382–9) – Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid‬‬

‫‪Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1295) - Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫‪Table 6.2 Changes made to the passage by Taftāzānī‬‬

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150 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

and are therefore likely original to Taftāzānī. However, in terms of its content it entirely depends on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq as its source. A translation of the passage is: In general, it is a world of great spaciousness without end, parallel to the sensory world in that its planets are continually moving, and that its simple elements and its composites receive the influences from the motions of its planets and the illuminations of the intelligible world. This is [about] what the ancients say, that there is in existence a magnitudinous world, different from the sensory world. Its wonders have no end and its cities are countless. Among those cities are Jabalqa and Jabarsa, which are great cities, both having a thousand gates and the creatures in it are countless.

Taftāzānī did not cite our passage in full, but broke it off just before the end, only to include the very last words (“it is parallel to the sensory world”) at the beginning of his discussion, expanding on it to explain why exactly it is parallel to the Earthly world. Besides this addition, there are no textual differences for this passage. Note, however, that just like in the edition of Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ, the editor chose muddatuhu instead of mudunuhu, giving in a footnote mudunuhu as an alternative reading, which I have used in the comparison. This instance of the mudunuhu/muddatuhu controversy shows that the misread was not only present in manuscripts of Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ, but also in later texts. Since mudunuhu/muddatuhu are orthographically similar but phonologically different, this confusion is an indicator that these intellectuals were operating in a written tradition, not an oral one. His inclusion of the idea in the part on ontology ends in a tone with which we are by now familiar; one of distancing himself and casting suspicion. He writes “Since the allegation is strong and the uncertainty untenable, as has preceded, accomplished philosophers and theologians have not heeded it [i.e., this idea].”15 Fifteenth–Sixteenth Century: Commentators at Work

About a hundred years after Taftāzānī, Huṣayn Maybudī, also known as Qāḍī Mīr (d. 1505),16 included the passage in his commentary on Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 151

the dīwān attributed to ʿAlī. He does not say it is from Taftāzānī, but the citation is to the letter.17 Since Maybudī opens the passage the way Taftāzānī does, it must come from him and not from Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī. This citation is interesting, as most of Taftāzānī’s influence would only be felt later. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the discussion on Shahrazūrī’s world of image is mostly held within the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī. This does not exclude our next case, Ibn Abī Jumhūr (d. ≥ 1500). He uses Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil extensively to construct a comprehensive discussion of the world of image, without, however, properly marking this discussion as a separate chapter.18 He does not say he is citing Shahrazūrī, and alters a few words, drops and adds others, most notably leaving out the reference to “the ancients” at the beginning. As his text, Mujlī mirʾāt al-Munjī, a super-commentary on his own commentary on his own Maslak al-afhām fī ʿilm al-kalām, uses a lot of material from Shahrazūrī and Suhrawardī,19 we can consider him, loosely speaking, part of the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī. Another author using the passage is Nayrīzī (d. ≥ 1536), citing Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil/Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt version, in his Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, the commentary on Suhrawardī’s al-Alwāḥ.20 From the comparison, in Table 6.3, it becomes clear that even though Nayrīzī announces the start of a citation (wa-fī al-Shajara al-ilāhiyya . . ., “In al-Shajara al-ilāhiyya [it says] . . .”), it is far from being a literal copy. This shows that whether a citation is expressly introduced as such or not, we have to investigate every case individually to see how literal the citation is. Among the changes we may note several omissions, with one amounting to sixty words. There are also quite a few slight changes in wording, and a few cases of word displacement. Most notable is the completely different way of saying that these “other worlds” (ʿawālim ukhrā) are in between the material and the immaterial world. Shahrazūrī claimed that these worlds “are neither this world that we are in, nor [that of] soul and intellect.” He thereby merely stresses the difference with these worlds, not necessarily the intermediate position between them. Nayrīzī replaces this statement by saying that “the

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152 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

existents that are in [these other worlds] are nobler than the existents of this world, and coarser than the existent of the world of souls and intellects.” With this, Nayrīzī makes it clear that all four worlds – that of body, soul, intellect, and image – have existents in them, which can be distinguished from each other by paying attention to their subtlety or coarseness. From the same time and place we have Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1542), who copies large parts of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s epistle in his commentary on Hayākil al-nūr, including the passage in Table 6.3.21 Textually, Dashtakī only adds “they claimed” (wa-qālū). The subject is “the ancients,” and it merely makes the text flow better from “the ancients” to what the ancients have to say. Other than this addition, he changes the words slightly, switches word order, gives a synonym here and there, and drops a few words. In other parts of his citation of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s epistle, he does contribute a few paragraphs of original reflections, criticizing the coherence of the idea of a world of image, as discussed in the previous chapter. Harawī’s (d. ≥ 1599) commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, written in the year 1600,22 cites the passage, explicitly relying on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, introducing the citation with “the commentator said” (qāla al-shāriḥ).23

EDL\Jl3URGH University Press

-

Seventeenth Century: Safavid Intellectuals take Notice

Not much later, we see a definite change. Highly influential intellectuals from Isfahan, the new capital of the Safavid Empire, show interest in the world of image and discuss it in their writings. From Taftāzānī, who made mention of the idea outside the immediate commentary tradition on Suhrawardī, it is Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) who introduced the idea in traditional Shīʿī thought as a hermeneutical tool to understand the barzakh, the place and moment in between death and resurrection.24 He was a prolific polymath, who travelled extensively and eventually took on the position of shaykh al-islām for Shāh ʿAbbās I, at Isfahan. Relevant in this context is to note that he was friends with Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631),25 a teacher for Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635),26 and a third-generation student of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī.27 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 153

Among Shaykh Bahāʾī’s many writings, I have been able to locate our passage in at least one of them: at the very end of al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan, finished in 1015/1606.28 It reads:29 In one report of our people it is related that the apparitions to which the souls attach for as long as they are in the barzakh are not bodies. They sit in circles (ḥalaqan ḥalaqan) in forms like their material bodies, talking to each other and enjoying food and drinks. Perhaps they are in the sky, between the Earth and the heaven, where they meet in the air and get to know each other, etcetera, [all of this] pointing to the absence of a body though establishing some of its concomitants, as is reported in al-Kāfī and other [books] on the authority of Amīr al-muʾminīn and the Imams among his offspring, granting those apparitions a place neither among the coarseness of material things, nor among the subtleness of abstract things, but rather having both aspects, being in between the two worlds.30 This is supported by what a group of high-ranking philosophers say, that there is in existence a magnitudinous world different from the sensory world, in between the world of abstract things and the world of material things, its bodies are neither as subtle nor as coarse, and [so are its] accidents such as motion, rest, sound, taste, scent, etcetera, being self-subsisting, suspended images, that do not [inhere] in matter. This is an enormously spacious world, its inhabitants subdivided in different classes according to subtleness and coarseness, and ugly and beautiful forms. Their imaginable bodies provide all the external and internal senses, by which they enjoy and suffer from enjoyable and painful things, both spiritual and bodily. al-ʿAllāma [= Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī], in Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, has related the statement about this world to the prophets, saints and divine sages. Even though no intellectual proof supports its existence, it is supported by traditional sources and the divine sages know of it through their experiential exertions and confirm it through their revelatory visions. And you, you know that the masters of spiritual observations are more powerful and more expert than the masters of bodily Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

‫وقد يشاهد هذا العالم بعض ا�لكهنة والسحرة وأهل العلوم الروحانية فعليك بالإيمان بها‬ ‫وإياك بالأنكار ٭‪ 13‬وما ذكره (للمعل ّم الأول) ↔ (ردّا ً) عليهم فهو إنّما يتوجه على ظواهر‬ ‫أقاو يلهم لا على المقاصد‬

‫‪3‬‬

‫‪Nayrīzī (1524) – Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ‬‬

‫ن هذا على رأي أرسطو ومن تبعه وأمّا [الأقدمون] من ٭‬ ‫(‪ )f.29a‬وفي الشجرة الإلهي ّة‪ :‬أ ّ‬ ‫‪+3‬‬ ‫الحكماء كهرمس وأنباذقلس وفيثاغورس وأفلاطون وغيرهم ٭ على إن في الوجود عوالم‬ ‫آخر ذوات مقادير والموجودات فيها ألطف من موجودات ٭ هذا العالم ٭‪ 4‬وأكثف من‬ ‫موجودات عالم النفوس والعقول‬ ‫٭ (فيها) ↔ (عجائب وغرائب) من البلاد والعباد والأنهار ٭ والأشجار والصور المليحة‬ ‫‪60‬‬ ‫والقبيحة ٭‪ 6‬وفيها أقاليم يقال جابلقاء وجابرصا وهورقليا ٭‬

‫‪1‬‬

‫‪I‬‬

‫(‪ )2-153.2‬وقد قالت متألهة الحكماء كهرمس وأنباذقلس وفيثاغورس وأفلاطن وغيرهم‬ ‫من الأفاضل والقدماء إن في الوجود عوالم أخرى ذوات مقادير غير هذا العالم الذي نحن‬ ‫فيه وغير النفس والعقل‬ ‫فيه العجائب والغرائب فيها من البلاد والعباد والأنهار والبحار والأشجار والصور المليحة‬ ‫والقبيحة ما لايتناهى وتقع هذه العوالم في الإقليم الثامن الذي فيه جابلقا وجابرصا وهورقليا‬ ‫ذات العجائب وهي في وسط ترتيب العالم ولهذا العالم أفقان الأدنى وهو ألطف من الفلك‬ ‫الأقصى الذي نحن فيه وهو مرتفع عن إدراك الحواس والأفق الأعلى يلي النفس الناطقة‬ ‫وهو أكثف منها والطبقات المختلفة الأنواع من اللطيفة وا�لكثيفة الملذة والمبهجة والمؤلمة‬ ‫المنزعجة لا تتناهى بينهما ولا بد للسالك من المرور عليه والفاضل منهم من خرج عنه إلى‬ ‫فضاء الأنوار المشرقة‬ ‫وقد يشاهد هذه العوالم بعض ا�لكهنة والسحرة وأهل العلوم الروحانية فعليك بالإيمان بها‬ ‫وإياك والإنكار ولعلك يظفر ببعض رسائلنا التي نعملها في هذا الفن إن شاء ﷲ تعالى‬ ‫وردّ المعلم الأول إنما يتوجه على ظاهر أقاو يلهم لا على مقاصدهم‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī (1282) – Rasāʾil al-shajarat al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫‪Table 6.3 Analysis of the reception of the passage by Nayrīzī‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫وقد يشاهد هذا العالم بعض ا�لكهنة والسحرة وأهل العلوم الروحانية فعليك بالإيمان بها‬ ‫وإياك بالأنكار ٭‪ 13‬وما ذكره (للمعل ّم الأول) ↔ (ردّا ً) عليهم فهو إنّما يتوجه على ظواهر‬ ‫أقاو يلهم لا على المقاصد‬

‫ن هذا على رأي أرسطو ومن تبعه وأمّا [الأقدمون] من ٭‬ ‫(‪ )f.29a‬وفي الشجرة الإلهي ّة‪ :‬أ ّ‬ ‫الحكماء كهرمس وأنباذقلس وفيثاغورس وأفلاطون وغيرهم ٭‪ +3‬على إن في الوجود عوالم‬ ‫آخر ذوات مقادير والموجودات فيها ألطف من موجودات ٭ هذا العالم ٭‪ 4‬وأكثف من‬ ‫موجودات عالم النفوس والعقول‬ ‫٭ (فيها) ↔ (عجائب وغرائب) من البلاد والعباد والأنهار ٭ والأشجار والصور المليحة‬ ‫‪60‬‬ ‫والقبيحة ٭‪ 6‬وفيها أقاليم يقال جابلقاء وجابرصا وهورقليا ٭‬ ‫‪3‬‬

‫‪Nayrīzī (1524) – Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ‬‬

‫(‪ )2-153.2‬وقد قالت متألهة الحكماء كهرمس وأنباذقلس وفيثاغورس وأفلاطن وغيرهم‬ ‫من الأفاضل والقدماء إن في الوجود عوالم أخرى ذوات مقادير غير هذا العالم الذي نحن‬ ‫فيه وغير النفس والعقل‬ ‫فيه العجائب والغرائب فيها من البلاد والعباد والأنهار والبحار والأشجار والصور المليحة‬ ‫والقبيحة ما لايتناهى وتقع هذه العوالم في الإقليم الثامن الذي فيه جابلقا وجابرصا وهورقليا‬ ‫ذات العجائب وهي في وسط ترتيب العالم ولهذا العالم أفقان الأدنى وهو ألطف من الفلك‬ ‫الأقصى الذي نحن فيه وهو مرتفع عن إدراك الحواس والأفق الأعلى يلي النفس الناطقة‬ ‫وهو أكثف منها والطبقات المختلفة الأنواع من اللطيفة وا�لكثيفة الملذة والمبهجة والمؤلمة‬ ‫المنزعجة لا تتناهى بينهما ولا بد للسالك من المرور عليه والفاضل منهم من خرج عنه إلى‬ ‫فضاء الأنوار المشرقة‬ ‫وقد يشاهد هذه العوالم بعض ا�لكهنة والسحرة وأهل العلوم الروحانية فعليك بالإيمان بها‬ ‫وإياك والإنكار ولعلك يظفر ببعض رسائلنا التي نعملها في هذا الفن إن شاء ﷲ تعالى‬ ‫وردّ المعلم الأول إنما يتوجه على ظاهر أقاو يلهم لا على مقاصدهم‬

‫‪Shahrazūrī (1282) – Rasāʾil al-shajarat al-ilāhiyya‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫(‪ )506.12‬وهذا يؤي ّد ما قاله ٭‪ 5‬طائفة (من) ↔︎ (أساطين) الحكماء ٭‪ 3‬من‬ ‫أن [في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي] هو {واسطة} ↔︎ {بين (عالم المجردات)‬ ‫↔︎ (وعالم الماديات)} ٭‪ 3‬ليس في تلك اللطافة ولا في هذه الكثافة فيه ٭‪ 4‬للأجسام‬ ‫والأعراض ٭ من الحركات والسكنات ٭‪ 2‬والأصوات والطعوم والروائح وغيرها مثل‬ ‫‪22‬‬ ‫قائمة بذواتها معلقة لا في مادة ٭‪ 30‬وهو عالم عظيم الفسحة ٭‪ + 25‬٭‪ 25‬وسكّانها ٭‬ ‫على طبقات ‪ +‬متفاوتة في {اللطافة والكثافة} ↔︎ {(وقبح [الصورة]) ↔︎ (وحسنها)}‬ ‫ولأبدانهم المثالية ٭‪ 11‬جميع الحواس الظاهر ية والباطنية فيتنعمون ويتألمون باللذات‬ ‫والآلام النفسانية والجسمانية‬

‫‪Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) – al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan‬‬

‫(‪ )3-372.4‬يشير إلى ما ذهب إليه بعض المتألهين من الحكماء ونسب إلى القدماء من أن بين‬ ‫عالمي المحسوس والمعقول واسطة يسمى عالم المثل ليس في تجرد المجردات ولا في مخالطة الماديات‬ ‫وفيه لكل موجود من المجردات والأجسام والأعراض حتى الحركات والسكنات والأوضاع‬ ‫والهيئات والطعوم والروائح مثال قائم بذاته معلق لا في مادة ومحل يظهر للحس بمعونة مظهر كالمرآة‬ ‫والخيال والماء والهواء ونحو ذلك وقد ينتقل من مظهر إلى مظهر وقد يبطل كما إذا فسدت المرآة‬ ‫والخيال أو زالت المقابلة أو التخيل وبالجملة هو عالم عظيم الفسحة غير متناه يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬ ‫في دوام حركة أفلاكه المثالية وقبول عناصره ومركباته آثار حركات أفلاكه وإشراقات العالم العقلي‬ ‫وهذا ما قال الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى‬ ‫مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى‬ ‫ما فيهما من الخلائق ومن هذا العالم تكون الملائكة والجن والشياطين والغيلان �لكونها من قبيل‬ ‫المثل أو النفوس الناطقة المفارقة الظاهرة فيها وبه تظهر المجردات في صور مختلفة بالحسن والقبح‬ ‫واللطافة والكثافة وغير ذلك بحسب استعداد القابل والفاعل وعليه بنوا أمر المعاد الجسماني فإن‬ ‫البدن المثالي الذي تتصرف فيه النفس حكمه حكم البدن الحسي في أن له جميع الحواس الظاهرة‬ ‫والباطنة فيلتذ ويتألم باللذات والآلام الجسمانية‬

‫‪Taftazānī (1382–9) – Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid‬‬

‫‪Table 6.4 Changes made to the passage by Shaykh Bahāʾī‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫(‪ )506.12‬وهذا يؤي ّد ما قاله ٭‪ 5‬طائفة (من) ↔︎ (أساطين) الحكماء ٭‪ 3‬من‬ ‫أن [في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي] هو {واسطة} ↔︎ {بين (عالم المجردات)‬ ‫↔︎ (وعالم الماديات)} ٭‪ 3‬ليس في تلك اللطافة ولا في هذه الكثافة فيه ٭‪ 4‬للأجسام‬ ‫والأعراض ٭ من الحركات والسكنات ٭‪ 2‬والأصوات والطعوم والروائح وغيرها مثل‬ ‫‪22‬‬ ‫قائمة بذواتها معلقة لا في مادة ٭‪ 30‬وهو عالم عظيم الفسحة ٭‪ + 25‬٭‪ 25‬وسكّانها ٭‬ ‫على طبقات ‪ +‬متفاوتة في {اللطافة والكثافة} ↔︎ {(وقبح [الصورة]) ↔︎ (وحسنها)}‬ ‫ولأبدانهم المثالية ٭‪ 11‬جميع الحواس الظاهر ية والباطنية فيتنعمون ويتألمون باللذات‬ ‫والآلام النفسانية والجسمانية‬

‫‪Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) – al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan‬‬

‫(‪ )3-372.4‬يشير إلى ما ذهب إليه بعض المتألهين من الحكماء ونسب إلى القدماء من أن بين‬ ‫عالمي المحسوس والمعقول واسطة يسمى عالم المثل ليس في تجرد المجردات ولا في مخالطة الماديات‬ ‫وفيه لكل موجود من المجردات والأجسام والأعراض حتى الحركات والسكنات والأوضاع‬ ‫والهيئات والطعوم والروائح مثال قائم بذاته معلق لا في مادة ومحل يظهر للحس بمعونة مظهر كالمرآة‬ ‫والخيال والماء والهواء ونحو ذلك وقد ينتقل من مظهر إلى مظهر وقد يبطل كما إذا فسدت المرآة‬ ‫والخيال أو زالت المقابلة أو التخيل وبالجملة هو عالم عظيم الفسحة غير متناه يحذو حذو العالم الحسي‬ ‫في دوام حركة أفلاكه المثالية وقبول عناصره ومركباته آثار حركات أفلاكه وإشراقات العالم العقلي‬ ‫وهذا ما قال الأقدمون أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى‬ ‫مدنه ومن جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى‬ ‫ما فيهما من الخلائق ومن هذا العالم تكون الملائكة والجن والشياطين والغيلان �لكونها من قبيل‬ ‫المثل أو النفوس الناطقة المفارقة الظاهرة فيها وبه تظهر المجردات في صور مختلفة بالحسن والقبح‬ ‫واللطافة والكثافة وغير ذلك بحسب استعداد القابل والفاعل وعليه بنوا أمر المعاد الجسماني فإن‬ ‫البدن المثالي الذي تتصرف فيه النفس حكمه حكم البدن الحسي في أن له جميع الحواس الظاهرة‬ ‫والباطنة فيلتذ ويتألم باللذات والآلام الجسمانية‬

‫‪Taftazānī (1382–9) – Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

158 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

observations. So, just as you trust them on the secrets about celestial matters that they offer you, so it is right for you to trust them on the hidden matters of the angelic, divine worlds that they offer you.

He asserts that he knows of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. His passage, however, seems to be heavily indebted to Taftāzānī’s version, not Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s. This can be deduced from the fact that the passage in Shaykh Bahāʾī that runs from huwa wāsiṭa . . . to . . . fī mādda finds its parallel in Taftāzānī from bayn ʿālamay . . . to . . . fī mādda, whereas it cannot be traced back to a passage in Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary. Also the last sentence shows more correspondence with Taftāzānī than with Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, as Quṭb al-Dīn does not speak of “enjoying and suffering from enjoyable and painful things, both spiritual and bodily” as concisely as does Taftāzānī, whose text is virtually the same as Shaykh Bahāʾī’s apart from using a different verb for “to enjoy” in a different conjugation, and from not mentioning “spiritual.” In general, Shaykh Bahāʾī did not simply copy Taftāzānī. The process is complicated to the point that an intermediary source cannot be excluded. Still, with the premise that Shaykh Bahāʾī was reading Taftāzānī, we can find a higher level of correspondence than would at first meet the eye. For example, some elements in Shaykh Bahāʾī can easily be seen as mere synonyms for what Taftāzānī had written. Taftāzānī writes “some of the divine ones among the philosophers,” Shaykh Bahāʾī writes “a group of high-ranking philosophers.” When speaking of what the things in the world of image are not, Taftāzānī says “they do not have the abstraction of abstract things nor the blend of material things,” and Shaykh Bahāʾī says “they do not have such subtleness nor such coarseness.” Clearly, these statements are synonymous. Words are shuffled in more than one way, though none of them are difficult to follow. The first one, “among” (min) and “high-ranking” (asāṭīn) is merely to allow the sentence to flow better, forced by his deletion of Taftāzānī’s “divine ones.” Then “in between” (wāsiṭa) is placed at the beginning of the sentence, which is merely a grammatical

EDL\Jl3URGH University Press

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 159

simplification of Taftāzānī’s sentence. In Taftāzānī, wāsiṭa was used adverbially and Shaykh Bahāʾī now uses it as predicate. Why he choses to additionally change the order of “the world of abstract things” and “the world of material things” is not clear. Similarly, the reason for his shuffling around of the various words to indicate there are beautiful and ugly images seems to do nothing to the meaning of the sentence. Twice he displaces text. The most prominent case of this happens at the beginning, where he already cites the famous sentence “there is in existence a magnitudinous world different from the sensory world.” In fact, as we may notice, this is the only sentence he takes from the famous passage we have been studying, lifting it from one of his largest omissions of Taftāzānī’s text. This omission covers more than seventy words, which I have broken up into three units here. First, it is broken up around where the aforementioned sentence should be; then, it is further broken up at Shaykh Bahāʾī’s “its inhabitants” (wa-sukkānuhā), to highlight that this seems to be his way to summarize Taftāzānī’s enumeration of who can live in the world of image, namely, angels, jinn, demons, ghouls, and rational souls. The fact that this sentence is placed at a spot similar to where it is found in Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s text, is an indicator that Shaykh Bahāʾī was perhaps using the Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq to restructure what he wanted to use from Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid. The many changes in the text show that he understood the argumentation well, for only with full understanding can one make changes to the text without loss of comprehension. Shaykh Bahāʾī’s friend, Mīr Dāmād, also discusses the world of image, but not in a traditional context as Shaykh Bahāʾī had done, but in a book of philosophy, al-Jadhawāt. He utilizes the passage under discussion, but does not quote it verbatim. He uses bits and pieces from it, in a different order, and translates it into Persian to incorporate it better into his Persian text. Notably, he relates the idea not to “the ancients” generally, but specifically to “the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and a group of Ishrāqī Muslims.”31 At another point, he cites a snippet from Khafrī (d. 1535) on the world of image.32 Shaykh Bahāʾī’s student, Mullā Ṣadrā, is also interested in the world of image, as we have seen in the previous chapter. He did not

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use the specific passage under consideration. The absence of the passage is telling for Mullā Ṣadrā’s stance towards Shahrazūrī’s world of image, being more interested in harmonizing this idea with his own philosophical agenda than to build forth on what Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī had provided. A hint that he did know of this passage can be found in his glosses on Ibn Sīnā’s (d. 1037) al-Shifāʾ. Here he says that “I am among those who believe in the existence of a magnitudinous world different from the material [world], as argued for by prominent philosophers and leading mystics.”33 This sentence is obviously derived from the first sentence of our passage. In his Asfār, completed in 1628,34 he came close to using the passage as well, by invoking the concept of a “magnitudinous world” (ʿālaman miqdāriyyan). This appears in his discussion of the category of quantity; a specific type of quantity can exist among “separables” (al-mufāraqāt, that is, things devoid of matter) only if we accept the existence of a world that has dimensions yet is not material. He says this specific type of quantity “exists in the thing” (mawjūd fīhi), by which he must mean spatial quantity.35 Our passage appears in the writings of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī (d. 1662), a student of Mullā Ṣadrā. Lāhījī’s Risālah-ye nūriyya is dedicated to the world of image, in which he collects a great deal of what was then available on the world of image, including the passage under discussion. In fact, he collects it both from Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary, as well as from Shaykh Bahāʾī’s Hadith collection.36 In the case of Shaykh Bahāʾī’s version, he first cites the Hadith, and then uses parts of Shaykh Bahāʾī’s explanation. He does not mention him by name, merely referring to “one of the intellectuals” (baʿḍī-i ʿurafā). His treatise is written in Persian, but these citations are in the original Arabic. To accommodate his readers, he interjects with a paraphrase in Persian in the middle of his citation of Shaykh Bahāʾī. In the case of Lāhījī’s citation of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s version, what is most notable is that he includes a note on the names of the mythical cities of Jabalqa and Jabarsa, saying that he has seen a variant spelling in a manuscript of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, namely, Jābarq and Jābarṣ. The passage also appears in Lāhījī’s Gawhar-i murād.37 There he uses

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 161

Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, but in a different way than he did in Risālah-ye nūriyya. From the same circle of people we find Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1680) using the same passage, this time apparently based on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī as his source. It appears at least twice in his corpus, once in his Kitāb al-wāfī, and another time in al-Shāfī fī l-ʿaqāʾid wa-l-akhlāq wa-l-aḥkām.38 In another text, al-Kalimāt al-maknūna, he makes use of the term ʿālam al-mithāl, but he seems to draw from the commentary tradition on Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), not Suhrawardī.39 Eighteenth Century: The Digestion in Shīʿī Traditional Thought

After the notion went through the hands of the great intellectuals of Isfahan, it apparently became palatable to a wider Shīʿī audience. From here on, Shahrazūrī’s world of image would be much included in traditional commentaries on Hadith. Thus, Majlisī (d. 1698) uses the notion of a world of image as a hermeneutical tool to understand the barzakh. Like Shaykh Bahāʾī before him, he held the position of shaykh al-islām of Isfahan. His legacy is characterized by several compilations of traditional knowledge, the most impressive one being the Biḥār al-anwār, which takes up no less than 110 volumes.40 The passage under discussion appears in two different forms. In the recension of Taftāzānī it is present in his Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl and in his Biḥār al-anwār.41 In the recension of Shaykh Bahāʾī, it appears in his Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl and in his Malādh al-akhyār.42 In all cases he attributes it to the author from whom he is citing, in the one case introducing the whole passage with “the commentator on al-Maqāṣīd said” (qāla shāriḥ al-Maqāṣid), in the other saying “Shaykh Bahāʾī said” (wa-qāla al-shaykh al-Bahāʾī) at the beginning. The differences are only orthographic in nature. There is the mudunuhu/muddatuhu confusion, attesting to the persistence of this problem, Majlisī apparently wrote Jabarsa with sīn instead of a ṣād, and the editions of Taftāzānī and Majlisī disagree whether at one point it should be fīhimā or fīhā. The usage of Shaykh Bahāʾī only shows some slight irregularities in the Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl. The word “suspended” (muʿallaqa) is missing, perhaps merely a slip of the pen. A similar slip of the pen, either by Majlisī,

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intermediary copyists, or the modern editor, occurs when Majlisī’s text reads al-ḥawāss al-ẓāhira wa-al-bāṭina instead of al-ḥawāss al-ẓāhiriyya wa-al-bāṭiniyya. Both ways of writing mean “the external and internal senses,” the difference therefore being negligible. Many other authors are quick to use Shaykh Bahāʾī’s passage. It appears in Jazāʾirī’s (d. 1701) collection al-Anwār al-nuʿmāniyya.43 Some minor changes appear in the text, and, interestingly, he expands on who the “group of high-ranking philosophers” could be, namely, “Plato and his followers.” Also Madanī (d. 1708) and Ṭāliqānī (d. 1745) have this passage. Their citation is closer to Shaykh Bahāʾī than to Jazāʾirī, and they both explicitly attribute it to Shaykh Bahāʾī.44 It seems that in the same vein Qāryāghdī (d. ≥ 1687) uses the passage in his al-Baḍāʿa al-muzjāt, a commentary on Kulaynī’s (d. 941) Rawḍat al-kāfī, drawing from Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī’s al-Wāfī.45 A certain ʿAlī Naqī Bihbahānī (d. > 1696), who presumably flourished just shortly after Lāhījī died,46 also has the passage and it is unclear whether he took it from Lāhījī or Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī.47 A last case to discuss for this century is Narrāqī (d. 1794), whose al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya shows more than a few mentions of the world of image in the context of Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī. He fails to mention the passage under discussion, and only twice comes close to it. Once, he calls images from the world of image “magnitudinous,” and once he invokes “the ancients” to confirm their existence.48 Perhaps this is an indicator of his disinterest in the idea, which finds confirmation in his open disagreement on the issue of images in mirrors: “What is visible in a mirror . . . is not one of the existents of the world of image, as the Ishrāqīs claim.”49

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Nineteenth Century: The Balkans-to-Bengal Complex at Work

Meanwhile, Suhrawardī’s and Shahrazūrī’s thought did not only circulate in Safavid Iran. From manuscript copies we know their corpus reached all corners of the Islamic world. For the discussion of the world of image, we can find some sources that attest to the easy transmission of knowledge and similarity in interests, in a region that stretched from the Balkans to Bengal.50 Because much of the source Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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material of the post-classical period remains in manuscripts or lithographs, badly catalogued, it is difficult to access large amounts of texts. The following evidence is therefore only to be taken as indicative, and not as conclusive, in terms of the transmission of the world of image. Ottoman Anatolia

Evidence for engagement with the world of image in Anatolia can be found well before the nineteenth century, which I will include here too. There is, for example, the case of Shirwānī (d. 1626), who wrote an epistle on the afterlife. The editors claim that Shirwānī staunchly followed Suhrawardī and his world of image, yet upon reading the treatise this is not immediately obvious. Indeed, he uses the term “world of image” (ʿālam al-mithāl), but does not directly copy Suhrawardī or Shahrazūrī to explain what that is. Most notably, the sentence under consideration is not present, nor is the quintessential term ʿālaman miqdāriyyan. I have therefore not included him in Figure 6.1. There is one reference to the “Ishrāqīs” (al-ḥukamāʾ al-ishrāqiyūn), but not in a context related to the world of image.51 What is more, the only person cited by name is Ibn ʿArabī. The strongest textual evidence that he was building forth on Shahrazūrī’s world of image is (1) the idea that we will acquire an “imaginable body” (al-badan al-mithālī); (2) the qualification of such images as “independently existing” (qāʾima bi-nafsihā); (3) that these images are “suspended, without being attached to a place or direction” (muʿallaqa ghayr mutaʿallaqa bi-makān wa-jiha); (4) that these images are similar to “images in mirrors, the imagination, the common sense, and the other internal senses”; (5) that besides after death they can be witnessed by “prophets, saints, people sleeping, and people who are sick”’ and (6) that these images are different from Platonic Forms as argued by “the divine Plato, the sages of Persia, and others.”52 Elements that seem to derive more from Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators are (1) the world unfolds from God on a spiritual, imaginable, and sensory level; (2) that the world of image is called an “isthmus” (barzakh); (3) the suggestion that “in the world of image bodies are spiritualized and spirits are embodied” (fa-fī ʿālam al-mithāl yatarawwaḥ

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al-ajsād wa-yatassad al-arwāḥ); (4) the use of the term “the visible world” (ʿālam al-shahāda); and (5) the insistence on the notion of “the heart” (al-qalb) over the notion of the soul.53 In the difficulty of tracing back Shirwānī to one or the other philosopher, he shows himself to be an independent thinker. He is, however, not necessarily interested in exploring the idea of a world of image further. Instead, he employs it to understand bodily resurrection, adding that our Heaven and Hell will be constructed out of the values coming from our thoughts and actions in this life. As a final note, Shirwānī must have discussed the world of image too, in a similar fashion, in his al-Fawāʾid al-khāqānniyya, as Buyūk Zāda (d. 1837) cites from this work, mentioning the title.54 Another notable example is Kalanbawī (d. 1790), in his gloss to Dawānī’s commentary on Ījī’s (d. 1355) al-ʿaqāʾid. The world of image is mentioned twice, once in passing and once with the passage under consideration.55 His inclusion of Shahrazūrī’s world of image is not in the context of eschatology, but rather the discussion on God’s knowledge. He wishes to point out that some people think that  God’s knowledge includes such suspended images, and since such images can be universal and particular this would allow God to have knowledge of particulars. Kalanbawī speaks about this suggestion as though it is commonly mentioned, but I have not seen it in other sources. To introduce his readers quickly to the notion of suspended images, he cites Taftāzānī’s version of the passage, mentioning him by name. He interjects a comment once. When Taftāzānī speaks of images going from one to another place of manifestation, perhaps going corrupt, Kalanbawī notes that it is “its visibility” that goes corrupt, implying that the image itself does not. After the citation he continues the discussion of suspended images for another page, arguing that they are different from Platonic Forms. For this he mentions and cites Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. In the end he simply moves on to a next topic, and does not share his own opinion candidly. Finally, mention should be made of two very small treatises on suspended images written by the Ottoman scholars Qaṣāb Bāshā Zāda

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(d. 1820) and Buyūk Zāda (d. 1837). Both merely summarize the difference between Platonic Forms and suspended images.56 Modern Egypt

The world of image, in the passage under discussion, also appears in Egyptian circles of the nineteenth century. One case is especially surprising, as this is not a text on philosophy or theology, but on uṣūl al-fiqh, legal theory, by the hand of Azhar professor Ḥasan ʿAṭṭār (d. 1834). He cites from Taftāzānī, with acknowledgment. Two points about his citation bear mention. First, ʿAṭṭār changed the introducing sentence slightly. He further seems to have forgotten to copy a  sentence. This is obvious as the missing sentence starts with al-ʿālam al-ḥissī and the place where ʿAṭṭār picks up his citation also starts with al-ʿālam al-ḥissī. A mistake like this shows he was constructing his text by himself, with a copy of Taftāzānī’s text next to him, without there being an oral aspect to the production of his text. ʿAṭṭār, at the end, adds: “I say: al-Jalāl Dawānī assigns all images witnessed in mirrors to this world. He mentioned this in his commentary on Suhrawardī’s Hayākil. We related his explanation in another place.” This comment attests to a wider awareness of the discussion  around Shahrazūrī’s world of image in ʿAṭṭār’s time. Such awareness is visible in Taʿliqāt ʿalā Sharḥ al-Aḍudiyya, a gloss by either Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī (d. 1897) or his student Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d.  1905),57 on the commentary by Dawānī on the creed of ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī. They cite the passage from Taftāzānī, without acknowledgment.

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Mughal and Modern India

Suhrawardī’s and Shahrazūrī’s philosophical ideas reached India, that much we know.58 The footprint it left is as of yet unclear. One example is the book Dabistān-i madhāhib, whose author is uncertain, but perhaps it is by Mollā Mowbad.59 It has a striking discussion of al-Ishrāqiyūn, those who follow the philosophy of Suhrawardī, as already noted by Corbin.60 It contains a rather precise summary of Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

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Suhrawardī’s notion of using the imagination after death. In Shea and Troyer’s translation we read: The venerable Shaikh Maktul tends to establish in his demonstrations, that the heavenly bodies are places of imaginations of the inhabitants of heaven, and that beneath the heaven of the moon, and above the globe of fire is a spherical body, without motion, and this is the place of the imaginations of the inhabitants of hell.61

Notably, a mention of the term ʿālam al-mithāl is missing. It seems that the author of the Dabistan was basing himself strictly on Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. The world of image is also put to use by the reformist thinker Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1762).62 Mohammad Karimi Zanjani Asl claims that Shāh  Walī Allāh mentions the wondrous places of Jabalqa and Jabarsa, and therefore argues that there is a connection between Shāh Walī Allāh and Suhrawardī.63 As for the genealogy of the sentence  we have been studying, it seems justified to include Shāh Walī Allāh based on a succinct remark in his Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha. Table 6.5 shows the relevant sentence.64 As is visible, only four words and a synonym have remained in Shāh Walī Allāh’s text. Further, he relates the idea to Hadith sources, not ancient ­philosophers. Lastly, he does not mention the term “world of image” and also remains silent on the other standard descriptions of this world as being full of wondrous creatures etcetera. In short, this passage would not seem to be directly related to the world of image and only by looking for intentional textual correspondence can we find evidence that it does speak of Shahrazūrī’s world of image. Another example from India is Ḥaydarābādī’s (d. > 1945?) commentary on Suhrawardī’s Hayākil al-nūr. He writes in Persian, and only includes a heavily condensed version of the passage, but from the gofte and (“He said”) we may infer that he is citing someone, which could be Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, as he is drawing from Quṭb al-Dīn’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq elsewhere in his commentary.

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‫(‪ )2-84.9‬وحكي عن الحكماء الأقدمين‬ ‫أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم‬ ‫الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه‬ ‫من جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرسا وهما‬ ‫مدينتان عظيمتان ولكل منهما ألف باب‬ ‫لا تحصى ما فيها من الخلائق‬

‫– )‪Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (1821‬‬ ‫‪Sharḥ al-ʿArshiyya‬‬

‫(‪ )2-84.9‬وحكي عن الحكماء الأقدمين‬ ‫أن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم‬ ‫الحسي لا تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه‬ ‫من جملة تلك المدن جابلقا وجابرسا وهما‬ ‫مدينتان عظيمتان ولكل منهما ألف باب‬ ‫لا تحصى ما فيها من الخلائق‬

‫– )‪Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (1821‬‬ ‫‪Sharḥ al-ʿArshiyya‬‬

‫(‪ )43.11‬اعلم أنه دلت أحاديث كثيرة‬ ‫على أن في الوجود عالما ٭ غير عنصري تتمثل‬ ‫فيه المعاني بأجسام مناسبة لها في الصفة‬

‫– )‪Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1762‬‬ ‫‪Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha‬‬

‫(‪ )43.11‬اعلم أنه دلت أحاديث كثيرة‬ ‫على أن في الوجود عالما ٭ غير عنصري تتمثل‬ ‫فيه المعاني بأجسام مناسبة لها في الصفة‬

‫– )‪Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1762‬‬ ‫‪Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha‬‬

‫(‪ )121.12‬٭‪ 7‬گفته است كه اين‬ ‫عالم مقدارى است غير عالم حسى و‬ ‫(عجايبات او) ↔︎ (لا يتناهى) و لا‬ ‫‪7‬‬ ‫يحصى است ٭‬

‫– )‪Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1295‬‬ ‫‪Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫(‪ )493.14‬وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن‬ ‫في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا‬ ‫تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك‬ ‫المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان‬ ‫لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من‬ ‫الخلائق‬

‫– )‪Ḥaydarābādī (1945‬‬ ‫‪Nihāyat al-ẓuhūr‬‬

‫(‪ )121.12‬٭‪ 7‬گفته است كه اين‬ ‫عالم مقدارى است غير عالم حسى و‬ ‫(عجايبات او) ↔︎ (لا يتناهى) و لا‬ ‫‪7‬‬ ‫يحصى است ٭‬

‫(‪ )493.14‬وهو الذي أشار إليه الأقدمون أن‬ ‫في الوجود عالما مقدار يا غير العالم الحسي لا‬ ‫تتناهى عجائبه ولا تحصى مدنه ومن جملة تلك‬ ‫المدن جابلقا وجابرصا وهما مدينتان عظيمتان‬ ‫لكل منهما ألف باب لا يحصى ما فيها من‬ ‫الخلائق‬

‫– )‪Ḥaydarābādī (1945‬‬ ‫‪Nihāyat al-ẓuhūr‬‬

‫– )‪Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1295‬‬ ‫‪Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq‬‬

‫‪Table 6.5 Analysis of the modern reception of the passage‬‬

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168 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

Qajar Iran Meanwhile, the reception in Iran continued. The most notable one is by Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826),65 who lived around the turn of the nineteenth century in Qajar Iran. It seems that this region, in this period, is especially rich in innovative religious thought. Indeed, based on Aḥsāʾī’s thinking, this vibrancy even brought about a new religion, the Bahāʾī faith, as an offshoot from Islam. Aḥsāʾī’s, and his commentators’, connection to the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī is well known, thanks mostly due to Henry Corbin.66 It seems that the notion of the world of image was one of Aḥsāʾī’s primary interests. I have been able to find one instance of the sentence we have been studying in Aḥsāʾī’s writings, namely, in his Sharḥ al-ʿArshiyya, a commentary on a treatise by Mullā Ṣadrā, which he completed in 1821.67 It seems likely that he took this passage from Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī. The insertion of wa-ḥukiya ʿan al-ḥukamāʾ, “it is related from the philosophers,” is not attested as such in other sources and may therefore simply be Aḥsāʾī’s own. This forced him, of course, to change al-aqdamūn into al-aqdamīn. There is the familiar sīn/ṣād mix-up. This and the additional wa may simply be part of the bandwidth of the manuscript tradition. In short, his citation is faithful, though, of course, without attributing it explicitly to Quṭb al-Dīn. I suspect the passage is used elsewhere too, and should also be findable among his commentators. Unfortunately, many of the texts from his corpus and his commentary tradition are not easily accessible, which in combination with the large size of the corpus makes it difficult to navigate these texts in search of intentional textual correspondences. A more precise study on the relationship between Aḥsāʾī’s writings and that of his successors with the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī will therefore need to be postponed until a later date. Besides Aḥsāʾī, we see that Hamdānī (d. 1802) cited Majlisī’s version of the passage nearly to the letter.68 Tūysirkānī (d. 1901) cites from Jazāʾirī’s al-Anwār, as explicitly indicated by him and also plain from the inclusion of “Plato and his followers.” The leaving out of the word al-ḥissī, sensory, in “the sensory world” seems to be a simple ­mistake.

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The other differences with Jazāʾirī’s text are actually in line with Shaykh Bahāʾī’s text or with other texts that cite Shaykh Bahāʾī, therefore showing the natural range of possibilities that the manuscript tradition of this text had.69 The influential philosopher Sabziwārī (d. 1873), in his Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, does not use the passage. He does discuss Shahrazūrī’s world of image, citing Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and in fact also cites relevant passages from Suhrawardī’s al-Talwīḥāt and Ibn Sīnā’s al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, mentioning both author and title.70 Among the early commentators on Sabziwārī, we find Haydajī (d. 1920) reporting our passage under consideration. A final case for this period is Ayatollah Dahgardī (d. 1934). He utilizes Taftāzānī’s passage, with a few changes and an extra sentence. Slightly odd is his way of writing Jābarṣā, which he writes as Jābalsā.71 Twentieth–Twenty-first Century: Continuing Interest

With that we come to the modern and contemporary era. For this period I could only find Shīʿī sources using the passage we are discussing. The Iraqi Shīʿī scholar Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1954) says explicitly that he is citing Shaykh Bahāʾī and does so nearly verbatim.72 Near the end there are some very slight variations in the wording. What sticks out most is an added mā, “what,” which also appeared in Ṭāliqānī’s text and therefore seems to have been part of the manuscript tradition of Shaykh Bahāʾī’s text. A commentator on Sabziwārī, Riḍā Ṣadr (d. 1994) mentions the passage.73 He introduces it slightly differently and deletes the word “those” (tilka) from Quṭb al-Dīn’s “from among those cities,” but neither change is very significant. He further writes Jābarsā with a sīn instead of a ṣād, and writes Jābarqā with a rah instead of a lām. Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981) does not use the passage, but does use Mullā Ṣadrā’s Asfār to discuss the category of quantity in his Nihāyat al-ḥikma. Three commentators of Nihāyat al-ḥikma jump on the opportunity of Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s use of ʿālaman miqdāriyyan, to explain that what is meant is the world of image (ʿālam al-mithāl).74 One of them, Ayatollah Ardabīlī, a scholar from Mashhad, passed away only in 2012. The two others are at time of writing still alive. Dr. ʿAlī Shirwānī, born

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in 1964 in Tehran and now a scholar in Qom, wrote a translation and commentary in 1991 in which he glosses this “magnitudinous world” as the world of image. ʿAbbās ʿAlī Zāʿirī Sabzawārī wrote the preface to his commentary on Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Nihāyat al-ḥikma in December 2002, in which he does the same as Shirwānī. Finally, Jaʿfar Sajādī (d. 2014) reports the passage in his dictionary of Islamic terms under the entry “the four worlds” (ʿawālim arbaʿa) in a fashion that is close to Quṭb al-Dīn’s version.75 We further have modern evidence of Lāhījī’s influence, in the writings of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī (d. 2005) and Ayatollah Ḥasan Zāda Āmulī, at time of writing still alive. In the case of Āshtiyānī’s commentary on Mullā Ṣadrā’s Zād al-musāfir this is clear, as Āshtiyānī explicitly cites Lāhījī. It is all the more strange then that Āshtiyānī still decided to drop two words. Three words are changed, but this may be due to slight variations in the manuscripts. In the case of Āmulī, this influence is based on the textual correspondence. It appears in an epistle on images and the world of image, and Āmulī uses the passage to explain the Islamic notion of the barzakh.76 Much of the evidence collected in this chapter may seem at first sight repetitive, redundant even. But I would like to argue that there are some interesting lessons to be learned, which would have gone unnoticed otherwise. By way of example, to fully appreciate the depth we have been able to achieve with this detailed analysis that focused on the materiality of the texts, let us break down one sentence from the passage we have been studying, as it is presented in the twentiethcentury text al-Firdaws al-aʿlā, of Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1954). A translation of this sentence is:

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This is supported by what a group of high-ranking philosophers say, that there is in existence a magnitudinous world different from the sensory world.

In Arabic, the sentence reads as follows:

‫ن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ّ ‫وهذا يؤيد ما قاله طائفة من أساطين الحكماء من أ‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي‬ Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 171

If we separate out different parts of the sentence to distinguish which author contributed which part of the sentence, we get the following: Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621):

‫ن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ّ ‫وهذا يؤيد ما قاله طائفة من أساطين الحكماء من أ‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي‬

Taftāzānī (d. 1391):

‫ن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ّ ‫وهذا يؤيد ما قاله طائفة من أساطين الحكماء من أ‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي‬

Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288):

‫ن في الوجود عالما عالما غير‬ ّ ‫وهذا يؤيد ما قاله طائفة من أساطين الحكماء من أ‬ ‫العالم الحسي‬

Suhrawardī (d. 1191):

‫ن في الوجود عالما مقدار يا‬ ّ ‫وهذا يؤيد ما قاله طائفة من أساطين الحكماء من أ‬ ‫غير العالم الحسي‬

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Thus, we see that this modern text has, for this sentence, been brought into being by an 800-year process of preservation and appropriation. This is, to me, what it means to be a living tradition. The terms preservation and appropriation bring us to an important result offered by this chapter. By studying intertextuality this thoroughly, something of the textual practices at work in the late medieval and early modern Islamic discourse are revealed. We see clearly two different practices emerge. We notice that some copy verbatim. They are making sure that knowledge does not dissipate, preserving it by copying it, as the precarious nature of a manuscript tradition invariably demands a certain rate of reproduction to make up for the rate of loss.77 For some thoughts, at certain times, each manuscript carrying its meaning is a precious one.78 This practice I call preservation. Being a verbatim copy, the author of the target text has less trouble admitting he is citing from the source text. Among instances of preservation we still see some slight textual variations. This constitutes the bandwidth within which a text is defined, its

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172 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

f­ luidity owing to the fact that these texts were copied by hand, as manuscripts, not mechanically reproduced. Next to that we see a practice where someone clearly copies an earlier text, but is doing this far from verbatim. This practice I call appropriation. It is usually done without acknowledgment of the source text. It would seem easier to copy the source text verbatim. In fact, this is so easy that it does not require comprehension. Not doing so implies the opposite; it reveals a practice of studying and reflection on the source text. Only someone who understands the thoughts expressed by the text is able to make changes to the text without dilapidating the ­argument at stake. In short, while the author keeps the ideas expressed for the most part intact, the way it is expressed is changed to make it more properly his own. The text is appropriated. Sometimes this is done in a most refined way, as when Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī massages Shahrazūrī’s ideas expressed in his paraphrasing commentary into a running commentary. Sometimes all that happens is that a few words are changed in order, for example, when a source text says “intellects and souls,” a target text may say “souls and intellects.” This is, philosophically speaking, no meaningful change, but it still shows an author’s active engagement with the text, perhaps even done on purpose to show his readers that he was actively engaged with and in command of his sources. Of course, not all acts of appropriation are meaningless. Overseeing the entire history of the passage under discussion, we notice that some elements are pushed in and some elements are pushed out. Most of these are too small to describe in detail, but as examples we may notice that an emphasis on the variation from coarse to subtle, within the world of image, trickled in, while a mention of the two marvelous cities of Jābalqā and Jābarṣā disappeared. Lastly, we may conclude that by focusing on only one small passage, we were able to collect a set of texts that seem to belong together. This allows us to compile a tentative genealogy, as shown in Figure 6.1. Without an analysis as detailed as done here, we would not have been able to include all these people, nor would we have been able to justify lines of influence. Especially Taftāzānī’s role in this comes as a great surprise. His brief treatment of the world of image

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 173

appears in a text that was not a commentary on Suhrawardī, nor a text that dealt extensively with Suhrawardī’s commentary tradition. Quite possibly, only because it appeared in a text not directly associated with Suhrawardī’s philosophy, was it later possible for Shīʿī traditionalists to incorporate the idea into their commentaries on sacred texts, which happened primarily through the writings of Shaykh Bahāʾī. Conspicuous Absence of Ibn ʿArabī and his Commentators

Before we close this chapter, we need to address the absence of Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators from this analysis. They make frequent mention of “the world of image” (ʿālam al-mithāl), and not in a figurative sense but seemingly as a technical term. The simple reason as to why they do not show up in this analysis is that they do not make use of the passage under discussion. This, in turn, casts a suspicion on how much they are truly related to Shahrazūrī’s idea of a world of image. Some scholars consider Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators to be speaking of the same world of image as Suhrawardī and his commentators.79 I propose that for the world of image, the commentary tradition on Ibn ʿArabī forms a disjunctive set of texts, a different genealogy if you will. We may note that the term ʿālam al-mithāl is used in passing twice in Ibn ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt,80 and finds a more prominent place as early as Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. 1274).81 After him, it seems that the commentary tradition on Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam was the primary instigator of the larger textual tradition around the notion of ʿālam al-mithāl that does not connect directly with the commentary tradition on Suhrawardī. This commentary tradition is vast and virtually unexplored so far, with the majority of commentaries unedited, which makes specific and thorough analysis impossible. The few notes I give here are based on four of the major commentators, by Jundī (d. 1292), Kāshānī (d. 1329), Qayṣarī (d. 1350), and Jāmī (d. 1492). It is possible that the commentators on the Fuṣūṣ got the notion of a world of image from Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī, but textual evidence for this is rather thin. Kāshānī refers a few times to “the Ishrāqīs,” indicating that he is aware of the commentary tradition

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!

Anonymous (1329-39)

Taftāzānī (d. 1391)

Gh. al-D. Dashtakī (d. 1542)

Harawī (d. > 1600)

Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631)

Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640)

Muḥsin Fayḍ (d. 1680)

I

Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1310)

Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1762)

Narrāqī (d. 1794)

;

Ibn Abī Jumhūr (d. > 1501)

' 1288)

Nayrīzī (d. > 1536)

Sabziwārī (d. 1873)

~ •,

Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981)

Qāryāghdī (d. ≥1687)

Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826)

Haydajī (d. 1920)

Riḍā Ṣadr (d. 1994)

Maybudī (d. 1505)

Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621)

Kalanbawī (d. 1790)

Ḥasan ʿAṭṭār (d. 1834)

Afghānī/ʿAbduh (d. 1897/1905)

Dahgardī (d. 1934)

l (

Figure 6.1 The transmission of the idea of a world of image

Suhrawardī (d. 1191)

Ibn Kammūna (d. 1284)

~, • \

Ḥaydarābādī (d. > 1945)

Sajādī (d. 2014)

\11

Lāhījī (d. 1662)

Majlisī (d. 1698)

Jazāʾirī (d. 1701)

Madanī (d. 1708)

Ṭāliqānī (d. 1745)

Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1954)

Ḥaydarī

Ardabīlī (d. 2012)

Shīrwānī

Zāʿirī

Tūysirkānī (d. 1901)

Bihbahānī (d. > 1696)

Āshtiyānī (d. 2005)

Ḥasan Zādah Āmulī

Hamdānī (d. 1802)

J

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the reception of shahrazūrī’s world of image | 175

on Suhrawardī.82 In Qayṣarī’s commentary, which includes a section dedicated to the world of image, there are only a few indicators that he would have been inspired by Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī. Most relevant in the context of this chapter is that he calls entities of the world of image as being “sensory and magnitudinous” (maḥsūsan miqdāriyyan).83 Such little textual correspondence means, in my opinion, that there is too little evidence to establish intentional textual correspondence. A notable characteristic of the commentaries on the Fuṣūṣ is the exclusive choice for ʿālam al-mithāl, with only infrequent use of al-ʿālam al-mithālī, and none of the other terms coined by Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī.84 Another characteristic is the emphasis on the alternative names “independent imagination” (khayāl munfaṣil) and “dependent imagination” (khayāl muttaṣil), sometimes referred to as “the absolute world of image” (ʿālam al-mithāl al-muṭlaq) and the “restricted world of image” (ʿālam al-mithāl almuqayyad).85 These terms are completely absent from the writings of Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī. This commentary tradition enjoyed its own reception history. To give an estimate of the breadth of this reception, we may note authors as diverse as the Shīʿī theologian Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. ≥ 1385),86 the Sufi ʿAbd al-Karīm Jīlī (d. c. 1428),87 the Ottoman intellectual Shams al-Dīn Fanārī (d. 1430),88 the Indian reformist thinker Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624),89 and the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini (d. 1989),90 all using ʿālam al-mithāl in their writings by use of the commentary tradition on Ibn ʿArabī. The list could be extended many times over, but this is not the place to do that.

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7 Conclusion

I

t is said that a stanza was found on Suhrawardī’s grave which reads:1

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~ the inhabitant of this grave was a pearl ~ ~ a hidden one, which God created out of nobility ~ ~ the times did not know his value ~ ~ so he returned it to the shell for the great care he had for it ~

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Executed at the age of thirty-six, one does indeed get the impression that the people of his time did not value him for what he was worth. What else would he have committed to paper had he lived longer? One may equally wonder how many people throughout history really understood him. Would it have made a difference if had he written more on the ideas brewing inside him? These two questions largely define the tension that is immanent to the history of the notion of a world of image. Studying the expressions of the ideas of suspended images and a world of image, I have reconstructed in this book, to the best of my abilities, the development of these ideas. The most significant result of this study is the rehabilitation of Shahrazūrī as the ultimate architect of the philosophical expression for a world of image (ʿālam al-mithāl). Suhrawardī did not formulate a well-formed account of a world of image, in fact, he did not even use 176 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

conclusion | 177

this term. Instead, I would propose that the development of the idea knows three major stages, connected to the thinkers who brought the idea to a new level: Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), Suhrawardī (d. 1191), and Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288). It is only the latter who coined the well-known technical term “world of image” and definitively turned the ideas of his predecessors into the formulation and philosophical defense of an ontologically real and independent, magnitudinous world, a world in which things can have all the characteristics that material things have, while still being immaterial. The ultimate genesis of the idea of a world of image lies within discussions on the nature of man, in particular, those discussions of his fate after death: the hereafter is interesting to consider exactly because, paradoxically, the afterlife has prescriptive value for this life. Early Islamic philosophers, drawing from Greek philosophy, argued that it was primarily the actualization of man’s intellectual potential that would decide the fate of man after death, resulting in a twofold soteriological division of mankind. Good conduct was part of the discussion, but the intellectual activity dominated the discourse to such an extent that mankind was said to be able to only either enjoy true felicity or to suffer eternal misery. True felicity was defined as being part of the intelligible world, misery was said to be the distance from the intelligible world, and the continuing yearning for Earthly pleasures which could never again be satisfied. Ibn Sīnā allows for a more important place for good conduct. He thus marshals two factors to decide on the fate of man, intellectual activity and good conduct, and since both these factors can either be present or missing, Ibn Sīnā’s soteriology comes to exist of four major categories. These categories are assigned different eschatological fates. The upper category, those with good intellectual activity and good conduct, get to enjoy the intelligibles. Ibn Sīnā calls this “becoming an intelligible world.” The lowest category, those without intellectual activity and without good conduct, will suffer after death. This suffering has two aspects to it. One aspect is that they are removed from the world of intellect. Another aspect is that these people are so much used to the Earthly world that after death they still think and act as though they

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178 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

have a body. But they obviously have not, and are therefore severely limited in their doings. For the two categories in between, Ibn Sīnā conceived of a solution that was highly original and, at first sight, a bit curious. This solution is repeated in many of his writings, including major works like al-Shifāʾ and al-Ishārāt. In some of them, he prefaced this interpretation with the words “they say,” or “some say,” as though he is not proposing a solution original to him, but merely passing on something he had heard. Given the many times he draws attention to this solution, and given the fact that in some writings he does not preface it as such, I think it is safe to conclude that this idea sprouted from the mind of Ibn Sīnā and that he prefaced it only to soften its tone, knowing that it would yield a revolutionary way of thinking of eschatology, or perhaps because he was not completely sure of it himself. In summary, the solution for the people in the middle categories comes down to the suggestion that these people would be allowed to use their imagination. Since the souls in these categories had not actualized their intellectual potential entirely, they are not entirely focused on the intelligible world and they still yearn for Earthly pleasures. If such souls could imagine the delights of Earthly pleasures, they could satisfy their yearning without having to actually be in the sublunar world. That these things would only be imagined and not actually existent, is no problem for Ibn Sīnā as he argues that what matters is the “imprinting” of the object of knowledge onto the faculty, not how that imprinting comes about. Imagination is a bodily faculty according to Ibn Sīnā, so the use of imagination after death is not a trivial suggestion. Since making use of another sublunar body after death implies metempsychosis, which is vehemently denied by Ibn Sīnā, he turned to the supralunar world and found what he was looking for: souls would use the celestial bodies as the substrate for their imagination. Only in his commentary on al-Uthūlūjiyā (“The Theology of Aristotle”) does he hint at how this actually works without interfering with the body–soul relation that already exists between the celestial body and the celestial soul. He suggests that such bodies could be like mirrors, and human souls are only required to be opposite to a mirror to witness what they are imagining.

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conclusion | 179

The reception of Ibn Sīnā’s suggestion was largely negative. Most intellectuals thought it was simply ungrounded, its argument merely of persuasive nature (iqnāʿī). Those who did take it seriously, thought it to be flawed. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī could not see how there would be no conflict with the celestial soul that is already assigned to the celestial body. One body surely cannot be controlled by two souls, for it would receive conflicting directions and it would malfunction as a result. Similarly, others thought Ibn Sīnā’s ideas were tantamount to metempsychosis (tanāsukh), a doctrine almost universally rejected by intellectuals from the medieval Islamic world. As I have shown, it seems that it was only Suhrawardī who positively received Ibn Sīnā’s ideas on the use of the imagination after death. He reported on it in his al-Lamaḥāt and Partaw-nāmah, and included a more detailed discussion on it in his al-Talwīḥāt. The discussion in al-Talwīḥāt primarily focused on why the soul could really not use any body from the sublunar world, not even vaporous bodies. With this, Suhrawardī remained close to Ibn Sīnā’s discussion in his al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād. Suhrawardī’s expansions on Ibn Sīnā’s ideas are recorded in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. Bringing Ibn Sīnā’s suggestion, together with his own innovations in epistemology, he introduces a notion called “suspended images.” These are self-subsisting things that are different from intellects, souls, and bodies. They are, as it were, a fourth mode of being. These things are called images because they are much like bodily things, in that they have all the particular qualifications we know of bodies. Suhrawardī one time calls the suspended images “the eighth clime,” which is especially evocative of the similarity with bodies. It is, however, not correct to see the suspended images as an independent world in which we can go in and out. Of souls and intellects we do not ask where they are, because they are immaterial and hence have an equal relationship to any place in this Earthly world. Suspended images are similarly immaterial. These four realms of intellect, soul, body, and suspended image, are not like fluids of different densities, sitting in layers on top of each other, but are like an emulsion, in which all the different parts are equally mixed throughout the entire volume without dissolving.

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Suspended images are suspended, meaning, according to Suhrawardī, that they do not inhere in a place or a locus. Wherever they are perceived, they are in mere suspense in that place. That place is therefore not their locus, but their place of manifestation. I have argued that suspended images are constantly perceived, as any act of sense perception involves them. When we see something, the image of the object hangs in suspense on our eyes. When we hear something, the sound of the object hangs in suspense on our ears. Our senses are not perceiving them, but instead they are a place of manifestation for them. The thing that actually observes is what Suhrawardī often refers to as “the self,” that is, the immaterial soul. He calls the soul the sense of senses. Suhrawardī chooses the senses to be like this in response to the theory of perception that was current in his time. That dominant theory held that forms of objects impress themselves onto a faculty, by which the person knows. Suhrawardī rejects the theory of impression and instead argues that the mere presence is required for knowledge. His main argument against the theory of impression is that it cannot accommodate cases in which a big object is perceived through a small organ. For example, we see a mountain with our eyes, but the mountain is many times bigger than our eyes. This in itself is proof enough that the theory of impression is to be rejected. Suhrawardī developed his theory of presence through experience, as he claims himself. With this he means an intuitive, extraordinary experience, such as can be had in dreams or meditation. The witness of veridical experiences of philosophers, prophets, and mystics is taken seriously by him, and he encourages readers that they too can have such an experience. “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images,” he says. The philosophical foundation of knowledge by presence relies on considering the special case of selfknowledge. Suhrawardī brings forth arguments that we cannot know ourselves by means of a faculty, and we cannot know ourselves by means of an image. We simply know ourselves by ourselves, through ourselves, and this is because we are present to ourselves. Our body

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conclusion | 181

is present to us too, and if external objects present themselves in a bodily faculty, their image is present to the soul. With this theory of knowledge by presence in mind, the possibility of using the imagination after death takes on a different form. No longer is it the case that souls need a body and therefore connect to celestial bodies. For Suhrawardī, souls were using particular parts of their Earthly bodies as places of manifestation for different kinds of perception (imagination included), and the same principle applies after death, when souls use celestial bodies as places of manifestation. For Suhrawardī, the intelligible world is and remains the final goal toward which mankind needs to work its way. The comprehension that is possible after death by using celestial bodies is more richly described by Suhrawardī than it was by Ibn Sīnā, but remains only an intermediary stage. In fact, Suhrawardī denies a bodily resurrection and a Last Day of Judgment. Suhrawardī’s writings attracted a large number of commentators, but this does not mean that they were personally convinced by Suhrawardī’s philosophy and wanted to develop it further. I have distinguished roughly three groups. The first is a rather large group of commentators that simply do not engage with suspended images or the world of image at all. The second is a group of early commentators that show only a hesitant engagement with these ideas. For example, the earliest commentary we know of, by Tūdhī (d. ≥ 1252), in fact disregards the ideas found in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and only reports on what Suhrawardī wrote in al-Talwīḥāt, and even that he thinks applies only to the somewhat bad souls. Abharī (d. 1264) cites Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, but continues by saying that a clear proof has not been established for this view. This does not mean, for him, that we need to dismiss the idea. Instead, we are to “refrain” from it, leaving in the middle whether we need to refrain from the idea altogether or only refrain from a definitive judgment. Similarly, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1310), a well-known commentator of Suhrawardī, engages with the notion of suspended images and the world of image in detail, but upon closer inspection it turns out he relies solely on Shahrazūrī, an earlier commentator. An epistle written anonymously shortly after

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Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, includes original arguments in favor of suspended images. However, it also includes original arguments against them and in terms of volume they outweigh the pro-arguments considerably. Further, the way the epistle is structured makes the discussion of suspended images progressively more negative, obviously favoring a final negative verdict, though strictly speaking not drawing this conclusion itself. In the third group, consisting of commentators from Shiraz, this hesitance has turned into a cautious approach, in which intellectuals are progressively more outspoken. Dawānī (d. 1502), in his commentary on Hayākil al-nūr, merely distances himself from the idea by introducing it with “according to him,” referring to Suhrawardī. Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1542) comes up with counterarguments. He argues that if suspended images are different from bodies, they should not be seen in bodily terms, that is, with a shape, color, scent, and so on. Further, if suspended images are of a different ontological category than bodies, then it does not make sense that they are seen as part of the world of bodies. As we do see these images in the world of bodies, for example, in a mirror, and as we do perceive them in all their bodily characteristics, they cannot be of a different world. Such arguments are repeated by Nayrīzī (d. ≥ 1536), who openly dismisses the existence of suspended image and the world of image. In fact, he goes so far as to deceive his readers, saying that Suhrawardī never supported this idea as a solution for the eschatological fate of the majority of people, implying that neither should we. Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), too, rejects Ibn Sīnā’s and Suhrawardī’s solution for using the imagination after death by utilizing celestial bodies. He does engage with the notion of suspended images and the world of image, but in a rather shrewd way using Suhrawardī’s thinking for his own needs. His interpretation stems from his introduction of foreign elements, such as the idea that the faculty of imagination is immaterial. With this, he reduces the notion of a world of image to the faculty of the imagination itself: this world is non-existent, empty, without the imagination actively filling it. As such, each of our imagination creates its own world.

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This idea of an empty world of image is squarely opposed to the one elaboration that is both positive and highly original. It comes from what we should accept as the one enthusiastic disciple of Suhrawardī, by the name of Shams al-Dīn Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288). With Shahrazūrī, the notion of suspended images ultimately turns into the world of image, existing parallel to our Earthly world as an eighth clime next to the standard division of the world into seven climes. For Shahrazūrī, this is a populated world that mimics the Earthly world from its stars and celestial bodies, down to its plants and rocks. Similar to how things on Earth come to be through the motion of the celestial bodies, so too this can happen in the world of image. It is, however, a fantastical world, in which nothing is impossible. Most intriguing, what we know to be accidents here, are independently existing substrates over there. This means nothing in the world of image is in the way of something else; if more things come to be the space to contain them automatically grows with it. Equally, it means that things do not gradually change, for example, from black to white, as accidents could do. Instead, in the world of image such change is instant: one moment we perceive a black object, the next a white (or, perhaps, we see several grey objects each progressively whiter). Our mind tricks us into thinking that we have seen a gradual change. Shahrazūrī’s account on this world of image is grounded in Suhrawardī’s sentence in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq that “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the barriers, in which are suspended images.” The quintessential sentence for Shahrazūrī now becomes that “If you hear of the discussion of the ancients that there is a magnitudinous world in existence . . . [then] believe in it and let your faith in it not be hard on you, as the prophets and the divine sages recognize this world.”2 This sentence and the passage of which it is part, can be found four times in Shahrazūrī’s writings. The most important one is in a chapter dedicated to the world of image, in his Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhiyya. He placed this chapter in a section of his book on cosmology, not eschatology, thereby indicating that the discussion on suspended images should be considered on its own and not solely in the context in which Ibn Sīnā first came to think

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of allowing the use of the imagination after death. Shahrazūrī seems to have made a deliberate effort to push out the adjective “suspended,” muʿallaqa, in favor of using the term mithālī, itself as an adjective, or else qualifying such an image by “independently existing,” qāʾim bi-dhātihi. Whereas Suhrawardī used many terms to denote suspended images, Shahrazūrī consistently uses ʿālam al-mithāl, a term absent from Suhrawardī’s writings. Shahrazūrī makes the world of image exist between the sensory and the intelligible world, saying that its lower strata touch the Earthly world and its higher strata touch the immaterial, intelligible world. Celestial bodies are relegated to a minor role, in favor of a more independent existence and usage of the world of image. Instead of suspended images being in need of a place of manifestation, images in the world of image becomes themselves places of manifestation. Anything in the world of image can become a carrier for a human soul, in dreams, meditation, or after death. Thus, human beings during their Earthly life can already temporally wander about, meeting angel-intellects who can enter into the world of image from above, both taking on imaginable forms as their bodies. With his acceptance of metempsychosis, Shahrazūrī seems to have seen the world of image as an essential part of the trajectory of any human soul, on its ascend toward the world of intellect. Human souls first take on Earthly bodies, then they migrate to imaginable bodies, to finally join the intelligible world. One odd aspect of Shahrazūrī’s writings is that his enthusiasm is not met with a personal testimony. He says that he could fill “many tomes” with descriptions of what is to be found in the world of image, but he never explicitly says that he has first-hand experience. He is constantly using Suhrawardī’s texts without acknowledging the source, but when he uses Suhrawardī’s sentence that says “I myself have had veritable experiences . . .,”3 Shahrazūrī makes it clear that this is Suhrawardī speaking, not himself. Nonetheless, the contributions he made to the discussion on suspended images are without equal, and his influence would be felt up until the present day. Using the key sentence cited above from Shahrazūrī, I have been able to formulate a reconstruction of the reception of Shahrazūrī’s

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world of image. The results are astounding. If Ibn Sīnā sowed the seeds, Suhrawardī made it sprout, and Shahrazūrī let it blossom, it was Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī who, with his commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, made sure that the idea would be harvested and distributed. His commentary is by and large an appropriation of Shahrazūrī’s commentary, but this went unnoticed by virtually all later intellectuals, who all read Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s commentary, not Shahrazūrī’s. Soon, however, the idea of a world of image would travel far beyond the commentaries on Suhrawardī’s corpus. There is the expected reception by philosophers such as Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1541), Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631), and Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī (d. 1679). However, next to that it was remarkably enough also included by Taftāzānī (d. 1390) in his compendium on natural theology, Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid. What is even more remarkable is that Taftāzānī’s text would play a key role in the distribution of the idea, being the primary source for many Shīʿī scholars from Safavid Persia. Through Taftāzānī, the idea is used by Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) in his commentaries on Shīʿī Hadith, as a hermeneutical element to understand the religious notion of the barzakh, the time in between death and resurrection. After him, other traditional scholars as well seem to have had no problem in including it in their own discussions of the barzakh, and so we may notice that intellectuals make use of it all the way up to our time, for which a contemporary example is Ayatollah Ḥasan Zāda Āmulī. Shahab Ahmed states that Suhrawardī’s philosophy is one “of the most socially-pervasive and consequential thought-paradigms in the history of societies of Muslims.”4 He is referring specifically to the region that he dubs the Balkans-to-Bengal complex of the post-classical period. By focusing on one specific aspect of Suhrawardī’s thought, this book underscores Ahmed’s statement, showing that the ­influence of Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī extends over virtually the entire period from the twelfth century up until today, throughout the Islamic world, from Granada, to Istanbul, to Samarkand, to Hyderabad, to Isfahan, to Cairo, and many places in between. What started out with one sentence, “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended

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images,” ballooned into elaborations in dozens of books, bringing forth new arguments for and against, being introduced and applied in unforeseen contexts. After a creative boom in the twelfth and thirteenth century, the idea displays a much slower progression, and many texts from later centuries are clearly based virtually entirely on earlier texts. To me this does not mean that such later texts are meaningless. If we look at a relatively recent text, by Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1954), we can find out that he did not himself contribute a single letter to the discussion on the world of image. Yet neither is it a simple copy of an earlier source. Granted, he copies Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621) or an intermediary source between him and Shaykh Bahāʾī, but Shaykh Bahāʾī in turn only contributed a couple of things to the passage, relying for the most part on Taftāzānī (d. 1391). Taftāzānī, in turn, relies for the most part on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 1310), who relies on Shahrazūrī (d. ≥ 1288), who relies on Suhrawardī (d. 1191). Thus, the text about the world of image in Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ’s book comes about by an 800-year process of changing, adding, and deleting words. I have pointed out different cases which indicate this process is literary in nature, not oral. These changes in wording are therefore deliberate changes. The discourse of the world of image therefore underwent a slow evolution, and is in my opinion an example of how a decentralized intellectual discourse, such as Islam has, still knows a form of authority – namely, the authority of tradition. This authority of tradition is, essentially, a democratic process in which the collection of opinions for and against a certain idea allow for a scholar such as Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ to pen his text the way he did. Two absences from this history should be noted. It seems odd that I was able to include Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī (d. 1825) based on only one passage, while his commentators are wanting completely. I suspect that their texts should also be included in the genealogy I have sketched, but as their texts are not readily available and hard to navigate, I was not able to confirm this suspicion. Judging from the material Corbin collected in his Terre céleste et corps de résurrection, it seems that Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī and his successors are actually among the few philosophers who proposed fundamental innovations

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toward the idea of a world of image. As this study had Suhrawardī and his commentators as the primary focus, it seems appropriate to relegate the investigation into Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī and his successors to future research. Likewise notable is the absence of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) and his commentators. In this case, I think it is justified to leave them out. Even though they share a technical term, ʿālam al-mithāl, and even though their use of it is quite close, I suggest that they came about this term in entirely different ways and are hardly aware of each other’s use. Commentators on Suhrawardī only marshal in citations from Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators as evidence that mystics also have experience indicating the existence of a world of image. Meanwhile, Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators seemingly never involve material from Suhrawardī and his commentators. Since this book had the world of image in the context of Suhrawardī’s writings as its scope, I decided not to include a study of this concept in the writings of Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators. In this study I also proposed several matters of more methodological nature that may help scholars of late medieval Islamic intellectual history in general. These results stem from the observation that a methodology that focusses on an author’s intentions does not work for Islamic intellectual history, as the practices of preservation and appropriation are so widespread that it is no guarantee that if a certain idea is present in a certain text, then the author of that text adheres to that idea. By preservation I mean the simple act of copying an earlier source, with or without acknowledgment of that source. Appropriation is a more subtle variation of that, in which it is clear that the author is drawing from an earlier source, but is at the same time heavily changing the letter of the text. It reveals a practice of studying and reflection on the source text, since only someone who understands the idea can alter the text without mistakenly changing the meaning. To reveal this intertextuality, I work from a distant reading approach. I seek out what I call intentional textual correspondence and evident reliance in structure. They both provide us with a measure of the intertextuality of two texts, the first on the micro level of words and sentences, the second on the macro level of chapters

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and treatises. The word “commentary” simply refers to any target text that shows intentional textual correspondence exactly in those places of the source text that define the structure and composition of the text. A restricted commentary tradition is a set of texts that were meant to be circulated, that are commentaries on either one source text or all texts of one person, including all those that are source texts themselves. I have come to see a restricted commentary tradition as a particularly useful way of studying philosophy in the post-classical period, as it helps to circumvent the pitfalls of falsely attributing originality due to focusing on too few sources, and falsely attributing banality or oddity as due to having an unrepresentative sample. At the same time, a restricted commentary tradition makes the number of texts on which one has to work still manageable. In conclusion, this method has allowed me to show how a most peculiar idea was proposed by Ibn Sīnā and subsequently became the subject of much criticism, was nevertheless developed into a sophisticated system of thought by Suhrawardī and Shahrazūrī, and eventually conquered a place in mainstream, traditional Shīʿī thought. This is, then, the meaning and consequence of Suhrawardī’s sentence that “Whoever sees that place is certain of the existence of another world different from the [world of] bodies, in which are suspended images.”5

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Notes

Chapter 1  1. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155.  2. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 212/Philosophy, p. 138.  3. A. von Kremer, Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1868, pp. 89–97.  4. B. Carra de Vaux, “La philosophie illuminative (Hikmet el-ichraq), d’après Suhrawerdi Meqtoul,” Journal Asiatique 9(19), p. 65. Significantly, he admits having read this text in Istanbul and that he had noticed nothing “Illuminative” about it.  5. Ibn Sīnā, Traités mystiques d’Abou Alî al-Hosain b. Abdallâh b. Sînâ, ou d’Avicenne, ed. A. F. Mehren, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1889. For a full discussion of the controversy over this term, see D. Gutas, “Avicenna’s Eastern (‘Oriental’) Philosophy: Nature, Scope, Transmission,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10 (2000): 159–180.  6. H. Corbin, “Post-Scriptum à un entretien philosophique,” L’Herne: Henry Corbin (1981), p. 40 ; H. Corbin, “Pour l’anthropologie philosophique: Un traité persian inédit de Suhrawardî d’Alep (m. 1191),” Recherches philosophiques 2 (1932–1933), p. 371, fn. 1; H. Corbin and P. Kraus, “Le bruissement de l’aile de Gabriel,” Journal Asiatique 227 (1935), p. 5, fn. 2.  7. L. Massignon, Recueil de textes inédits concernant l’histoire de la mystique en pays d’Islam, réunis, classés, annotés et publiés. Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner (1929), pp. 112–113.

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 8. O. Spies and M. Umaruddin, “Suhrawerdī Maqtūl’s philosophical position according to the works of his youth,” Muslim University Journal (Aligarh) 3 (1936), p. 118; O. Spies and S. K. Khatak (eds.), Three Treatises on Mysticism: With an Account of his Life and Poetry. Stuttgart: Bonner Orientalistische Studien, 1935, p. 3.  9. Spies and Umaruddin, Suhrawerdī Maqtūl’s philosophical position,  p. 124. 10. S. van den Bergh, “De Tempels van het Licht door Soehrawerdi († 1191),” Tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte 10 (1916): 30–59, at p. 30. 11. Thus designated by himself. H. Corbin, “Préface de la Seconde Édition,” in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 3, p. viii. 12. Corbin, “Prolégomènes,” in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, pp.  xxxvii ff.; Corbin, “Prolégomènes,” in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 2, pp. 5 ff.; H. Corbin, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, II: Sohrawardî et les Platoniciens de Perse, Paris: Gallimard, 1971, p. 27. 13. Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 2, title page; Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, p. 40; Corbin, H., Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique. Paris: Gallimard, 1986, p. 286; Corbin changed his mind on translating this title several times (e.g., his French translation is titled Le livre de la sagesse orientale and we also encounter Théosophie de l’Orient des lumieres in En Islam iranien, vol. 2, p. 20), but both “theosophy” and “Oriental” remained important themes in his understanding of Suhrawardī. 14. Corbin, En Islam Iranien, vol. 2, p. 10. 15. Compare Corbin, “Prolégomènes II,” in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 2, p. 21; Corbin, En Islam Iranien, vol. 2, p. 41; H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shi’ite Iran, trans. N. Pearson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, p. xxiv. 16. S. M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Sholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, esp. pp. 172 ff. See also W. J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 295 ff. 17. C. J. Adams, “The Hermeneutics of Henry Corbin,” in R. C. Martin (ed.), Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985, p. 131. 18. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, p. 5.

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19. H. Corbin, “La place de Mollâ Ṣadrâ Shîrâzî (OB. 1050/1640) dans la philosophie iranienne,” Studia Islamica 18 (1963), p. 95. 20. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, p. 5. 21. H. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal,” in Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam, trans. L. Fox. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1995, p. 1. 22. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis,” p. 19. On the misuse of this term by intellectuals after Corbin, Christian Jambet says that “Henry Corbin cannot be blamed for this.” Ch. Jambet, The Act of Being, trans. J. Fort. New York: Zone Books, 2006, p. 284. 23. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis,” pp. 18–20. 24. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis,” pp. 1, 2. 25. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis,” p. 1. 26. Especially much used in his Terre céleste et corps de résurrection. The term “creative imagination,” used in L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabî, seems to work synonymously for him. Cf. Corbin, Histoire de la Philosophie, p. 297. 27. “Imaginable world” is actually close to one of the earliest choices Corbin made. In his Prolégomènes to the first volume (dated December 1944) he translated ʿālam al-mithāl as “le monde de l’Imaginable” (Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, p. li). 28. Most notable scholarly examples are T. Izutsu, The Concept and Reality of Existence. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1971; S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1976; M. Aminrazavi, “The Significance of Suhrawardī’s Persian Sufi Writings in the Philosophy of Illumination,” in L. Lewisohn (ed.), Classical Persian Sufism: From its Origins to Rumi. London: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1993, pp. 259–283; Ch. Jambet, “Sohrawardī ou Suhrawardī Shihāboddīn Yahyā – (1155–1191),” Encyclopædia Universalis, available online at: http://www.universalis.fr/ encyclopedie/sohrawardi-suhrawardi; Gh. Ḥ. I. Dinani, Shuʿāʿ-i andīshah wa-shuhūd dar falsafah-yi suhrawardī, 8th edn. Tehran: Ḥikmat, 1388. 29. H. Landolt, “Suhrawardī between Philosophy, Sufism and Ismailism: A Reappraisal,” in Recherches en Spiritualite Iranienne. Tehran: Presses Universitaires d’Iran, 2005, pp. 107–118; H. Landolt, “Les idées platoniciennes et le monde de l’image dans la pensée du Šayh al-Išrāq Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī (ca. 1155–1191),” in D. De Smet, M. Sebti, and G. De Callatay (eds.), Miroir et Savoir: La transmission d’un thème platonicien,

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des Alexandrins à la philosophie arabo-musulmane. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008, pp. 233–250. 30. R. Marcotte, “Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and his Interpretation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Philosophical Anthropology,” unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2000. 31. L. Muehlethaler, “Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) on the Argument of the Flying Man in Avicenna’s Ishārāt and al-Suhrawardī’s al-Talwīḥāt,” in Y.  T. Langermann (ed.), Avicenna and his Legacy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 179–203; H. Eichner, “‘Knowledge by Presence,’ Apperception and the Mind–Body Relationship: Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī and al-Suhrawardī as Representatives and Precursors of a Thirteenth-Century Discussion,” in P. Adamson (ed.), In the Age of Averroes. London: Warburg Institute, 2011, pp. 117–140; J. Kaukua, Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 32. For example, R. Pourjavady and S. Schmidtke, “Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311) as a Teacher: An Analysis of his Ijāzāt,” Journal Asiatique 297(1) (2009): 15–55; R. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran. Leiden: Brill, 2011; M. Privot, “Some Notes on the Typology of the Works of al-Shahrazūrī al-Ishrāqī,” Journal of Islamic Studies 12(3) (2001): 312–321. 33. N. Sinai, “al-Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision and Suspended Images (Muthul Muʿallaqa),” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 25 (2015): 279–297. 34. R. Arnzen, Platonische Ideen in der arabischen Philosophie, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. 35. A. Q. Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses: Innovation in the Margins,” Oriens 41 (2013): 317–348, at p. 318. 36. F. Moretti, Distant Reading. London: Verso, 2013, p. 180. 37. The definitions given here are taken in summary form from my article “Commentary and Commentary Tradition: The Basic Terms for Understanding Islamic Intellectual History,” Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire 32 (2017): 1–24. 38. D. Gutas, “Aspects of Literary Form and Genre in Arabic Logical Works,” in Ch. Burnett (ed.), Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Latin Medieval Tradition. London: Warburg Institute, 1993, pp. 29–76. 39. A classic discussion is in his al-Shifāʾ, Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing. For Fārābī see, e.g., Fārābī, Kitāb al-milla wa-nuṣūṣ ukhrā, ed. M. Mahdi. Beirut: Dār al-mashriq, 1991, p. 89.

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40. J. Jihami, Mawsūʿat muṣṭalaḥāt al-falsafa ʿinda l-ʿarab. Beirut: Maktabat lubnān nāshirūn, 1998, pp. 964–965. 41. My double use of commentary, in the general sense and in the more specific, true sense of the word, is mirrored in the historical actors’ categories. As Gutas proposes, when historical sources speak of tafsīr, they mean a commentary in the general sense of the word, which could be a commentary, but also a translation, summary, and so forth. Sharḥ, on the other hand, is the word used for a commentary in the true sense of the word. Cf. Gutas, “Aspects of Literary Form.” 42. Cf. A. Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers. Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 78–80. 43. Cf. R. Pourjavady and S. Schmidtke, “Some Notes on a New Edition of a Medieval Philosophical Text in Turkey: Shams al-Dīn al-Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil al-Shajara al-Ilāhiyya,” Die Welt des Islams 46(1) (2006): 76–85; J.  Lameer, “Ibn Kammūna’s Commentary on Suhrawardī’s Talwīḥāt. Three Editions,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 3 (2012): 154–184. 44. Cf. Suhrawardī, The Book of Radiance [= Partaw-nāmah], trans. H. Ziai. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998, p. xi.

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Chapter 2 1. To contextualize philosophical eschatology within Islamic thinking, see C. R. Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 2. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola sulla Vita Futura [= al-Risāla al-Aḍḥawiyya], ed. F. Lucchetta. Padua: Editrice Antenore Padova, 1969, p. 191. 3. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 197. 4. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing [= al-Shifāʾ], trans. M. E. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005, p. 349. 5. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 354. 6. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 205. 7. A view Ibn Sīnā ascribes to Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 213. 8. Plotinus, Plotini Opera. Enneades IV–V [Plotiniana arabica ad codicum fidem anglice vertit], ed. P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer, trans. G. Lewis. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer et Cie, 1959, p. 221. 9. Fārābī, Ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, ed. A. N. Nadir. Beirut: Dār almashriq, 1968, pp. 138–144.

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10. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, pp. 137 and 207. 11. Corbin mistakenly reads Ibn Sīnā’s text as such, cf. H. Corbin, “Le thème de la résurrection chez Molla Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (1050/1640) commentateur du Sohrawardī (587/1191),” in Studies in Mysticism and Religion presented to Gershon Sholem. Jerusalem, 1967, p. 85. 12. The idea can be found in, among others, al-Shifāʾ, al-Najāt, al-Ishārāt, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, al-Risāla al-Aḍḥāwiyya, Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā, al-Mubāḥathāt, Risālat aḥwāl al-nafs, al-Taʿlīqāt, and Risāla fī maʿrifat al-nafs al-nāṭiqa wa-aḥwālihā. References to editions can be found in the Bibliography. For specific passages see the following footnotes. 13. Taken from the translation, Kindī, The Philosophical Works of Al-Kindī, trans. P. Adamson and P. E. Pormann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 116; original in Kindī, Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, ed. M. Abū Rīda. Cairo: Dār al-fikr al-ʿarabī, 1950–1953, p. 278. 14. Fārābī, Ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, p. 147. 15. Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, ed. M. al-Zare’i. Qom: Bustan-e ketab-e Qom, 1381, pp. 349–350; Ibn Sīnā, “al-Mubāḥathāt,” in Arisṭū ʿinda l-ʿarab, ed. A. Badawi. Kuwait: Wikālat al-maṭbūʿāt, 1978, p. 198; Ibn Sīnā, “Risāla fī maʿrifat al-nafs al-nāṭiqa wa-aḥwālihā,” in Aḥwāl al-nafs: risāla fī al-nafs wa-baqāʾihā wa-maʿādihā, ed. A. F. Ahwani. Cairo: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyyah, 1952, p. 187. 16. Jean (Yahya) Michot’s PhD dissertation focuses specifically on this idea and tries to show how well it fits with Ibn Sīnā’s system of thought, cf. J. Michot, La destinée de l’homme selon Avicenne. Le retour à Dieu (ma’ād et l’imagination). Louvain: Peeters, 1986. 17. In Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356; Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād. Tehran: Muʾassasah-i muṭālaʿāt al-islāmī, 1363, baʿḍ ahl al-ʿilm p. 114; Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 124; Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyā,” in Arisṭū ʿinda l-ʿarab, ed. A. Badawi. Kuwait: Wikālat al-maṭbūʿāt, 1978, p. 72; Ibn Sīnā, “Risālat aḥwāl al-nafs,” in Aḥwāl al-nafs: risāla fī l-nafs wa-baqāʾihā wa-maʿādihā, ed. A. F. Ahwani. Cairo: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1952, p. 138. 18. Thus reads Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ al-Ishārāt,” in al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, ed. S. Dunya. Cairo: Dār al-maʿārif, 1957, vol. 4, p. 36. He suggests Ibn Sīnā is referring to Fārābī. This did not go unnoticed, for example, Sabziwārī mentions Ṭūsī’s opinion in Sabziwārī, Sharḥ al-manẓūma, ed. M. Talibi, 5 vols. Tehran: Nashr-i nāb, 1384, vol. 5,

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p. 315; Michot, La destinée de l’homme selon Avicenne, p. 25, fn. 10; F. Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” Islamic Studies (1964): 168. Davidson says that “since he deemed himself an independent philosophic authority and did not ordinarily cite in the name of others positions that he espoused himself, his attribution of a theory to others suggests nonacceptance,” H. A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 114; Inati, on the other hand, notices that Ibn Sīnā does not criticize the view and infers that he accepted it, Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Sina and Mysticism: Remarks and Admonitions Part Four, trans. Sh. Inati. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996, p. 22. 19. al-Shifāʾ’s section on maʿād is textually identical to the section on maʿād in Ibn Sīnā’s al-Najāt. This bears mentioning as some scholars seem to have missed this point, for example, Michot shows no awareness of this in his La destinée de l’homme selon Avicenne, nor does Inati in her Ibn Sina and Mysticism (e.g., on p. 17). 20. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356 (my own translation). 21. This is the idea Ibn Sīnā supports in his early work, ʿUyūn al-ḥikma, cf. Ibn Sīnā, ʿUyūn al-ḥikma, ed. M. al-Jabr. Damascus: Dār al-yanābīʿ, 1996, pp. 94–95. 22. For example, Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 97; “The world [consists of] on the one hand an intelligible world, and on the other hand a sensory world.” 23. For some philosophers, this means that those souls perish, as Ibn Sīnā relates about Alexander of Aphrodisias, cf. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, pp. ­221–223. Inati also mentions Fārābī as being of this opinion, but her reference in Ibn Sina and Mysticism, p. 20, fn. 51 does not confirm this. 24. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 113. A translation is available, see Ibn Sīnā, “Livre de la genèse et du retour,” unpublished translation by Y. Michot, Oxford, 2002, p. 76. 25. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 223. 26. He outlines a sevenfold division, but he had already reduced all souls to three categories which he believes actually comes down to the twofold division of felicitous and miserable (Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 111). 27. This is all the more important for Ibn Sīnā since an important part of this epistle is dedicated to promoting a hermeneutics of sacred texts that

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refutes a literal interpretation. According to Ibn Sīnā, revelation, like the Koran, only speaks in sensory terms because this is what people can relate to and hence what will “scare them straight.” The truth, however, is far beyond this and so people who want to know the truth should pursue this with their reason, not by following revelation. Cf. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, pp. 40–97. This particular passage received a fiercely critical commentary by Ibn Taymiyya, included in his Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, ed. M. R. Salim, 11 vols. Riyad: Dār al-kunūz al-adabiyya, 1979, vol. 3, pp. 10–87. It has been subject of a translation and analysis by Y. Michot, “A Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary on Avicenna’s Risāla Aḍḥawiyya: Part I,” Journal of Islamic Studies 14(2) (2003): 149–203; Y. Michot, “A Mamlūk Theologian’s Commentary on Avicenna’s Risāla Aḍḥawiyya: Part II,” Journal of Islamic Studies 14(3) (2003): 309–363. 28. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356 (my own translation). 29. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356. 30. Ibn Sīnā, Avicenna’s Psychology, trans. F. Rahman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952, p. 31. 31. Ibn Sīnā, Avicenna’s Psychology, p. 41; Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 114–115. 32. For a brief discussion, see Marcotte, “Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and his Interpretation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Philosophical Anthropology,” pp. 286 ff; Michot, La destinée de l’homme selon Avicenne, pp. 170 ff. 33. Ibn Sīnā, Avicenna’s Psychology, pp. 63–64. 34. Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyā,” p. 72, on Enn IV, 4, 5–8. Cf. translation in G. Vajda, “Les notes d’Avicenne sur la ‘Théologie d’Aristote,’” Revue Thomiste 51(II) (1951): 403–404. 35. Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt, pp. 349–350. 36. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 115. 37. Ibn Sīnā, Epistola, p. 225. 38. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mubāḥathāt, p. 198. 39. Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā,” p. 72. There is an echo of this in al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, where he says that a soul “may acquire some sort of desire for a body for which it is appropriate for it to connect that souls connect to it,” cf. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 114. 40. Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā,” p. 72. 41. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 114–115.

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42. Ibn Sīnā, “Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā,” p. 72. Inati seems not to have been aware of this answer and argues that “a soul can attach itself to a celestial body or the like . . . through attaching itself to the soul of that body” (Inati, Ibn Sina and Mysticism, p. 24), but can rely only on an opaque passage. Davidson, dissatisfied with what al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād offers and apparently not aware of Sharḥ Uthūlūjiyyā, evaluates Ibn Sīnā’s reasoning as nonsense. He concludes that “disembodied human souls should not, in his system, be able to experience the hereafter through their imaginative faculties” (Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect, p. 114). 43. In fact, from Ibn Sīnā’s notion of the eternity of the world it follows that there are already an infinite number of souls that have separated from their bodies. This would imply an actual infinite, which is impossible according to Ancient thought (cf. H. A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 407–409, for an excellent treatment of this principle that he relates back to as far as Aristotle). Marmura has shown that Ibn Sīnā was aware of this problem and discusses the solution Ibn Sīnā offers, which consists in the assertion that only an ordered actual infinite is impossible. Cf. M. E. Marmura, “Avicenna and the Problem of the Infinite Number of Souls,” Mediaeval Studies 22 (1960): 232–239; H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 452 ff. 44. Marcotte has to turn to the small epistle Ithbāt al-nubbuwa to dig up one sentence in Ibn Sīnā’s immense corpus where he says: “thus the worlds are three [in number]; a sensory world, an imaginable world, and an intelligible world.” However, he says this in answer to the question what heaven and hell are, which becomes more clear in the sentence afterwards. He says: “The intelligible world is the place of dwelling, that is, heaven. The world of imagination and estimation is, as was shown, where there is suffering. The sensory world is the world of the graves.” “Suffering,” al-ʿaṭab, is euphemistically translated by Marcotte as “corruption,” perhaps in an attempt to make this sentence fit our discussion better. But the evidence seems to me to point to an interpretation of this little sentence as referring to heaven, hell, and the grave (where people are said to wait before the Last Judgment), thus bearing little semblance to our discussion here, as

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Ibn Sīnā says in our discussion that people may imagine the delights of paradise, which they surely would not be able were they to be in hell. Cf. Marcotte, “Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and his Interpretation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Philosophical Anthropology,” p. 291; Ibn Sīnā, Risāla fī ithbāt al-nubūwāt wa-taʾwīl rumūzihim wa-amthālihim. Cairo, 1908, p. 131. 45. Bahmanyār, al-Taḥṣīl, ed. M. Mutahhari. Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1349, p. 837. 46. Abū l-Barakāt Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī l-ḥikma, 3 vols. Haiderabad: Jamʿīyat dāʾirat al-maʿārif al-ʿuthmāniyya, 1939, vol. 2, p. 439. 47. Baghdādī, al-Muʿtabar, vol. 2, pp. 442–443. 48. As  al-Shifāʾ’s section on maʿād is textually identical to the section on maʿād in al-Najāt, Lawkarī could have gotten it from either one. Cf. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 432; Faḍl ibn Muḥammad Lawkarī, Bayān al-ḥaqq bi-ḍimān al-ṣidq, ed. I. Dibaji. Tehran: al-Maʿhad al-ʿālī al-ʿālamī li-l-fikr wa-l-ḥaḍāra al-islāmiyya, 1995, p. 387. 49. Ghazālī, Maqāṣid al-falāsifa, ed. M. Bijuw. Damascus: Maṭbaʿat al-ḍibāḥ, 2000, p. 213. 50. Ghazālī, Kitāb al-maḍnūn bihi ʿalā ghayr ahlihi, in M. A. Al-Akiti, “The Maḍnūn of al-Ghazālī: A Critical Edition of the Unpublished Major Maḍnūn with Discussion of His Restricted, Philosophical Corpus,” unpublished PhD thesis, Oxford University, 2007, pp. 156–157. 51. M. A. Al-Akiti, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Falsafa: al-Ghazali’s Madnun, Tahafut and Maqasid with Particular Attention to their Falsafi Treatments of God’s Knowledge of Temporal Events,” in Y. T. Langermann (ed.), Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 51–100. 52. Ghazālī, “al-Masāʾil al-maḍnūn bihā ʿalā ghayr ahlihā [= Hebrew Ajwiba],” in Majmūʿah-i falsafī marāgha, ed. N. Pourjavady. Tehran: Markaz-i nashr-i dānishġāhī, 1380, p. 87. Cf. Y. T. Langermann, “The ‘Hebrew Ajwiba’ Ascribed to al-Ghazālī: Corpus, Conspectus, and Context,” Muslim World 101 (2011): 680–697. 53. Ghazālī, Kitāb al-maḍnūn bihi ālā ghayr ahlihi [= ʿIlq al-maḍnūn]. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-iʿlāmiyya, 1303, pp. 30, 39. 54. Ghazālī, Nafkh al-rūḥ wa-l-taswiya [= al-Maḍnūn al-ṣaghīr], ed. A. H. al-Saqā. Cairo: Maktabat al-madīna al-munawwara, 1399, pp. 48–52. 55. Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers [= Tahāfut al-falāsifa],

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trans M. E. Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2000, pp. 208–225. Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār also does not make mention of the idea, Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights [= Mishkāt al-anwār], trans. D. Buchman. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998. 56. A similar attitude on causality is argued for in F. Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 57. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, pp. 356–357; Shahrastānī, alMilal wa-l-niḥal, ed. ʿA. Ḥ. Fa’ur. Beirut: Dār al-maʿrifa, 1993, pp. 541–542. 58. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 357 (translation adapted). 59. At least three other major writings, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya, al-Muḥaṣṣal, and al-Mulakhkhaṣ do not mention it. The first does not have a chapter properly discussing eschatology. The later two emphasize discussions that are typically mostly present in theological works, not in philosophical works. The picture that emerges from the latter two works is that Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī is in favor of the theological position that proposes that at death we perish and are annihilated. Then, when God wants to, he will bring us back from non-existence (iʿādat al-maʿdūm). It is mostly his fierce criticism of those who argue that bringing back the non-existent is impossible that makes it look like this is his personal opinion. Cf. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī and Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾakhkhirīn [includes Talkhīṣ al-Muḥaṣṣal], ed. Ṭaha Saʿd. Beirut: Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 1984, pp. 327–346; Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, “al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-ḥikma wa-al-manṭiq,” MS Or. Oct. 623 (Berlin, 933), ff. 236a–239a; Y. Ceylan, Theology and Tafsīr in the Major Works of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 1996, pp. 184 ff. Also his commentary on Ibn Sīnā’s al-Najāt is “completely silent” about it, cf. J. Michot, “L’eschatologie d’Avicenne selon F.D. al-Rāzī,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 87 (1989): 239. On the other hand, he does mention it in his summary of al-Ishārāt, cf. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, Lubāb al-Ishārāt wa-ltanbīhāt, ed. A. H. al-Saqā. Cairo: Maktabat al-kulliyyāt al-azhariyya, 1986, p. 185. 60. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, Sharḥ al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt, 2 vols. Tehran: Anjuman Athar va Mafakhir Farhangi, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 583–584. 61. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, Kitāb al-arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-dīn, ed. A. H. al-Saqā. Cairo: Maktabat al-kulliyyāt al-azhariyyah, 1986, vol. 2, p. 70. 62. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356; 1. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī,

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Kitāb al-mabāḥith al-mashriqīya fī ʿilm al-ilāhiyāt wa-l-ṭabīʻīyāt, 2 vols. Haiderabad: Dāʾirat al-maʿārif, 1925, vol. 2, pp. 430–431. 63. Because the actual infinite is impossible, see above fn. 39. 64. Ghazālī does not show awareness of the view that the imagination is immaterial in his Maqāṣid al-falāsifa and his Tahāfut al-falāsifa, which makes it likely that the view was developed either by Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī himself or by someone only slightly earlier than him. Similarly, Rāzī argues for the idea that the soul can apprehend particulars, not just universals. He explicitly states that “this noble principle has its use in the science of eschatology,” and later adds “though this chapter may be small in size, it is big in significance.” Cf. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliyya min al-ʿilm al-ilāhī, ed. A. M. al-Saqā, 9 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987, vol. 7, p. 262; Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, p. 201. 65. In his Sharḥ al-Ishārāt he also explains the idea in this way. 66. Sayf al-Dīn Āmidī, Abkār al-afkār fī uṣūl al-dīn, ed. A. M. al-Mahdī, 5 vols., 2nd edn. Cairo: Maṭbaʿah dar al-kutub wa-l-wathāʾiq al-qawmīya, 2004, vol. 4, pp. 292–293, 310; Sayf al-Dīn Āmidī, Ghāyat al-marām fī ʿilm al-kalām, ed A. F. Mazīdī. Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, 2004, pp. ­290–291; Sayf al-Dīn Āmidī, al-Nūr al-bāhir fī al-ḥikam al-zawāhir, ed. F. Sezgin, 5 vols., facsimile. Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 2001, vol. 4, pp. 259–261. 67. Ṭūsī, Sharḥ al-Ishārāt, vol. 4, pp. 35–37. 68. Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad Rīzī, Falsafah-i ishrāq [= Ḥayāt al-nufūs], ed. M.  T. Danishpazuh. Tehran: Bunyād-i Mawqūfāt-i Duktur Maḥmūd Afshār, 1377, p. 498. 69. Ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī, Qawāʿid al-marām fī ʿilm al-kalām, ed. A. alHusayni. Qom: Maktabah āyat allāh al-ʿuẓmā al-Marʿashī al-najafī, 1985, p. 156. 70. al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, Manāhij al-yaqīn fī uṣūl al-dīn, ed. Y. J. al-Maghārī. Qom: Dār al-uswah li-l-ṭibāʿa wa-l-nashr, 1994, p. 498. 71. If this author is to be identified as Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Nīsābūrī, then Ḥājjī Khalīfa gives 750 as his death date: Hājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, 2 vols. Istanbul: Wikālat al-maʿārif, 1943, vol. 2, p. 1267; while Ismāʿīl Pāshā gives 760: Ismāʿīl Pāshā, Hadiyyat al-ʿārifīn, 2 vols. Istanbul: Wakālat al-maʻārif, 1951, vol. 2, p. 161. 72. Fakhr al-Dīn Isfarāʾinī, Sharḥ Kitāb al-najāt li-Ibn Sīnā, ed. H. N. Isfahani. Tehran: Anjuman Athar va Mafakhir Farhangi, 1383, pp. 497–498.

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73. Isfarāʾinī, Sharḥ Kitāb, p. 510, cf. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 355. 74. ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī and al-Sayyid al-Sharīf Jurjānī, Kitāb al-mawāqif [= Sharḥ al-Mawāqif], 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-jīl, 1997, vol. 3, p. 481. 75. In the next century I have only seen it referenced in Khojazāda’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa, Istanbul: Bayazid Library, MS 1990, f. 125b. 76. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237; Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, p. 76. 77. Cf. Q 37:8, 38:69, 95:5. 78. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237. 79. Suhrawardī, The Book of Radiance [= Partaw-nāmah], trans. H. Ziai. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998, p. 76 (adapted). 80. It is, however, unclear whether he also wrote these texts in this order. For example, in this particular passage Suhrawardī refers in his al-Lamaḥāt to his al-Talwīḥāt, thus implying that al-Lamaḥāt was written after al-Talwīḥāt. It could, of course, be the case that he added the reference only at a later point. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237. 81. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237. 82. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 82. 83. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 84. 84. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 91. 85. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 2, p. 186. 86. As such explicitly defined by Suhrawardī in his Risāla fī iʿtiqād al-ḥukamāʾ, vol. 2, pp. 267–268, following earlier philosophers, for example, Sayf al-Dīn Āmidī, in A. Al-Aʿsam, al-Muṣṭalaḥ al-falsafī ʿind al-ʿArab, 2nd edn. Cairo: Al-hayʾat al-miṣriyyat al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1989, p. 369. Tahānawī attributes the definition of spirit as a subtle, vaporous body to “the doctors” (al-aṭibbāʾ), Tahānawī, Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn, 2 vols. Beirut: Maktabat lubnān nāshirūn, 1996, vol. 1, p. 877. 87. Ibn Sīnā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 115. The spirit as an intermediator between the immaterial soul and material body is well attested in Islamic philosophy (as it was in Greek philosophy), and also Suhrawardī accepts this view, even in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, cf. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 207/Philosophy, p. 135. 88. Suhrawardī had said this earlier in al-Talwīḥāt; Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 77. 89. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 460. 90. Cf. H. Eisenstein, “Samandal,” EI2, vol. 8, pp. 1023b–1024a.

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91. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 460. 92. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 90. 93. This distinction is present throughout his writings. In al-Alwāḥ he says: “So bodies may be divided into ethereal, with a fixed form, and elemental, generated and corruptible, with a changing form. The elemental things are subservient (munfaʿila) to the ethereal things.” al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 43. A same distinction is implied in al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 433; Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, p. 19; Bustān al-qulūb, vol. 3, p. 346; Hayākil al-nūr, vol. 3, p. 96. It is also explained similarly by Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī when he says “the ethereal things, that is, the celestial bodies” (al-athīriyyāt ayy al-falakiyyāt), Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 343 (inspired by Shahrazūrī’s commentary, cf. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 373). 94. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 90. 95. He also mentions a part of Q 57:21, “the Garden’s width is like the width of the heaven and the Earth.” Its relation to this context is not clear to me. 96. Marcotte reads barzakh as meaning “body,” which is how Suhrawardī uses the word in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. However, since al-Talwīḥāt in general lacks the vocabulary of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, and since the context is fitting to translate it as “isthmus” rather than “body,” I have not followed her on this. Cf. R. Marcotte, “Suhrawardī’s Realm of the Imaginal,” in Ishraq, Islamic Philosophy Yearbook 2. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers, 2011, p. 76. 97. Marcotte, “Suhrawardī’s Realm of the Imaginal,” p. 77; Rūzī bā jamāʿat-i ṣūfiyān, vol. 3, pp. 245, 247; translation in Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī, The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises, trans. W. Thackston. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999, pp. 36, 37; Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī, L’archange empourpré: Quinze traités et récits mystiques, trans. H. Corbin. Paris: Fayard, 1976, pp. 371, 373. 98. Marcotte, “Suhrawardī’s Realm of the Imaginal,” p. 78. 99. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 496. 100. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt: jirm falakī, vol. 4, p. 237; Partaw-nāmah: jismī samāwī, vol. 3, p. 76; al-Talwīḥāt: jirm samāwī, vol. 1, p. 89; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq: baʿḍ al-barāzikh al-ʿulwiyya, vol. 2, p. 230.

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Chapter 3 1. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 229–230/Philosophy, pp. 148–149; Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, pp. 89–90. 2. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155. 3. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 230/Philosophy, p. 149. 4. I therefore find it strange that Rüdiger Arnzen states that “Insgesamt fällt auf, dass al-Suhrawardī Formulierungen vermeidet, die auf eine Dinglichkeit der ‘herabhängenden Abbilder’ schließen lassen.” Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 149. The “ontologization” of Ibn Sīnā’s idea of post mortem imagination was already noted by Fazlur Rahman, cf. Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” p. 170. 5. With varying clarity, previous scholars have already noticed this correspondence. For example, Carra de Vaux, “La philosophie illuminative,” p. 75, fn. 1; p. 76, fn. 1; p. 76, fn. 4. J. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 194–195. Corbin also acknowledges this congruity, but does not use it much, instead emphasizing the perceived relationship between Suhrawardī’s division of lights and angelology, where dominating lights are “archangels” and managing lights are “angel-souls,” cf. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, pp. 114, 123. A similar relationship may already be observed in Ibn Sīnā, when he calls intellects spiritual angels (al-malāʾika al-rūḥāniyya) and souls active angels (al-malāʾika al-ʿamaliyya), cf. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 358. Similarly, Ghazālī notes in his Tahāfut that heavenly angels are called “celestial souls” and the cherubim are called “pure intelligences,” cf. Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, p. 153. 6. See, e.g., Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 48; al-Sayyid al-Sharīf Jurjānī, al-Taʿrīfāt. Beirut: Dār al-nafāʾis, 2007, pp. 141–142 (entry jawhar). 7. Suhrawardī, Risālah fī iʿtiqād al-ḥukamāʾ, vol. 2, p. 270. ʿĀlam al-mulk and al-malakūt are of Koranic origin (e.g., Q 6:75, 7:185, 23:88, 36:83), al-jabarūt appears only in the Hadith literature. 8. Suhrawardī, Hayākil al-nūr, vol. 3, p. 96; Suhrawardī, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, pp. 117–118; Suhrawardī, Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, p. 65; Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 234. 9. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 65; al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 86. 10. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 11/Philosophy, p. 2.

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11. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 212/Philosophy, p. 138. 12. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 101/Philosophy, p. 72. 13. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 102/Philosophy, p. 73. 14. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 101/Philosophy, p. 72. 15. Ibn Sīnā, Avicenna’s Psychology, p. 29. 16. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 100/Philosophy, p. 71. Cf. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 486. 17. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 101/Philosophy, p. 71. Cf. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 486. 18. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 101/Philosophy, p. 71. 19. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 101/Philosophy, p. 72. 20. D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976, pp. 3–6, 18–32. 21. Sinai, “Al-Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision and Suspended Images (Muthul Muʿallaqa),” pp. 283–287. 22. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 211–212/ Philosophy, p. 138. Suhrawardī only once says explicitly “self-subsistent,” elsewhere being content with just “subsistent” (qāʾim), see pp. 240, 242. 23. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 211–212/Philosophy, p. 138. 24. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 230/Philosophy, p. 148. 25. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 102/Philosophy, p. 73. 26. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 241/Philosophy, p. 154. 27. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 211, 232/Philosophy, pp. 138, 149. 28. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 212, 234/Philosophy, pp. 138, 150. 29. D. Gutas, “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29(1) (2002), p. 17; O. Leaman, “Islamic Philosophy and the Attack on Logic,” Topoi 19 (2000), p. 18; M.  Aminrazavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997, p. 87. On the latter, cf. Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 147, fn. 508. 30. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 230–231/Philosophy, p. 148. Ziai and Walbridge’s edition does not have the word “fixed,” thābita, in the body of the text. 31. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, p. 150.

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32. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 230/Philosophy, p. 149. 33. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 240/Philosophy, p. 154. 34. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 243/Philosophy, p. 155. 35. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 253/Philosophy, p. 160. 36. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 253/Philosophy, p. 159. 37. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 240/Philosophy, p. 154. 38. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 240, 242/Philosophy, pp. 153, 154. But nowhere does Suhrawardī speak of these entities as giving shape to “symbols of love, hate, hope and fear” such that this world is an “unconscious of the Universe,” as Rahman would have it. Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination and ʿĀlam al-mithāl,” p. 171. Nor is the experience of suspended images to “be communicated only through non-ordinary language, such as poetic language or symbolic modes of metalanguage,” as Ziai would have it. H. Ziai, “Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī: Founder of the Illuminationist School,” in History of Islamic Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1996, vol. 1, p. 452. 39. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 234/Philosophy, p. 150. 40. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 241/Philosophy, p. 154. 41. For example, H. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis ou l’imaginaire et l’imaginal,” in Face de Dieu, Face de l’Homme. Paris: Flammarion, 1983, pp. 7–40; Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 150; Jambet, The Act of Being, pp. 315, 318, 320, 322. 42. Compare Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 138–139/Philosophy, p. 99; Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, pp. 326 ff. 43. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 91. Compare Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 501; Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 238; Suhrawardī, Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, p. 74. 44. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 179/Philosophy, p. 119. 45. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 254/Philosophy, p. 160. The first two are city names and actually know a long history in the Muslim imagination, going back as far as Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s Tafsir (Q 73:9), of the second century of the Ḥijra, meaning a city in the far east and a city in the far west. From Muqātil onwards, a great variety of Islamic texts mention these cities. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 150/767) relates it on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687). Muqātil bin Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil Bin Sulaymān, ed. A. Farid, 3 vols. Beirut: Dar al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2003, pp. 409–410. Cf. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-buldān,

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5 vols. Beirut: Dār al-ṣādir, 1955, vol. 2, pp. 90–91. Also to be found under alternative spellings: Jābalqā or Jābalq, and Jābarsā, Jābars, Jābarṣā, Jābarṣ, Jābalṣ, or Jābals. 46. Cf. Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, in his celebrated work on astronomy al-Tadhkira, defines the climes as such: “the practitioners of the science have divided it into seven climes [stretching] lengthwise so that each clime is beneath a day-circle, the conditions of the places in it then being similar.” Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s Memoir on Astronomy [al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa], ed. F. J. Ragep, 2 vols. New York: Springer, 1993, p. 250. The standard work on the climes, or climata, remains E. Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata und die poleis episēmoi. Heidelberg: Winter, 1929, but compare with D. Shcheglov, “Ptolemy’s System of Seven Climata and Eratosthenes’ Geography,” Geographia Antiqua 13 (2004): 21–37. Note that a division of seven climes is also present in Ancient Persian thought, cf. A. Christensen, Le premier homme et le premier roi dans l’histoire légendaire des iraniens. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt, 1917. 47. Suhrawardī, Āwāz-i parr-i jibraʾīl, vol. 3, p. 211; Suhrawardī, Fī ḥaqīqat al-ʿishq, vol. 3, p. 273. This is how Corbin understands the term, e.g., Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, p. 188. 48. Suhrawardī, Āwāz-i parr-i jibraʾīl, vol. 3, p. 211. English translation: Suhrawardī, The Philosophical Allegories and Mystical Treatises, p. 10. French translation: Suhrawardī, L’archange empourpré, p. 229. 49. Corbin and Kraus, “Le bruissement de l’Aile de Gabriel,” p. 41. 50. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155. I mean expansion in the literal sense; the wording is so close that I would not find it far-fetched that Suhrawardī first took this sentence from Ḥikmat al-ishrāq while he was writing al-Mashāriʿ, and then expanded on it. 51. P. Duhem, Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, trans. R. Ariew. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985 (abridged English translation of Le Système du monde, 1913), pp. 387–392, 431–510; G. Galle, “Peter of Auvergne on the Unicity of the World,” Recherches de théologie et de philosophie médiévales 68(1) (2001): 111–141. 52. Suhrawardī, “al-Mashāriʿ wa-al-Muṭāraḥāt,” MS Or. 365, Leiden, 707, f. 155a.

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53. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, Appendix A, Text 7. Corbin offers a translation in Terre céleste. It is so free that it makes one wonder what the manuscript evidence was that he was using. Cf. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, p. 118. He refers to his own edition (Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, p. 109), which reveals he knew of this passage through Ibn Kammūna. I discuss the role of Ibn Kammūna in the promotion of this passage later. 54. Rāzī and Ṭūsī, Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾakhkhirīn, p. 233. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, “al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī l-ḥikma wa-al-manṭiq,” MS Or. Oct. 623, Berlin, 933h, f. 238a. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī himself holds that it is possible to have another world, cf. Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, Nihāyat Al-ʿuqūl Fī Dirāyat Al-Uṣūl, ed. S. Fouda. 4 vols. Beirut: Dār al-dhakhāʾir, 2015, vol. 4, pp. 80 ff. Other theologians would maintain the argument and allow Heaven and Hell to be located in the material world, cf. Ibn ʿArafa (d. 1400), Al-Mukhtaṣar al-Shāmil fī ʿilm al-kalām, ed. M. A. Abd al-Khaliq, 2 vols. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-azhariyya li-l-turāth, 2014, vol. 2, pp. 995–997. 55. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 241/Philosophy, p. 154 (my own translation). 56. Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt: jirm falakī, vol. 4, p. 237; Partaw-nāmah: jismī samāwī, vol. 3, p. 76; al-Talwīḥāt: jirm samāwī, vol. 1, p. 89; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq: baʿḍ al-barāzikh al-ʿulwiyya, vol. 2, p. 230. 57. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 230/Philosophy, p. 149. 58. Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356 (my own translation). 59. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 235, 243, 255/Philosophy, pp. 150, 155, 160. 60. See R. Freitag, Seelenwanderung in der islamischen Häresie. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1985; D. Gimaret, “Tanāsukh,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 181b–183a. 61. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 91. 62. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 230/Philosophy, p. 149 (adapted). 63. Suhrawardī, al-Muqāwamāt, vol. 1, p. 128; al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 493; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 238/Philosophy, p. 153. 64. These two interpretations were well established by the time of Suhrawardī, see, e.g., the use of them by three representative contemporaries of him: Ibn Malāḥimī, Tuḥfat al-mutakallimīn fī l-radd ʿalá l-falāsifa, ed. H. Ansari and W. Madelung. Tehran: Muʾassasah-i

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pizhūhishī-i ḥikmat va falsafah-i Īrān, 2008, p. 175; Āmidī, Abkār al-afkār fī uṣūl al-dīn, vol. 4, p. 267; Rāzī, and Ṭūsī, Muḥaṣṣal afkār al-mutaqaddimīn wa-l-mutaʾakhkhirīn, p. 327. See also L. Gardet, Dieu et la destinée de l’homme. Paris: J. Vrin, 1967, pp. 268 ff. 65. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 493. 66. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 491; Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 100; Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 237/Philosophy, p. 152. 67. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 248/Philosophy, p. 157. Literally, Suhrawardī says: “before the veil of the moment of resurrection weighs down on them.” 68. Suhrawardī, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 123. 69. This Hadith is reminiscent of another Hadith that states that “people are asleep and when they die they awake.” This is mentioned by Suhrawardī in Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 120. Nayrīzī notes on this passage in al-Alwāḥ that Suhrawardī wants to interpret bodily resurrection as spiritual resurrection, something Nayrīzī does not agree with. Cf. Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd Nayrīzī, “Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ ḥaqāʾiq al-Alwāḥ,” MS Şehid Ali Paşa 1739 (Istanbul, 943), f. 183b. 70. Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 83. 71. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, pp. 149–150. 72. Compare Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 104; Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 495; Suhrawardī, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 123; Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 240; Suhrawardī, Partawnāmah, vol. 3, p. 79; Suhrawardī, Hayākil al-nūr (Arabic), in Dawānī, Thalāth rasāʾil, ed. S. A. Tuysirkānī. Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1991, p. 95. Whereas the Arabic version includes the word “Satan” (Shayṭān) as a name for the imagination, the Persian version does not have this, cf. Suhrawardī, Hayākil al-nūr (Persian), vol. 4, p. 108. 73. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 495. 74. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 231/Philosophy, p. 149. 75. Subāt could also mean sleep. I am nudging the meaning in the direction of a sleep-like state, based on the context and the gloss that Shahrazūrī gives for this term: “It is a term for either the tranquility of the faculties or the state between being asleep and being awake.” Cf. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 575. 76. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 232, 243/Philosophy, pp. 150, 155.

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77. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 240/Philosophy, pp. 153–154. 78. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 102. Compare Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 493; Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 238; Suhrawardī, Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, pp. 86 ff; Suhrawardī, Hayākil al-nūr, vol. 3, pp. 107–108; Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 87; Suhrawardī, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 122; Suhrawardī, al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 239. 79. Suhrawardī, The Book of Radiance, p. 82. 80. Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis,” p. 8. 81. Especially much used in his Terre céleste et corps de résurrection. The term “creative imagination,” used in L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn Arabî seems to work synonymously for him. 82. Cf. Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 148; Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 149; Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” p.  167; Aminrazavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination, p. 88; Ziai, “Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī: Founder of the Illuminationist School,” vol. 1, p. 452; Jambet, The Act of Being, p. 323. The latter is an especially succinct example of this view. Jambet writes: “Divine theurgy and astral theology – these are the foundations of the imaginal world.” 83. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 493; al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 102; Partawnāmah, vol. 3, p. 78; Hayākil al-nūr, vol. 3, p. 107; al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 86; Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 122; al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 239; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 236/Philosophy, p. 151. 84. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 237/Philosophy, p. 151. The other texts have similar statements. 85. Suhrawardī, Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, p. 79. Compare Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 95. 86. Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 86; Suhrawardī, Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 122 87. Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 95. 88. Suhrawardī, al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, pp. 95–96. 89. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 72. 90. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 112/Philosophy, p. 80. 91. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 213/Philosophy, p. 139. 92. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 214/Philosophy, p. 139. 93. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 214/Philosophy, p. 139. 94. For more, see M. H. Yazdi, The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992; H. Ziai, Knowledge and

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Illumination. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990; R. Marcotte, “Irjāʿ ilā nafsi-ka: Suhrawardī’s Perception of the Self in Light of Avicenna,” Transcendent Philosophy 1 (2004): 1–22; Eichner, “‘Knowledge by Presence,’” pp. 117–140. 95. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 376. 96. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 111/Philosophy, p. 80. Note that I have a different understanding of the text than Ziai and Walbridge, although we agree on the underlying argument. 97. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 379. Cf. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, pp. 484–485. 98. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 487. 99. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 72. 100. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, pp. 484, 486; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 134, 215, 241/Philosophy, pp. 96, 139, 154. 101. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 215/ Philosophy, p. 139. 102. Nicolai Sinai writes that suspended images are only introduced to solve “exceptional cases” (“al-Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision,” p. 291), and argues that “what is manifested by the eye are concrete extramental particulars, not quasi-substantial images” (p. 293). Walbridge says something similar: “The World of Image has an attic-like quality, stuffed full of phenomena that do not fit elsewhere” (The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 150). It is perhaps by only considering snippets such as the one cited in the previous footnote that they comes to this, in my view mistaken, conclusion. 103. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155. 104. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, p. 149. 105. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 10–11, 156, 157, 162, 255/ Philosophy, pp. 2, 107, 108, 110, 160–161. 106. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 10–11, 156, 157, 162, 255/ Philosophy, pp. 2, 3, 107, 108, 110, 160. 107. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 74. 108. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 10, 213, 256/Philosophy, pp. 2, 139, 161. 109. Suhrawardī says that “a very great number of the people of Darband and innumerable people of a town called Miyanaj have testified that they have often beheld these forms” (Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 231/Philosophy, p. 149). However, Suhrawardī does not say

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that these people understood what they were seeing. What is here at stake is the realization that a certain experience can be explained only by assuming the existence of suspended images, and these people are therefore witnesses of a different nature. 110. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155. 111. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 156/Philosophy, p. 108. 112. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 156/Philosophy, p. 107. 113. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 10/Philosophy, p. 2. 114. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 156/Philosophy, p. 108. 115. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 9, 156/Philosophy, pp. 1, 108. 116. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, pp. 3–50. 117. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, p. 50. 118. H. Landolt, “Suhrawardi’s ‘Tales of Initiation,’” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107(3) (1987), p. 484. 119. Landolt, “Suhrawardī between Philosophy, Sufism and Ismailism,” p. 108. 120. Landolt, “Les idées platoniciennes et le monde de l’image dans la pensée du Šayh al-Išrāq Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī (ca. 1155–1191),” p. 239. 121. Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” p. 167. 122. Sinai, “al-Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision,” p. 281; Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination and ʿĀlam al-mithāl,” p. 169. 123. Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights, pp. 34–35. 124. Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights, p. 25. 125 . Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 162–164/Philosophy, p. 110; Badawi, Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿarab, p. 22. 126. Badawi, Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿarab, pp. 145.10, 145.17, 146,17, 153.9. 127. Badawi, Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿarab, pp. 90.12, 136.14. 128. Badawi, Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿarab, pp. 22.7, 89.11. 129. Badawi, Aflūṭīn ʿinda l-ʿarab, pp. 152.15. 130. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 212/Philosophy, p. 138. 131. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, pp. 403–404; compare with pp. 322, 336, 337, 400. 132. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, p. 319. 133. Kaukua, Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy. 134. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, pp. 326, 327, 341. 135. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, p. 342. 136. The word used is rawzana, which normally refers to a cone-shaped niche, similar to a mihrab but not extending to the floor and without a

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religious function. In this example, the back of the niche is a window as to allow to look outside. Baghdādī uses it here to emphasize the thickness of the window. 137. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, pp. 325, 401, 414. 138. Baghdādī, Kitāb al-muʿtabar fī al-ḥikma, vol. 2, pp. 331, 332. 139. I agree with Arnzen that Suhrawardī’s account of suspended images remains “unclear and puzzling.” Arnzen’s hesitance is perhaps best expressed when he says “Insgesamt fällt auf, dass al-Suhrawardī Formulierungen vermeidet, die auf eine Dinglichkeit der ‘herabhängenden Abbilder’ schließen lassen,” Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 149. This was also suggested by Rahman, who says that “the whole question of the relationship of the Realm of ‘Pure Figures’ with the purely spiritual world on the one hand and the perceptual world on the other is very obscure.“ cf. Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 147; Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” p. 170; Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 149. Chapter 4 1. D. Mascitelli, “L’identità di Šams al-Dīn Šahrazūrī filosofo išrāqī: un caso aperto,” Rivista degli studi orientali 69 (1995): 219–227. 2. Pourjavady and Schmidtke, “Some Notes on a New Edition of a Medieval Philosophical Text in Turkey,” p. 77. 3. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil al-shajara al-ilāhīya fī ʿulūm al-ḥaqāʾiq al-rabbāniyya, ed. M. N. Kūrkūn, 3 vols. Istanbul: Elif Yayınları, 2004, vol. 3, p. 599. 4. E. Cottrell, “Šams al-Dīn al-Šahrazūrī et les Manuscrits de ‘La Promenade des Âmes et le Jardin des Réjouissances: Histoire des Philosophes,’” Bulletin d’Études Orientales, IFPO Damas, LVI (2004–2005): 225–260. 5. The date when a copyist finished a manuscript in which it is indicated that Shahrazūrī is not alive anymore. Cottrell, “Šams al-Dīn al-Šahrazūrī et les Manuscrits de ‘La Promenade des Âmes et le Jardin des Réjouissances,’” p. 228. 6. V. Minorsky and C. E. Bosworth, “Shahrazūr,” in EI2, vol. 9, pp. 218–219. 7. Corbin, “La Ville de Sohraward,” in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 3, pp. 144–147. 8. For Ibn Kammūna, see Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 161. 9. Shams al-Dīn Shahrazūrī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ [= Nuzhat al-arwāḥ wa-rawḍat al-afrāḥ], ed. A. Shuwayrib. Tripoli: Jamʿiyyat al-daʿwa al-islāmiyya, 1988, p. 398. There exist two recensions of this text, see

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Cottrell, “Šams al-Dīn al-Šahrazūrī et les Manuscrits de ‘La Promenade des Âmes et le Jardin des Réjouissances.’” 10. Shahrazūrī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, pp. 375–392, 470. The entry, without the poetry, is also included, with slight variations, in Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 3, pp. 13–21. 11. Privot, “Some Notes on the Typology of the Works of al-Shahrazūrī al-Ishrāqī,” p. 313. Cf. M. Privot, “Le Kitâb al-rumûz d’al-Shahrazûrî: une oeuvre ishrâqî?,” unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Liège, 2007. 12. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, p. 347. 13. Privot, “Some Notes on the Typology of the Works of al-Shahrazūrī al-Ishrāqī,” pp. 314–318. 14. Privot, “Some Notes on the Typology of the Works of al-Shahrazūrī al-Ishrāqī,” p. 313. 15. H. Ziai (ed.), “Introduction,” in Shahrazūrī, Shams al-Dīn, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq [= Commentary on the Philosophy of Illumination]. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2001, p. xv. 16. Pourjavady and Schmidtke, “Some Notes on a New Edition of a Medieval Philosophical Text in Turkey,” p. 77. 17. To give an indication of how the passages that are given prime attention in this chapter stand out in the wider discussion of Shahrazūrī’s, here is a guide to Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq: passing mentions of the world of image are made on (page number of Shahrazūrī’s edition/paragraph number of Suhrawardī’s text): 278/105, 285/107, 349/145, 400/171, 427/180, 432/183, 510/225, 520/229, 528/233, 546/243, 557/249, 579/261. Minor remarks are made on: 370/155, 497/218, 594/273. Major discussions can be found on: 509/225, 549–557/244–248, 570–577/255–260. 18. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 229–230/Philosophy, p. 148. 19. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 550. 20. The first date being the date of completion of Ibn Kammūna’s commentary (R. Pourjavady and S. Schmidtke, A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad: ʿIzz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d. 683 1284) and his Writings. Leiden: Brill, 2006, p. 10), the second the date of completion of Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. 21. al-Ḥukamāʾ al-bāḥithīn probably refers to the distinction Suhrawardī makes in his introduction of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, where he divides philosophers according to their proficiency in “intuition” (taʾalluh, lit.

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“becoming divine”) and “discourse” (baḥth). Those only versed in discourse are the Peripatetics. Baḥth stands for the discursive, intellectual way of coming to a conclusion by apodeictic proof. Taʾalluh is associated with dhawq and mushāhada. In contrast to discursive philosophy, the easiest way to refer to it is therefore as “intuitive philosophy.” This is also what Ziai and Walbridge did in their translation, cf. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 11 ff./Philosophy, pp. 3 ff. 22. The edition reads qad ʿurifa fīmā annahu . . . but it should be qad ʿurifa fīmā marra annahu . . . See Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Landberg 7, Beinecke Library, New Haven, 1296, f. 199b. The marra is very tiny and tucked in between two lines, perhaps only added during the collation process. 23. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 509. 24. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 450. 25. A reference to the mutawassiṭāt, the corpus of mathematical texts to be read after Euclid’s Elements and before Ptolemy’s Almagest. Cf. L.W.C. van Lit, “The Measurement of the Circle in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Revision of the ‘Middle Books’ (Taḥrīr al- mutawassiṭāt),” Tarikh-e Elm 10 (2012): 1–42. 26. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 457. I have fully translated this epistle together with Christian Lange, to be published in the forthcoming volume in memory of Hossein Ziai. 27. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 230, 241/Philosophy, pp. 148, 154. 28. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 370 (2x), 427, 497, 528, 553, 554, 555 (2x), 557, 570 (2x), 571 (2x), 572, 573, 575 (3x), 576. 29. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 432, 509, 552, 556, 571, 575. 30. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 370 (2x), 553 (4x), 554 (4x), 556, 594 (3x). 31. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 553. 32. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 572. 33. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 552, 594. 34. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 278, 571, 594. 35. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 520. 36. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 400; 510; 579; 497, 556; 552, 553, 554, 555, 556. 37. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 212/Philosophy, p. 138.

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38. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 497, 509 (3x), 546, 551, 552, 571 (4x), 575. 39. This is done by me and does not rely on actual evidence from the edition or manuscripts of Shahrazūrī’s text. Since Shahrazūrī sometimes drops words from Suhrawardī’s passage and uses them sometimes syntactically differently, the bold words here do not form coherent sentences. 40. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 554. 41. Reading mudunuhu instead of muddatuhu, which must be a copyist or editorial mistake. 42. Reading aghrāḍ instead of aʿrāḍ, which is, again, a copyist or editorial mistake. 43. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 470. 44. I chose to read al-farīqa here. Both editions actually read al-baraha. When Ibn Kammūna cites the passage, we read in the edition al-ʿarīqa and the editor emphasizes that this is how he reads the manuscript, see Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 530. al-Farīqa seems the most likely given the context, and it is also in agreement with a different version of the same passage that Shahrazūrī offers elsewhere in the Rasāʾil (vol. 2, p. 153), in which he speaks of baʿḍ al-kahana wa-saḥara (“some of . . .”). 45. Literally: “in and outside their moment” (fī waqtihā wa-ghayr waqtihā). 46. It is surprising to see Shahrazūrī write in this manner about his book, as this sentence is merely an appropriation of Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ, in which Suhrawardī refers the reader to his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq. 47. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 2, p. 153. 48. See Appendix A, passage 1. 49. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 465; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 576. 50. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 469; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 519, 530, 552, 572. 51. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 460, 461 Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 554. 52. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 469; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 554, 570. 53. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 594. 54. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 594. 55. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 254/Philosophy, p. 160.

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56. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 594. 57. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 370, 520, 550; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 457, 458, 470. 58. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 552. Compare with pp. 554, 556. 59. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 133/Philosophy, p. 95. 60. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 139–148/Philosophy, pp. 99–104. 61. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 370. Compare Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 462. 62. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 550, 576; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 465, 467, 468, 682, 694, 695. 63. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 550. 64. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 464. 65. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 458–460. 66. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 467. 67. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 211–212/Philosophy, p. 138. 68. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 464. 69. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 577. 70. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 464. Compare Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 556. 71. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 462, 468, 471. 72. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 469. 73. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 470; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 575. 74. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 462. 75. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 594. Cf. p. 574. Cf. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, pp. 126–127. Corbin attributes the passage to Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, but Quṭb al-Dīn merely took it from Shahrazūrī. 76. Cf. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 370; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 461. Compare also to his remark that the sensory world and intelligible world are parallel, Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 427. 77. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 460, 693. 78. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 555, 576; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 458, 460, 461, 462, 464. 79. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 467. 80. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 570; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 461.

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81. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 553; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 468, 694. 82. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 521–522; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 581. 83. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 556, 577. 84. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 550, 553; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 464, 471, 681. 85. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 525. 86. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 554. 87. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 469. 88. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 552, 571;  Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 462. 89. Which is ironic given that Shahrazūrī boasts that he is expanding on something to which Suhrawardī only alluded, cf. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol.  3, p. 462. Suhrawardī’s allusion is perhaps the end of § 225, Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 212–213/Philosophy, p. 138. 90. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 463. 91. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 463–464. 92. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 556, 573. 93. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 571–572, 577; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 464, 471. 94. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 601. 95. This four-stage eschatology is clearly argued for in Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 680–682. 96. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 556. 97. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 681. 98. For his idea that somewhat bad souls become jinn, see Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 552, 554, 556–557; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 468, 469. 99. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 576; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 465, 467, 468. 100. This may be alluded to at Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 550. A later commentator, Harawī, is unequivocally saying this, asserting that the First Intellect is the best, Harawī, Anwāriyya, ed. H. Ziai. Tehran: Muʾassasah-i intishārāt amīr kabīr, 1358, p. 197. 101. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 520. 102. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 548–596. This is not the place to describe

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his exposition in detail. A first attempt was made by Schmidtke, though it deserves more attention. S. Schmidtke, “The Doctrine of the Transmigration of Soul according to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (killed 587/1191) and his Followers,” Studia Iranica 28 (1999): 237–254. 103. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 601, 603. 104. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 550. 105. Ziai translates this term as “absolute ignorance.” Though it is clear what “absolute” means, I think “compound” is closer to the Arabic and is perfectly understandable when we consider the definition of the term. Cf. Suhrawardī, The Book of Radiance, p. 75. See also Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 88; al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 501; al-Alwāḥ, vol. 4, p. 84; Kalimat al-taṣawwuf, vol. 4, p. 120; al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237. 106. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 89. 107. In Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq he presents a similar argument, but this time writes “divine providence,” al-ʿināyah al-ilāhiyya, cf. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 519. 108. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 550, 552, 574, 575; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 466, 469–470, 557, 590 109. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 554–555. Note that Suhrawardī calls Mani a heretic, Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 11/ Philosophy, p. 2, something which Jambet oversees, Jambet, The Act of Being, pp. 325–329. 110. Cottrell has shown that there are two recensions of the text, one ending with Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī, the other with Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Dāʿī. She also points out that the text circulated under different names, namely, Rawḍat al-afrāḥ and Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ. 111. For example, Shahrazūrī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, pp. 88, 94, 173, 179, 183, 252, 307. At two points he would seem to have had an opportunity to at least make mention of suspended images or the world of image, but he fails to do so. The first time is when he speaks of “the temple of the sun” (haykal al-shams), which is also featured in the story of Hermes in al-Talwīḥāt (see fragment 6 in Appendix A), cf. Shahrazūrī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, p. 81. The second time is when he cites the Uthūlūjiyā using the world muʿallaq (“as though I was suspended in it [the intelligible world] . . .” cf. Shahrazūrī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ, p. 354). 112. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, pp. 465–466.

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13. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, p. 149. 1 114. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155.

Chapter 5 1. Suhrawardī, and anonymous commentator, Sharḥ āwāz-i par jibraʾīl, ed. M. Qasimi, Maʿārif, 1 (1363): 77–99; Suhrawardī, and anonymous commentator, Muʾnis al-ushshāq, ed. N. M. Harawi. Tehran: Intishārāt-i Mawlá, 1366; Suhrawardī, and anonymous commentator, Qiṣṣat alghurbat al-gharbiyya, ed. H. Corbin, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 2, pp. 274–297; Muṣannifak, Ḥall al-rumūz wa-kashf mafātiḥ al-kunūz li-Risālat al-abrāj, partially ed. H. Corbin, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 3, pp. 462–471; Ilyās ibn Khiḍr, “Firdaws-i taʾwīl tarjama Muʾnis al-ushshāq,” Haci Resit Bey 108, Istanbul, n.d. 2. Perhaps written by Mubāriz al-Dīn Muḥammad Muẓaffar. Cf. Suhrawardī, and anonymous commentator, Hayākil al-nūr, ed. M. Karimi Zanjani Asl. Tehran: Nashr-i nuqṭah, 1379. 3. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Kāshī Ḥillī, “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Ragip Paşa 852 (Istanbul, 752), f. 325b. 4. B. Kuşpinar, Ismāʿīl Anḳaravī on The Illuminative Philosophy, Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 1996. Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Kurdī al-Zībārī, “Naẓm Hayākil al-nūr,” MS Laleli 2486, Istanbul, 1019. There are, however, two treatises on suspended images written by the Ottoman scholars Qaṣāb Bāshā Zāda (d.  1820) and Buyūk Zāda (d. 1837). A. Badawi (ed.), al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya. Kuwait: Wikālat al-maṭbūʿāt, [1947] n.d., pp. 150–154. 5. Ḥasan al-Kurdī, “Naẓm Hayākil al-nūr,” fll. 12b, 17b. 6. ʿUbayd Allāh Khān Tarkhān Ḥasanī, “Sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr,” MS Ar. h III 183 A, Punjab University Library, Lahore, 1209, f. 10a. Cf. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, p. 149. 7. Muḥammad Bāqir al-Jīlānī, Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, MS 11619, Marʿashī, Qom, f. 121a; MS 16679, National Library of Iran, Tehran, fll. 30b–31a. 8. Anonymous, “Mulakhkhaṣ muʿaẓẓam mā kutiba ʿalā l-Hayākil al-nūriyya al-Suhrawardiyya,” MS Isl. Ms. 975, University of Michigan Library, n.d., fll. 13, 16, 30. 9. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 460.

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10. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, p. 108; Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, p. 529. 11. Ibn Kammūna’s citation continues for a bit longer (cf. vol. 3, p. 529). The whole passage in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq is explicitly stated by Suhrawardī to be a summary (cf. Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 162). The same, though in a slightly different form, is also mentioned in al-Talwīḥāt (cf. vol.  1, p. 112, which is just a few pages later in the text from which Ibn Kammūna is commenting at the moment). Though he does not mention the text that he is summarizing, it was already pointed out by Corbin (Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, p. 163, marginal note) that this relates to The Theology of Aristotle (cf. A. Badawi, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 2nd edn. Kuwait: Wikālat al-maṭbūʿāt, 1978, p. 22), which is a selective and adapted translation of Plotinus’ Enneads (cf. Plotinus, Plotini Opera, p. 225). That Suhrawardī relates the passage to Plato, not Aristotle, shows he was one of the few who did not believe Uthūlūjiyā was genuinely from Aristotle. This attribution was so common, that even Suhrawardī’s supporter Shahrazūrī, commenting on the passage in Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, says that he has seen that “some books attribute this story to Aristotle.” Cf. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 399. However, in his Rasāʾil he simply copies Suhrawardī without remarking it comes from Aristotle, cf. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 439. 12. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 529–530. 13. Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Faḍl Allāh ibn Aḥmad Tūdhī, “Sharḥ al-Lamaḥāt,” MS Topkapi A 3251, Istanbul, n.d., fll. 152a–152b. 14. ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Ḥamza Aharī, al-Aqṭāb al-quṭbiyya aw al-bulgha fī al-ḥikma, ed. M. T. Danishpazuh. Tehran: Anjuman-i islāmī-i ḥikmat va falsafah-i Īrān, 1358, p. 70. 15. Aharī, al-Aqṭāb al-quṭbiyya aw al-bulgha fī al-ḥikma p. 71; cf. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 23–231. 16. As already observed by Corbin, cf. Corbin, “Prolégomènes,” vol. 1, pp. xxi–xxii, fn. 29. 17. Athīr al-Dīn Abharī, “Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī tajrīd al-daqāʾiq,” MS Ayasofya 2453, Istanbul, 663, fll. 133b–134a. 18. Abharī, “Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī tajrīd al-daqāʾiq,” f. 135b. Note the early use of the moniker ṣāhib al-ishrāq to denote Suhrawardī. 19. Abharī, “Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī tajrīd al-daqāʾiq,” f. 135b.

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20. Abharī, “Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī tajrīd al-daqāʾiq,” fll. 135b–136a. Note the unusual order of Logic – Metaphysics – Physics adopted in this text. 21. I find that virtually all the points that Arnzen proposes to be properly Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s are already present in Shahrazūrī’s writings. Further, I see no evidence for Arnzen’s reading that Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī proposes the world of image to be a limbo. Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, pp. 168–174. 22. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, Appendix A, fragment 3; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 518; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, p. 476. 23. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 1, pp. 88–90; Partaw-nāmah, vol. 3, pp. 75–76; al-Lamaḥāt, vol. 4, p. 237; Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 229– 235/Philosophy, pp. 148–150. 24. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 486–488. 25. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 492. 26. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 457–458, 491. 27. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, pp. 196–271. 28. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 257. 29. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, pp. 244–247. In Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, he also briefly mentions Ibn ʿArabī, albeit in a different context, cf. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 496. 30. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, “Sharḥ al-Najāt,” MS Ragip Paşa 861, Istanbul, 1112, fll. 266b–270a; Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Durrat al-tāj li-ghurrat al-dubāj, ed. M. Mishkat, 5 vols. in 1 tome. Tehran: Ḥikmat, 1385, vol. 4, pp. 119–130. 31. Already pointed out by Pourjavady, R., and S. Schmidtke, “Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s (634/1236–710/1311) Durrat al-Taj and its Sources,” Journal Asiatique 292(1/2) (2004): 311–330. 32. Compare Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Durrat al-tāj, p. 129, with Ibn Kammūna, al-Kāshif (al-Jadīd fī l-ḥikma), ed. H. N. Isfahani. Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy and Institute of Islamic Studies Free University of Berlin, 2008, pp. 349–350, and with Ibn Sīnā, The Metaphysics of The Healing, p. 356. 33. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 85–115. For an introduction and translation, see Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, pp. 175–184, 301–331. 34. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, p. 85. 35. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 92–93. 36. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, p. 93.

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37. This is the same passage as Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī cites in his epistle, see Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 245. 38. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 96–97. 39. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 97–106. 40. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 107–113. 41. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 113–115. 42. Lisān al-Dīn ibn Khaṭīb, Rawḍat al-taʿrīf bi-l-ḥubb al-sharīf, ed. A. A. Ata. Cairo: Dār al-fikr al-ʿarabī, 1968, p. 569. 43. Ibn Abī Jumhūr, Mujlī mirʾāt al-Munjī fī l-kalām wa-l-ḥikmatayn wa-ltaṣawwuf, ed. R. Y. Farmad, 5 vols. Beirut: Jamʿiyya ibn abī jumhūr al-aḥsāʾī li-iḥyāʾ al-turāth, 2013, vol. 3, pp. 776–784. 44. F. Griffel, “Divine Actions, Creation, and the Human Fate after Death in 9th/15th-Centry Imāmī Shiʿite Theology,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 125(1) (2005): 67–78. 45. S. Schmidtke, Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik im zwölferschiitischen Islam des 9./15. Jahrhunderts. Leiden: Brill, 2000, p. 17. 46. Compare Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī, Shawākil al-ḥūr sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr, ed. M. A. Haq and M. Y. Kokan. Madras: Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, 1953, p. 143; Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 211/ Philosophy, p. 138. 47. Significantly, one of Suhrawardī’s commentators, Ibn Kammūna, wrote extensively in favor of pre-eternity. See L. Muehlethaler, “Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) on the Eternity of the Human Soul: the Three Treatises on the Soul and Related Texts,” unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 2010. 48. Dawānī, Shawākil al-ḥūr, pp. 153–154. Cf. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, pp. 492, 494. 49. Dawānī, Shawākil al-ḥūr, p. 189. Cf. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 340. 50. Dawānī, Shawākil al-ḥūr, pp. 217–218. 51. Dawānī, Shawākil al-ḥūr, p. 236. 52. Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī, “Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat Al-Maṭāliʿ Al-Sharīfa,” Arabic MSS suppl. 85, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, 957, f. 132a–b. Cf. Āghā Buzurg, al-Dharīʾa ilá taṣānīf al-shīʿa, 26 vols. Beirut: Dār al-aḍwāʾ, 1983, vol. 4, p. 472, No. 2094. 53. L. W. C. van Lit, “Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī on the World of Image (ʿālam al- mithāl): the Place of his Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr in the Commentary

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Tradition on Suhrawardī,” in Ishrâq: Islamic philosophy Yearbook 5. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura Publishers, 2014, pp. 116–136. 54. Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr li-kashf ẓulamāt Shawākil al-ghurūr, ed. A. Owjabi. Tehran: Mīrāth-i maktūb, 2003, p. 241. 55. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 245. 56. Edited and translated by J. Walbridge, cf. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, pp. 233–270. 57. Running from Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, edition Walbridge, pp. 241, l. 6–261, l. 12, cf. Van Lit, “Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī on the world of image,” p. 119. 58. They can be found at: Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 250, l. 1–6/Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, edition Walbridge, p. 246.9; Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 250, l. 14–p. 251, l. 15/Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, edition Walbridge, p. 247, l. 11; Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 255, l. 11–p. 259, l. 9/ Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, edition Walbridge, p. 252, l. 8. 59. It corresponds to the first two pages of Qayṣarī’s discussion of the world of image in his introduction (muqaddima) to his commentary on Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam; Dāwud Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. H. Z. al-Amuli. Qom: Bustān kitāb Qum, 2004, pp. 117–118. The editor of Dashtakī’s text, Awjabi, lets the readers believe that only the first part of this extra passage is a citation, which would make the second part properly Dashtakī’s (Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 251, especially n. 116). This is simply not correct as a cursory comparison with Qayṣarī’s text reveals. 60. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 257. 61. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 257. 62. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 257. 63. Cf. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, pp. 407–409, for an excellent treatment of this principle which he traces back to Aristotle. 64. Except for one sentence in an early part of the commentary, where he lists a number of objections against Dawānī’s definition of sensory determination (al-ishāra al-ḥissiyya). As the seventh objection, he considers imaginable forms. Since they can be pointed to (mushār ilayhi), they must be occupying space (mutaḥayyiz). He says that this goes against what Suhrawardī thinks and that he will later explain more. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, pp. 51–52. 65. For an analysis of the occurrence of the term in his other writings, see Van Lit, “Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī on the world of image,” pp. 133–135.

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66. Dashtakī, Mirʾāt al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-mujlī al-daqāʾiq, in, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī, Musannafāt Ghīyath Al-Dīn Mansūr Husaynī Dashtakī Shīrāzī, ed A. Nourani, 2 vols. Tehran: Society for the Application of Cultural Works and Dignitaries, 2007, vol. 1, p. 126. The relationship between Hūrqalyā and the world of image is one of the focal points in H. Corbin, Terre céleste et corps de résurrection: d l’Iran mazdéen a l’Iran shî’ite. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1960. 67. He later finished a revision in 902/1497, see Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, pp. 25–26. 68. See Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, p. 25. 69. Īmān al-īmān: Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 58/Mirʾāt al-ḥaqāʾiq wa-mujlī al-dāqāʾiq: Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 126/Ḥujjat al-kalām li-īḍāḥ maḥajjat al-islām: Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 155; p. 161; p.  162; p. 163; p. 185; p. 186/Shifāʾ al-qulūb: Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 458/Taʿlīqāt ʿalā al-Sharḥ al-jadīd li-al-Tajrīd, Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 688; p. 692/Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq al-muḥammadiyya: Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 977. 70. Ḥujjat al-kalām li-īḍāḥ maḥajjat al-islām: “Whoever denies this has committed unbelief,” Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 1, p. 155; Shifāʾ al-qulūb: “Its denial is unbelief and aberration,” Dashtakī, Muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 458; Taʿlīqāt ʿalā al-Sharḥ al-jadīd li-al-Tajrīd: “In short, speculation on resurrection is nothing but unbelief and apostasy,” Dashtakī,  Muṣannafāt, vol. 2, p. 692. In Ḥujjat al-kalām and Shifāʾ al-qulūb, he explicitly rejects the solution offered by the Ishrāqīs (ibid.,  vol. 1, pp. 162–163; vol. 2, p. 458), though he adds in Ḥujjat al-kalām that this does not prove the Ishrāqīs have committed unbelief (ibid., p. 189). 71. Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd Nayrīzī, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Shawākil al-ḥūr,” MS Majlis-e Shura 1887, Tehran, 943, fll. 53b–64a. 72. Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd Nayrīzī, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Laleli 2523, Istanbul, n.d., fl. 191b ff.; Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd Nayrīzī, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Ragip Paşa 854, Istanbul, 1115, fl. 209a ff. 73. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 212/Philosophy, p. 138 (adapted). 74. Nayrīzī, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Laleli 2523, fl. 189a; MS Ragip Paşa 854, fl. 206b: ّ ‫لو كان هذه الصور موجودة لا في مكان ولا في مح‬  . ‫ل لوجب أن يدرك كذلك وليس كذلك‬

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75. I would not have been able to present the following findings were it not for the generosity of Dr. Reza Pourjavady, who kindly shared with me his personal notes that helped me navigate the manuscript copy MS. Şehit Ali Paşa 1739. 76. Pourjavady informs us that similar statements can be found in Nayrīzī’s glosses on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq and in his commentary on Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma. Pourjvady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, p. 140. 77. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 70b. 78. Cf. Ibn Sīnā. The Physics of The Healing [al-Shifāʾ], 2 vols., trans. J. McGinnis. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2009, vol. 2, p. 263; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 2, pp. 17, 150, 241. 79. Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 257. 80. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 70b. 81. Cf. Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 2, p. 153. 82. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, p. 141. 83. Cf. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, p. 141 (translation), p. 201 (original, note that ‫ خلط‬should be read ‫ =[ المط‬al-maṭlūb] and ‫ خارج\خارج‬should be read ‫ ≈[ فارج\فارج‬close to farja in Shahrazūrī’s rendering of the argument]); Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 29b. 84. Refers to the second argument; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 2, p. 152, ll. 9–19. 85. Refers to the first argument; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 2, p. 151, l. 20–p. 152, l. 8. 86. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 163b. 87. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 163b. 88. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 166a. 89. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 2, p. 89. 90. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 166b. 91. Suhrawardī, al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 2, p. 90. 92. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 168b. 93. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fll. 169a, 174a. 94. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 171b. 95. Nayrīzī, Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, fl. 171a. 96. Harawī, Anwāriyya, p. 197. 97. Harawī, Anwāriyya, p. 180. 98. Harawī, Anwāriyya, pp. 185, 197. 99. Harawī, Anwāriyya, pp. 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193. 100. Harawī, Anwāriyya, p. 188, cf. p. 192.

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101. This section mainly draws from Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, showing in the footnotes that his thought on the afterlife is quite consistent throughout his corpus. The focus is on the world of image, not eschatology, for which there are several monograph-length expositions, see Ch. Jambet, Mort et résurrection en islam: l’au-delà selon Mullâ Sadrâ. Paris: Albin Michel, 2008; M. Puyan, Maʿād-i jismānī dar ḥikmat-i mutaʿāliyyah. Qom: Bustan-e ketab-e Qom, 1388; E. S. Al-Kutubi, Mulla Sadra and Eschatology: Evolution of Being. London: Routledge, 2014. 102. I agree with Jambet that Mullā Ṣadrā uses the world of image “for his own purposes, modifying it in order to rethink the imagination.” Jambet, The Act of Being, p. 314. 103. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 411–412. 104. Though in other places of his commentary, he freely uses the term al-ʿālam al-mithālī. A comparison of the passing mentions shows this well enough. 105. This is one of his fundamental principles, a list of which he repeats in many texts here and there with slight variations. See Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 510–513, 514–515, 525; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, ed. J. Ashtiyânî. Mashhad: Meshed University Press, 1967, p. 263; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology: The Fourth Intellectual Journey in Transcendent Philosophy: Volumes VIII and IX of the Asfar, trans. L. Peerwani. London: ICAS, 2008, pp. 377, 505, 520, 550. On this list, in the context of his eschatology, see Corbin, “Le thème de la résurrection chez Molla Ṣadrā Shīrāzī,” pp. 71–115; and also F. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1975, pp. 254–257; Mullā Ṣadrā and J. Āshtiyānī, Sharḥ bar zād al-musāfir, 2nd edn. Tehran: Būstān-e Ketāb Publishers, 2009, p. 20; translation in: Al-Kutubi, Mulla Sadra and Eschatology, p. 129. 106. See also Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, p. 381 107. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 403, 408. Elsewhere, he uses these words with a distinct different meaning, when he divides the world into “divine” (ilāhī), “intellectual image” (mithāl ʿaqlī), “inbetween” (barzakhī), and “sensory form” (ṣūra ḥissiyya), cf. vol. 1, p. 505. This is not necessarily in contradiction with the “imaginable isthmus” proposed here, as the word mithāl, image, is essentially neutral and can be applied to sensible, imaginable and intelligible objects alike. The idea of blood mediating between spirit and body is not strange,

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but relies on Greek medical theory, which dictates that blood and spirit (pneuma) both originate from the heart and are pumped through the body. There seems to have been a variety of interpretations on the exact relationship, cf., P. J. van der Eijk, Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, esp. ch. 4, “The heart, the brain, the blood, and the pneuma,” pp. 119–135. 108. Compare Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 414, 446, 510, 514, 516–517, 523; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, ed. J.  Āshtiyānī. Tehran: Būstān-e Ketāb Publishers, 2008, pp. 451, 485–486; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, p. 267; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, pp. 370, 376, 378–381, 474–476, 500. 109. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 510, 545. He also sees the kalām solution of dispersement and gathering as a form of metempsychosis, see Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, pp. 479–480; Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 438; Mullā Ṣadrā and Āshtiyānī, Sharḥ bar zād al-musāfir, p. 17. 110. Already the very first sentence of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq’s chapter on eschatology indicates this: “know that the difference between resurrection and metempsychosis is . . .,” cf. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 435. 111. See Freitag, Seelenwanderung in der islamischen Häresie. Gimaret “Tanāsukh,” EI2, vol. 10, pp. 181b–183a. 112. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 519–522, 534, 538, 540–541;  Mullā Ṣadrā, The Wisdom of the Throne [= Al-ḥikma al-ʿarshīya], trans. J. W. Morris. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 203, 217; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, p. 531. 113. Corbin, “Le thème de la résurrection chez Molla Ṣadrā Shīrāzī,” p. 83. 114. S. Kamada, “Metempsychosis (tanāsukh) in Mulla Sadra’s Thought,” Orient 30/31 (1995): 119–132. 115. Jambet, Mort et résurrection en islam, pp. 132–149. It should be pointed out that Jambet also takes over Corbin’s suggestion of using “metamorphosis” in his analysis, but from the last sentence of his chapter (“In this sense, transmigration is justified”) it is clear that Jambet thinks metamorphosis is simply Mullā Ṣadrā’s reinterpretation of metempsychosis. 116. Rahman, The Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā, p. 254. 117. Compare Corbin, “Le thème de la résurrection chez Molla Ṣadrā Shīrāzī,” pp. 71–115, with Corbin, Terre céleste et corps de résurrection.

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18. Corbin, “Le thème de la résurrection chez Molla Ṣadrā,” p. 107. 1 119. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 530; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 545; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, p. 268. 120. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 543. 121. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 46. Compare Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 1, pp. 530, 536, vol. 2, pp. 126, 150, 364, 387, 471. 122. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 414–415. Mullā Ṣadrā repeats the citation later, in slightly different form, cf. vol.  2, p. 531; translated by M. Fakhry, “Glosses upon the Commentary of Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination,” in S. H. Nasr and M.  Aminrazavi (eds.), An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, vol. 4: From the School of Illumination to Philosophical Mysticism (London: I.  B.  Tauris, 2012), pp. 169–170. He also repeats it in al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād and al-Asfār: Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. ­506–507. Compare Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. A. A. Afifi. Beirut: Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 2002, vol. 1, pp. 88–89. 123. See H. Corbin, L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ’Arabi. Paris: Éditions Médicis-Entrelacs, [1958] 2006). On pp. 235–236 he translates and analyses this exact passage. 124. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 439, 522; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, p. 371. 125. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 528; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 445; Mullā Ṣadrā, The Wisdom of the Throne, p. 182; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, p. 268; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, pp. 382, 553. 126. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 511–513, 515, 530, 547; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, pp. 455, 474, 541, 547. 127. Mullā Ṣadrā, The Wisdom of the Throne, p. 243. 128. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 497. Compare Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 514–515, 528. Another signature sentence, indicated as such by Jambet, is for Mullā Ṣadrā to say that “the soul carries the body, the body does not carry the soul,” cf. Jambet, Mort et résurrection en islam, p. 112. 129. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 545; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, p. 503.

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130. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 519. 31. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 541. 1 132. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 532. 133. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, pp. 555, 557, 620; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Shawāhid al-rubūbiyya, p. 320; Mullā Ṣadrā, Spiritual Psychology, pp. 523, 561; Mullā Ṣadrā and Āshtiyānī, Sharḥ bar zād al-musāfir, pp. 21–22. 134. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 536–537; Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Mabdaʾ wa-l-maʿād, p. 603. 135. Suhrawardī, al-Mashāriʿ, vol. 1, p. 496 136. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 525, 545. 137. Mullā Ṣadrā, Taʿlīqa ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 536. The terms used are al-maḥw and al-ṣaḥw, which seem to be equivalent for the wellknown terms al-fanāʾ and al-baqāʾ.

Chapter 6  1. First phrased as toujours vivante en Iran (“Prolégomènes,” in Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, p. lv), but then he decided on jusqu’à nos jours:  “Prolégomènes III,” in Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 3, pp. 8, 9; Corbin, Terre céleste et corps de résurrection, pp. 22, 87, 138; Corbin, “La Place de Mollâ Ṣadrâ Shîrâzî,” pp. 91, 112; Corbin, En Islam Iranien, vol. 2, p. 33; H. Corbin, En Islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques,  IV: l’école d’ispahan, l’école shaykhie, le douzième imâm. Paris: Gallimard, 1972, pp. v, xv, 11, 15, 64, 209, 214, 244; Suhrawardī, L’archange empourpré, p. x; Corbin, Histoire de la Philosophie Islamique,  p.  302. It is in the very title of J. Ashtiyânî and H. Corbin (eds.), Anthologie des philosophes iraniens: depuis le xvii siècle jusqu’ à nos jours. Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1972.  2. Ṭāshkubrīzāda, Miftāḥ al-saʿāda wa-miṣbāḥ al-sayāda, 3 vols. Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1985, vol. 2, p. 79.  3. Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights, pp. 25, 35.  4. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155.  5. See in Appendix A, passage 7.  6. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 529–530. Shahrazūrī does not cite the passage in this part of his Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, see Appendix A, passage 6.

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 7. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 554; Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, vol. 3, p. 470; Rasāʾil, vol. 2, p. 153; Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, see Appendix A, passage 1.  8. H. Ritter, “Philologika IX: Die vier Suhrawardī, Ihre Werke im Stambuler Handschriften,” Der Islam 24 (1937): 281–282; H. Ziai, “The Manuscript of al-Shajara al-Ilāhiyya: A Philosophical Encyclopedia by Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Shahrazūrī,” Iranshenasi 2(1) (1990): 89–108; Pourjavady and Schmidtke, “Some Notes on a New Edition of a Medieval Philosophical Text in Turkey, pp. 76–85; Pourjavady and Schmidtke, A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad, pp. 28–48, 63–77.  9. Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 491. 10. Please note that in the case of Shahrazūrī, I have emended the edition from muddatuhu to mudunuhu. 11. Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights, p. 241. 12. Back to Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 491. 13. Badawi, A. (ed.), al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya. Cairo: Publications de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie, 1947; reprinted Kuwait: Wikālat al-maṭbūʿāt, n.d., p. 85; trans. in Arnzen, Platonische Ideen, p. 302. 14. Taftāzānī, Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, ed. A. R. Umayrah, 5 vols. Beirut: ʿĀlam alkutub, 1989, vol. 3, p. 372. 15. Taftāzānī, Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid, vol. 3, p. 373. 16. He was a student of Dawānī.  A. W. Dunietz, The Cosmic Perils of Qadi Ḥusayn Maybudī in Fifteenth-Century Iran. Leiden: Brill, 2016, p. 34. 17. Muʿīn al-Dīn Maybudī, Sharḥ-i dīvān-i mansūb bih Amīr al-muʾminīn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, ed. H. Rahmani and I. A. Shirin. Tehran: Mirāth-i maktūb, 2000, p. 112. Throughout the book he also cites directly from Suhrawardī. 18. Ibn Abī Jumhūr, Mujlī mirʾāt al-Munjī fī al-kalām wa-al-ḥikmatayn wa-altaṣawwuf, vol. 3, p. 779. 19. Schmidtke, Theologie, Philosophie und Mystik. 20. Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd Nayrīzī, “Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ ḥaqāʾiq al-Alwāḥ,” MS Şehid Ali Paşa 1739, Istanbul, 943, fl. 29a. 21. He likely finished the commentary before 895/1490, see Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran, p. 25. The passage is at Dashtakī, Ishrāq Hayākil al-nūr, p. 245. 22. H. Ziai, “muqaddimah-ye muṣaḥḥiḥ,” in Harawī, Anwāriyya, p. sīzdah [= XIII].

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23. Harawī, Anwāriyya, p. 194. 24. Maybe under influence of Ibn ʿArabī and his commentators, who use the concept of imagination to interpret the barzakh. Cf. W. C. Chittick, “Death and the World of Imagination,” Muslim World 78 (1988): 51–82. 25. H. Corbin, La philosophie iranienne islamique aux XVII et XVIII siècles. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1981, p. 356. 26. S. Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī: His Life and Works and the Sources for Safavid Philosophy, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 8. 27. Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, p. 143. 28. Shaykh Bahāʾī, al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan. Qom: Jāmiʿa mudarrisīn Ḥawza ʿilmiyya qum, n.d.), p. 507. 29. Shaykh Bahāʾī, al-Arbaʿūn ḥadīthan, pp. 506–507. 30. al-Kāfī is a Shīʿī Hadith compilation by Kulaynī. Amīr al-muʾminīn is ʿAlī ibn Abū Ṭālib, first Imam of the Shīʿah. 31. Ashtiyânî and Corbin (eds.), Anthologie des philosophes iraniens, vol. 1, pp. 53–54. 32. Mīr Dāmād, Jadhawāt wa Mawāqīt, ed. A. Owjabi. Tehran: Mīrāth-i maktūb, 2001, pp. 167–169. 33. Ashtiyânî and Corbin (eds.), Anthologie des philosophes iraniens, vol. 1, p. 205. Note that the sentence continues to mention Suhrawardī and ultimately ends with “but I disagree with him on two things.” 34. Rizvi, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī, p. 54. 35. Mullā Ṣadrā, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliyya fī al-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa, 9 vols., 3rd edn. Qom: Maktabat al-muṣṭafā, 1981, vol. 1, p. 18. 36. ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī, Risālah-i nūrīya dar ʿālam-i mithāl, ed. J. Ashtiyani. Mashhad: Dānishgāhī mashhad, 1972, pp. 140–141, 147–148. 37. ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī, Gawhar-i murād. Tehran: Sāyah, 1383, p. 603; Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, pp. 173–174. 38. Muḥin Fayḍ Kāshānī, Kitāb al-wāfī, ed. Ḍ. D. Ḥ. al-Isfahani, 26 vols. Isfahan: Maktabat al-imām amīr al-muʾminīn ʿalī ʿalayhi al-salām al-ʿāmma, 1406, vol. 26, pp. 479–480; Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī, al-Shāfī fī al-ʿaqāʾid wa-al-akhlāq wa-al-aḥkām. Tehran: Lawḥ maḥfūẓ, 1383, pp.  200–201. In al-wāfī he brings together Hadith from the four main Shīʿī Hadith collections, by Kulaynī, Ṣadūq, and Ṭūsī. al-wāfī remained one of the most influential Hadith collections. Cf. W. C. Chittick, “Muḥsin-i Fayḍ-i Kāshānī,” EI2, vol. 7, p. 476a.

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39. Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī, al-Kalimāt al-maknūna, ed. A. R. Asgari. Tehran: Madrasa ʿālī shahīd muṭahharī, 1387, pp. 101 ff. 40. Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār: al-jāmiʿa li-durar akhbār al-uʾimma al-aṭhār, 110 vols. Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1983. 41. Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, vol. 54, p. 351; Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl fī sharḥ akhbār āl al-rasūl, 26 vols. Tehran: Dār al-kutub al-islāmiyya, 1410, vol. 5, p. 358. 42. Majlisī, Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl, vol. 14, p. 224; Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, Malādh al-akhyār fi fahm tahdhīb al-akhbār, ed. M. al-Rajani, 16 vols. Qom: Maktabat āyat Allāh al-marʿashī, 1406, vol. 3, p. 311. 43. Niʿmat Allāh Jazāʾirī, al-Anwār al-nuʿmāniyya, 4 vols. Beirut: Dār al-qārī, 2008, vol. 4, p. 169. 44. ʿAlī Khān ibn Aḥmad Madanī, Riyāḍ al-sālikīn fī sharḥ ṣaḥīfa sayyid al-sājidīn, ed. M. H. Amini, 7 vols. Qom: Jāmiʿa mudarrisīn ḥawza ʿilmiyya qum, 1391, vol. 1, pp. 337–338; Muḥammad Naʿīm ibn Muḥammad Taqī Naʿīman Ṭāliqānī, Minhaj al-rashād fī maʿrifat al-maʿād, 3 vols. Mashhad: Majmaʿ al-buḥūth, 1424, vol. 3, p. 113. 45. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Qāryāghdī, al-Baḍāʿa al-muzjāt, ed. H. A. al-Jalfa’i. Qom: Dār al-ḥadīth li-l-ṭibāʿa wa-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1387, vol. 3, p. 249. 46. thank Dr. M. Ṭabatabayi Bihbahani for sharing a few pages of his M. Ṭ.  Bihbahani, Kārnāmah-i bihbahān. Tehran: Omid majd, 1992, pp. 494–495. 47. ʿAlī Naqī ibn Aḥmad Bihbānī, ʿIyār dānish, ed. S. M. Musavi. Tehran: Mirāth-i maktūb, 1377, p. 321. 48. Muḥammad Mahdī ibn Abī Dharr Narrāqī, al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, ed. A. Awjabi. Qom: Intishārāt ʿahd, 1381, pp. 453, 467. 49. Narrāqī, al-Lamaʿāt al-ʿarshiyya, p. 328. 50. S. Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. 51. A. K. Cihan and A. Taher, “Muḥammad Amīn Al-Shirwānī’s Treatise on Eschatology: An Analysis and Critical Edition of Risālah Fī Taḥqīq Al-Mabda’ Wa-Al-Ma’ād,” Nazariyat 2(4) (2016), p. 86. 52. Cihan and Taher, “Muḥammad Amīn Al-Shirwānī’s Treatise on Eschatology,” pp. 90, 92. 53. Cihan and Taher, “Muḥammad Amīn Al-Shirwānī’s Treatise on Eschatology,” pp. 90, 93.

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54. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, p. 153. 55. Kalanbawī, Ḥāshiya Kalanbawī ʿalā al-Jalāl, Istanbul, 1844, pp. 157–158, 343–345. 56. Badawi, al-Muthul al-ʿaqliyya al-aflāṭūniyya, pp. 150–154. 57. Some controversy exists on the authorship of this work. Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī and Muḥammad ʿAbduh, al-Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿAḍudiyya, ed. S. H. Khosrawshahi. Cairo: Maktabat al-shurūq aldawliyya, 2002, p. 400. Also available in: M. ʿAbduh, ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī and Dawānī, al-Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh [= Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿaḍudiyya li-Dawānī], ed. S. Dunyā, 2 vols. Cairo: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1958, pp. 431–432. 58. M.  Karimi Zanjani Asl, Ḥikmat-i ishrāqī dar hind. Tehran: Intishārāt iṭṭalāʿāt, 1387. 59. Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī, “Dabestān-e Madāheb,” EIr, vol. VI, fasc. 5, pp. 532–534. 60. Corbin, “Prolégomènes,” in Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, pp. LV ff. The translators Shea and Troyer transliterate “Hukma ashrákín” and add: “Platonists.” Mollā Mawbad, Oriental Literature or The Dabistan, trans. D.  Shea and A. Troyer. New York: Tudor Publications, [1843] 1937, p. 314. 61. Mollā Mawbad, Oriental literature or The Dabistan, p. 395. 62. For example, Dihlawī Shāh Walī Allāh, al-Tafhīmāt al-ilāhiyya, 2 vols. Bijnor: Madīnah barqī pras, 1936, vol. 1, pp. 120, 163, 194, 224, 254; vol. 2, p. 180. Cf. J. M. S. Baljon, Religion and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī, 1703–1762. Leiden: Brill, 1986, pp. 21–23, 99–101. 63. Karimi Zanjani Asl, Ḥikmat-i ishrāqī dar hind, pp. 69–74. I have not been able to verify this. 64. Dihlawī Shāh Walī Allāh, Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha, ed. S. Sabiq. Beirut: Dār al-jīl, 2005, p. 43. 65. Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī, Sharḥ al-ʿarshiyya, ed. Ṣ. A. al-Dabab, 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasa shams hijr, 2005, vol. 2, p. 84. 66. See Corbin, Terre céleste et corps de résurrection. 67. M. Momen, The Works of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī: A Bibliography. Newcastle: Bahā’ī Studies Bulletin Monograph, 1991, p. 78: part one completed on 26 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1234, parts two and three completed on 27 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1236. For the text, see Aḥsāʾī, Sharḥ al-ʿarshiyya, vol. 2, p. 84.

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68. Mūlā ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Hamdānī, Baḥr al-maʿārif, ed. W. Husayn, 3 vols. Tehran: Intishārāt Ḥikmat, 1387, vol. 3, pp. 103–104. 69. Muḥammad Nabī ibn Aḥmad Tūysirkānī, Laʾālī al-akhbār wa-al-āthār, 5 vols. Qom: Maktabat al-ʿallāma, 1401, vol. 4, pp. 252–253. 70. Sabziwārī, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, vol. 5, pp. 290–291, 314–324. 71. Abū al-Qāsim Dahgardī, Minbar al-wasīla mabāḥith iʿtiqādī bah rūsh falsafī wa-ʿirfānī. Qom: Daftar tablīghāt islāmī ḥawza ʿilmiyya qum, 1379, p. 351. 72. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Āl Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ, al-Firdaws al-ʿalā. Qom: Dār anwār al-hudā, 1426, pp. 336–337. 73. Muḥammad Haydajī, Taʿlīqat al-haydajī ʿalā l-manẓūma wa-sharḥihā. Tehran: Aʿlamī, 1986, p. 394; Riḍā Ṣadr, Ṣaḥāʾif min al-falsafa taʿlīqa ʿalā Sharḥ al-Manẓūma li-l-sabziwārī, ed. B. Khusrawshahi. Qom: Bustan-e ketab-e Qom, 2008, p. 608. 74. ʿAlī Shīrwānī, Tarjama wa-sharḥ Nihāyat al-ḥikma. Qom: Muʾassasah bustān kitāb, 1387, p. 439; Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī and ʿAbbās ʿAlī Zāʿirī Sabziwārī, Nihāyat al-ḥikma, 2 vols. Qom: Muʾassasat al-nashr al-islāmī al-tābiʿa li-jāmiʿat al-mudarrisīn bi-qum, 1423, vol. 1, p. 189; Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī and ʿAlī ʿIlmī Ardabīlī, Sharḥ nihāyat al-ḥikma. Qom: Muʾassasa bustān kitāb, 1387, p. 277. It also appears in other texts, for example, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Kamāl Ḥaydarī, Sharḥ Nihāyat al-ḥikma: al-ʿaql wa-al-ʿāqil wa-al-maʿqūl. Qom: Dār farāqad li-al-ṭibāʿa wa-al-nashr, n.d., p. 181. 75. Jaʿfar Sajjādī, Farhang-i maʿārif-i islāmī, 3 vols. Tehran: Kūmash, 1373, vol. 3, p. 1352. 76. Ḥasan Ḥasan Zāda Āmulī, Dū risālah muthul wa-mithāl. Tehran: Ṭūbā, 1382, p. 205. He also discusses the world of image in Ḥasan Ḥasan Zāda Āmulī, ʿUyūn masāʾil al-nafs wa-sharḥ al-ʿuyūn fī sharḥ al-ʿuyūn. Tehran: Muʾassasah-i intishārāt amīr kabīr, 1385, p. 729. 77. See, for example, F. Rosenthal, The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1947, p. 37. 78. For the case of Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s epistle, see van Lit, “Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī on the world of image,” pp. 116–136. 79. Corbin, Terre céleste et corps de résurrection; Rahman, “Dreams, Imagination, and ʿĀlam al-Mithāl,” pp. 167–180; Landolt, “Les idées platoniciennes et le monde de l’image dans la pensée du Šayh al-Išrāq Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī (ca. 1155–1191),” pp. 233–250.

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80. Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-makkīya fī maʿrifat al-asrār al-malikīya wa-l-mulkīya, 4 vols. Cairo: Dār al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya al-kubrā, 1911, vol. 1, p. 48; vol. 2, p. 128. 81. Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, Sharḥ al-Arbaʿīn ḥadīthan, ed. H. K. Yilmaz. Qom: Bīdār, 1372, pp. 32, 66, 106, 110, 129–130, 133, 136, 142–147, 181; Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, al-Fukūk, ed. M. Khojavi. Tehran: Mawlā, 1371, pp. ­205–208, 226–234, 255, 273. 82. ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. M. Hadi Zade. Tehran: Anjuman-i asār va mufākhir-i farhangī, 2004, pp. 141, 369, 370. 83. Dāwud Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. H. Hasan Zade Amoli, 2 vols. Qom: Bustan-e ketab-e Qom, 2004, p. 117. 84. Muʾayyad al-Dīn Jundī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. S. J. D. Ashtiyani. Qom: Bustan-e ketab-e Qom, 2002, pp. 32, 243, 392, 393, 422; Kāshānī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 128, 137, 209, 245, 246, 401, 411, 467, 501, 540, 543, 544, 549; Qayṣarī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 85, 92, 111, 127, 222, 259, 567, 579, 582, 588, 670, 921, 964, 982, 1108, 1172, 1193; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. I. Asim. Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2004, pp. 113, 181, 434; Jāmī, Naqd al-nuṣūṣ fī sharḥ naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ, ed. W. C. Chittick. Tehran: Anjuman-i shāhanshāhī-i falsafah-i īrān, 1977, pp. 52–57, 155–164, 179–181. 85. Jundī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 166, 217, 424; Kāshānī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, p. 203; Qayṣarī Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 132, 555, 565, 585, 668, 737, 881; Jāmī, Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, pp. 295, 446, 493; Jāmī, Naqd al-nuṣūṣ, pp. 52, 56, 156, 157, 162. 86. For example,, Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī, La philosophie shi’ite [= Jāmiʿ al-asrār wa-munabbiʿ al-anwār], ed. H. Corbin and O. Yahia. Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1969, pp. 268–271, 355– 357, 462, 467, 558–561, 570; Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī, Tafsīr al-muḥīṭ al-aʿẓam wa-al-baḥr al-akhḍam fī taʾwīl kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz al-muḥkam, ed. M. Musavi Tabrizi, 7 vols. Qom: al-ʿAhd al-thaqāfī nūr ʿalā nūr, 1995, vol. 1, p. 546; vol. 5, pp. 34 ff. 87. Cf. R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921, p. 122. 88. For example, Shams al-Dīn Fanārī, Miṣbāḥ al-uns, ed. M. Khojavi. Tehran: Mawlā, 1382, pp. 16, 18, 89, 94, 181, 184, 231, 262, 271, 272, 328, 347, 349, 373, 382, 383, 393, 413–429, 434, 437, 456, 463, 479, 503, 508, 511, 517–521, 537, 578, 579, 634, 653–656. This is clearly mostly inspired

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by Ibn ʿArabī’s commentary tradition. However, at pp. 421, 422, 425 ff, he is citing from ṣāḥib al-ishrāq about the world of image, though not this exact passage. Next to Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, he also refers to Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq (p. 464) and he may have also been citing from Shahrazūrī’s Rasāʾil (compare, e.g., Fanārī, p. 425, with Shahrazūrī, Rasāʾil, p. 461). I deem this not the place to go into this in more detail. 89. Aḥmad Sirhindī, Muʻarrab al-maktūbāt al-sharīfah al-marsūm bi-l-durar al-maknūnāt al-nafīsa, ed. M. M. Manzalāwī, 3 vols. Istanbul: Fazilet naşriyat ve matbaacılık, 1973, vol. 1, pp. 44–46: al-Maktūb al-ḥādī wa-althalāthūn ilā al-mullā Badr al-Dīn fī taḥqīq ʿālam al-arwāḥ wa-ʿālam al-mithāl wa-ʿālam al-ajsād; vol. 2, pp. 99–103: al-Maktūb al-thāmin wa-lkhamsūn ilā l-khwāja Muḥammad al-Taqī fī istifsārihi ʿan ʿālam al-mithāl wa-fī radd jamāʿa yaqūlūna bi-l-tanāsukh wa-bayān al-kumūn wa-l-burūz wa-mā yunāsibu dhālika. 90. Rūḥ Allāh Khumaynī, “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam wa-Miṣbāḥ al-uns,” Lithograph, Qom, n.d., p. 126.

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Chapter 7 1. Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbā fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭṭibāʾ, ed. N. Rida. Beirut: Maktabat al-ḥayāt, 1965, p. 644. Translated in Dawānī Shawākil al-ḥūr, p. ii. 2. Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 554. 3. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, p. 232/Philosophy, p. 149. 4. S. Ahmed, What is Islam?, p. 26. 5. Suhrawardī, Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, vol. 2, pp. 242–243/Philosophy, p. 155.

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Bibliography

This bibliography provides all sources mentioned in this study, except encyclopedia entries of which only the encyclopedia itself is given here. Years of publication merely reflect whatever is on the cover of the book I am using, regardless of whether it is based on the Gregorian, Hijrī-Qamrī, or Hijrī-Shamsī calendar, and also regardless of whether it is the original year of publication or the year of a reprint. In cases where dates in different calendars are mentioned, I note the Gregorian date. With the myriad of editions and reprints, coming from different parts of the world, I have deemed it more important to indicate which exact book I have used, rather than indicating exactly when a publication first saw the light.

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Manuscripts

Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn, “Kashf al-ḥaqāʾiq fī tajrīd al-daqāʾiq,” MS Ayasofya 2453, Istanbul, 663h. Anonymous, “Mulakhkhaṣ muʿaẓẓam mā kutiba ʿalā l-Hayākil al-nūriyya alSuhrawardiyya,” MS Isl. Ms. 975, University of Michigan Library, n.d. Dawānī, Jalāl al-Dīn. “Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥāshiyat Al-Maṭāliʿ Al-Sharīfa,” Arabic MSS suppl. 85, Beinecke Library, Yale University, 957h. Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Kurdī al-Zībārī, “Naẓm Hayākil al-nūr,” MS Laleli 2486, Istanbul, 1019h. 237 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

238 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

Ḥillī, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Kāshī, “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Ragip Paşa 852, Istanbul, 752h. Ilyās ibn Khiḍr, “Firdaws-i taʾwīl tarjama Muʾnis al-ushshāq,” MS Haci Resit Bey 108, Istanbul, n.d. Khojazāda, “Tahāfut al-falāsifa,” MS Bayazid 1990, Istanbul, n.d. Khumaynī, Rūḥ Allāh, “Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam wa-Miṣbāḥ al-uns,” Lithograph, Qom, n.d. Muḥammad Bāqir al-Jīlānī, “Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS 11619, Marʿashī, Qom, fll. 119–123. Muḥammad Bāqir al-Jīlānī, “Ḥāshiya ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS 16679, National Library of Iran, Tehran, fll. 29b–33a. Nayrīzī, Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Laleli 2523, Istanbul, n.d. Nayrīzī, Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Ragip Paşa 854, Istanbul, 1115h. Nayrīzī, Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd, “Ḥawāshī ʿalā Shawākil al-ḥūr,” MS Majlis-e Shura 1887, Tehran, 943h. Nayrīzī, Ḥajjī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd, “Miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ fī sharḥ ḥaqāʾiq al-Alwāḥ,” MS Şehid Ali Paşa 1739, Istanbul, 943h. Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn, “al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī l-ḥikma wa-al-manṭiq,” MS Or. Oct. 623, Berlin, 933h. Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq,” MS Landberg 7, Beinecke Library, New Haven, 1296h. Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Damad Ibrahim 819, Istanbul, n.d. Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880, Istanbul, n.d. Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Nuruosmaniye 2693, Istanbul, n.d. Shahrazūrī, “Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt,” MS Or. 578, Leiden, 704h. Shīrāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn, “Sharḥ al-Najāt,” MS Ragip Paşa 861, Istanbul, 1112h. Suhrawardī, “al-Mashāriʿ wa-l-Muṭāraḥāt,” MS Or. 365, Leiden, 707h. Suhrawardī, “al-Mashāriʿ wa-l-Muṭāraḥāt,” MS Topkapi A 3377, Istanbul, 865h. Tūdhī, Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Faḍl Allāh ibn Aḥmad, “Sharḥ al-Lamaḥāt,” MS Topkapi A 3251, Istanbul, n.d. ʿUbayd Allāh Khān Tarkhān Ḥasanī, “Sharḥ Hayākil al-nūr,” MS Ar. h III 183 A, Punjab University Library, Lahore, 1209h.

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bibliography | 239 Unpublished Studies Al-Akiti, M. A., “The Maḍnūn of al-Ghazālī: A Critical Edition of the Unpublished Major Maḍnūn with Discussion of His Restricted, Philosophical Corpus,” unpublished PhD thesis, Oxford University, 2007. Ibn Sīnā, “Livre de la genèse et du retour,” unpublished translation Y. Michot, Oxford, 2002. Marcotte, R., “Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and his Interpretation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) Philosophical Anthropology,” unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2000. Muehlethaler, L., “Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) on the Eternity of the Human Soul: the Three Treatises on the Soul and Related Texts,” unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 2010. Privot, M., “Le Kitâb al-rumûz d’al-Shahrazûrî: une oeuvre ishrâqî?,” unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Liège, 2007. Published Materials

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ʿAbduh, M., ʿAḍud al-Dīn Ījī and Dawānī, al-Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAbduh [= ḥāshiya ʿalā sharḥ al-ʿaqāʾid al-ʿaḍudiyya li-Dawānī], ed. S. Dunyā, 2 vols. Cairo: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1958. Adams, C. J., “The Hermeneutics of Henry Corbin,” in R. C. Martin (ed.), Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985, pp. 129–150. Afghānī, Jamāl al-Dīn and Muḥammad ʿAbduh, al-Taʿlīqāt ʿalā Sharḥ al-ʿAqāʾid al-ʿaḍudiyya, ed. S. H. Khosrawshahi. Cairo: Maktabat al-shurūq al-dawliyya, 2002. Āghā Buzurg, al-Dharīʾa ilá taṣānīf al-shīʿa, 26 vols. Beirut: Dār al-aḍwāʾ, 1983. Aharī, ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Ḥamza, al-Aqṭāb al-quṭbiyya aw al-bulgha fī al-ḥikma, ed. M. T. Danishpazuh. Tehran: Anjuman-i islāmī-i ḥikmat va falsafah-i Īrān, 1358. Ahmed, A. Q., “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses: Innovation in the Margins,” Oriens 41 (2013): 317–348. Ahmed, S., What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Aḥsāʾī, Aḥmad, Sharḥ al-ʿArshiyya, ed. Ṣ. A. al-Dabab, 3 vols. Beirut: Muʾassasa shams hijr, 2005.

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Appendix A: Edited Passages

I include some small passages from Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt and one passage from Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ. There is also an overview of all historical figures mentioned in this study, together with their Hijrī dates and an approximate death year in Common Era notation. On orthography, the following should be noted. The manuscript evidence does not always show the diacritical markers, but I have added these throughout. In contrast, vocalization markers are sparsely present, but I have omitted them. Likewise, I have not added shadda’s, but I did insert hamza’s. Conjugation of verbs are corrected without giving the variations in the manuscripts. For Shahrazūrī, I have given preference to Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880, as the first page states it is “from the pen of the author” (bi-khaṭṭ al-muṣannif), and also to Leiden Or. 578, which is the oldest dated copy. For Suhrawardī, I have given preference to the Leiden manuscript, being the older of the two. For variant readings and other notable phenomena, the following abbreviations are used:

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‫ د‬ ‫ ف‬ ‫ ل‬ ‫ ن‬

Damad Ibrahim Paşa 819 Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880 Leiden Or. 578 Nuruosmaniye 2693

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appendix a: edited passages | 257

Brief Description of the Manuscripts Damad Ibrahim Paşa 819 is an undated, anonymous copy. It is seemingly uncollated and complete. It has three seals on the first page, and shows the title Kitāb al-taʿlīqāt fī sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. There are headpieces on folios 1b, 98a, and 212b. They are similar to each other and in the same decorative style as the frontispiece, featuring the basmala in Kufic script. The frontispiece is rectangular, divided into three boxes, of which the outer two are narrow. Blue and gold dominate, with red, black, and white accents. The text reads: bi-rasm muṭālaʿa al-sulṭān al-aʿẓam // mawlā mulūk al-ʿarab wa-al-ʿajam al-sulṭān muḥammad // hādhā al-kitāb al-taʿlīqāt // fī sharḥ al-talwīḥāt li-l-ḥakīm // al-ilāhī wa-l-ʿālim al-ṣamadānī // al-mashhūr bi-l-shahrazūrī // raḥimahu al-qādir al-ghanī // bin al-sulṭān murād khān khallada Allāh taʿālā // khilāfatahu wa-ayyada sulṭānahu wa-ʿadālatahu. Folio numbers are indicated in pencil. There are twenty-seven lines to the page, framed with a double gilded border. Rubrics are also gilded. There seems to be no use of catchwords. It is written in a thin nastaʿlīq, mostly pointed, always using distinct points. It is unvocalized yet legible. The digital images I work with are 2051 × 1925 showing two pages, at about 500kb. The cut is tight and color balance is fine. Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880 is an undated, anonymous copy. The margin shows corrections in the same hand. It is incomplete, missing at least a small part of the end. At 295b the text ends abruptly, just before the actual end of the text, corresponding to Damad Ibrahim Paşa 819, folio 375a, line 5, whereas Damad Ibrahim Paşa 819 ends on folio 376a. Statements on the first page claim it is “in the pen of the author” (bi-khaṭṭ al-muṣannif). Further on the first page are: two seals; remnants of erased text; three lines in red ink, the middle crossed out, perhaps reading min ʿawārī al-zamān ʿanhu // – // wa-li-ṣaḥḥ? bi-khaṭṭ muʾallifihi. Titles present on the first page are Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt bi-khaṭṭ al-shāriḥ and Kitāb al-tanqīḥāt fī sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Folio numbers are in black ink, in an Oriental hand. The text runs on twenty-nine lines to the page, unframed, in black ink. Rubrics have been written first in black, then traced (perhaps later?) with red ink. It is written in a naskh that is not

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258 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

always easy to read, partly due to the absence of many diacritics. The digital images I work with are 2041 × 1481 showing two pages, at about 600kb. The cut is tight and color balance looks a bit too orange. Nuruosmaniye 2693 is an undated, anonymous copy. Clearly legible. It is incomplete, missing at least a small part of the end. It is likely a descendant from Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880, as the text stops at the same point. However, this end is not abrupt but shows intention. The last line has a gilded underlining and from there a space is reserved for a colophon, which is, unfortunately, not utilized. Further, in cases where Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880 is difficult to read and open to a wrong reading, Nuruosmaniye 2693 occasionally shows that wrong reading. On the first page, two seals and a waqf statement are given, but no title. On folio 1b there is an illuminated headpiece. 88b and 187b show space for an illuminated headpiece, but they were not executed. The headpiece is in gold and blue, with white, pink, and cyan flowers. It is constructed to highlight a gilded text box, but there is no text. Folio numbers are in pencil and only on every ten pages. The text runs on twenty-seven lines to the page, in a gilded frame, in black ink, with red rubrics. There are sparse corrections and rubrics in the margin. It is written in a thick nastaʿlīq. The margin shows a few corrections, in the same hand. It is clearly legible. The digital images I work with are 2592 × 1944 showing two pages, at about 600kb. The cut is tight and color balance looks a bit too green, with uneven lighting. Leiden Or. 578 has been described by Joep Lameer. He informs us of a completion date of 704/1304–5. He also informs us that it is incomplete. It only covers the Physics and Metaphysics, and has at least one big omission in the part on Physics. There are a number of elements on the first page, among them a seal and a red wax stamp, a passage on Suhrawardī, a few ownership statements, and, on top, a title reading Taḥrīr al-fann al-thānī min Sharḥ Talwīḥāt al-Suhrawardī li-Ibn Kammūna. The identification with Ibn Kammūna is incorrect. On the bottom a white piece of paper is glued which indicates it is from the collection of Levinus Warner. Folio numbers are in pencil in a European hand. The text runs twenty-five lines to the page, unframed, in black ink. There are sparse corrections, and also sparse use of red

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-

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

appendix a: edited passages | 259

overlining. Rubrics are in black but clearly visible by being written in a larger and thicker style. The script is an unstable naskh, which is nonetheless legible. The digital images I work with are 4928 × 3264 showing two pages, at about 7mb. The cut extends well beyond the codex and color balance is great, with slightly uneven lighting. Leiden Or. 365 was finished in 707/1307 in 283 folia. It seems to be a complete copy of al-Mashāriʿ, including Logic, Physics, and Metaphysics. On the first page, a stamp and an ownership statement are present, as well as a red wax stamp and a note glued to the first page with the printed words “Ex Legato Viri Ampliss. LEVINI WARNERI.” These are, however, minor aspects of the page, as half of the page features an impressive frontispiece. It consists of a house-shaped box with the top facing down. Below it are three vignettes. The dominant color is gold, with the contrasting color being what seems to be silver. Blue was also used to highlight the borders, but it is nearly completed faded. A geometric border encapsulates the text Kitāb al-Mashāriʿ wa-l-muṭāraḥāt // li-l-shaykh al-shahīd Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī // raḥmat Allāh ʿalayhi // wa-sallam. Folio numbers are in pencil in a European hand. The paper pages are rather large, and feature a rather casual naskh that runs on twenty-three lines per page. Rubrics are in oversized, thick black. On rare occasions, red ink is used to overline a first word, but this does not replace the oversized rubrics. Rarely, corrections in the same hand are visible in the margin. Catchwords have been inserted throughout. It is, with practice, legible. The digital images I work with are 4928 × 3264 showing two pages, at about 7mb. The cut extends well beyond the codex and color balance is great, with slightly uneven lighting. Topkapi A 3377 is a superb, luxurious execution of Suhrawardī al-Mashāriʿ, in 352 numbered folia, finished in 865/1460. The first page has two old stamps and one modern stamp. A basmala in Ottoman style. In black, on top, a title reads Kitāb al-Mashāriʿ wa-lmuṭāraḥāt li-l-Suhrawardī // fī l-manṭiq wa-l-ḥikma falsafiyya. The page is dominated by a frontispiece. The frontispiece is circular, with blue and gold as its dominant colors and red and purple as secondary colors. It is round and made up of layers. The outer layer is blue, with

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260 | the world of image in islamic philosophy

purple and red flowers. Then follows a layer with a gilded geometric pattern. Inside the text reads: hadhā kitāb [sic] // al-Muṭāraḥāt taʾlīf al-ʿālim // al-muḥaqqiq wa-l-ḥalīm al-mudaqqiq Shihāb // al-milla wa-l-dīn al-Suhrawardī // raḥimahu Allāh taʿālā. Folios 1b and 132b show headpieces in the same style as the frontispiece. They are blue and gold, with in white a basmala in Kufic script. Page numbers are in pencil, in a European hand. The paper features a gilded border around the text. It is written in a fine nastaʿlīq in black ink, with gilded rubrics, running on twenty-one lines per page. Only rarely is a correction visible in the margin. Catchwords are used, but due to the binding and the fact that I am working from images, only their contours are visible. The digital images I work with are 3264 × 2448 showing two pages, at about 1.6mb. The cut is good and color balance is great. 1. “ʿawālim ukhrā fī l-wujūd”

From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim 819, 136a; Fazil Ahmed Paşa 880, 107b; Nuruosmaniye 2693, 121a–121b; Leiden Or. 578, 38a. Cf. Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 2, p. 121.

‫٭٭٭‬ ‫ وقال هرمس وأنباذقلس وفيثاغورس وأفلاطن‬1‫هذا ما قاله المعلم الأول وأتباعه المشاون‬ ‫وأفاضل القدماء أن عوالم أخرى في الوجود لها مقادير غير هذا العالم الجسماني وغير النفس‬ ‫والعقل فيه العجائب ا�لكثيرة من الأفلاك وا�لكواكب والعناصر والمركبات والأقاليم والمدن‬ ‫ل هذه‬ ّ ‫ والجبال والرجال والأشجار والمعادن والصور المليحة والقبيحة ما لا يتناهى وك‬2‫والبحار‬ ‫في الإقليم الثامن الذي فيه جابلقا وجابرصا وهورقليا ذات العجائب وهي في وسط ترتيب العالم‬ ‫ولهذا العالم أفقان أدنى وهو ألطف من الفلك الأعلى وهو محيط به ويرتقع عن إدراك الحواس‬ ‫وأعلى يلى النفس الناطقة وهو أكثف منها والطبقات المختلفة الأنواع الغير المتناهية من اللطيفة‬ ‫وا�لكثيفة والملذة والمؤلمة منهما ولابد للسالك من المرور عليه والفضلاء هم الذين يترقون عنه إلى‬ ‫فضاء الأنوار المشرقة وقد يشاهدها بعض ا�لكهنة والسحرة وأرباب العلوم الروحانية وردّ المعلم‬ ‫ يتوجه على ظاهر أقاو يلهم دون مقاصدهم‬3‫الأول‬ ‫وإذا بطل الخلاء والعوالم المتعددة فالأجرام كلها متراصة في حشو المحدد كلها كرة واحدة‬   

‫ل المخطوطات‬ ّ ‫ كذا في ك‬.1 ‫ البحا‬:‫ ن‬.2 - :‫ ن‬.3

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‫‪appendix a: edited passages | 261‬‬

‫وبيضة واحدة لا مكان ها فيكون المحيط الذي لا مكان له روحانيا متصلا بأفق العالم الأوسط‬ ‫ولكل نوع من الأجرام المتكمنة في مقعره نوع من المكان يوازي اعداد َه اعداد ُه‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫”‪2. “li-l-inṭibāʿ wa-l-muthul sirr‬‬ ‫‪From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim 819,‬‬ ‫;‪201b; Fazil Ahmad Paşa 880, 158a; Nuruosmaniye 2693, 177b‬‬ ‫‪Leiden  578, 103a. Cf. Ibn Kammūna Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 2,‬‬ ‫‪pp. 288 ff.‬‬

‫٭٭٭‬ ‫قوله وللانطباع والمثل‪ 4‬سرّ لا نذكره إلا في حمكة الإشراق‬ ‫أقول لما أبطل قاعدتي الشعاع والانطباع بالكلية مع انا إذا غمضنا العين يمكننا تخيل جميع‬ ‫ما في العالم وكذا يمكننا تخيل أمور كرة‪ 5‬لا توجد في‪ 6‬الأعيان ويميز بينها وبين ما عداها من‬ ‫الموجودات مع عدم انطباعها في عضو من الأعضاء وإذا لم يكن موجودة في العالم الجسماني‬ ‫فيكون بالضرورة موجودة في عالم آخر أفضل من عالم الحس لأن العدم الصرف لا يمكن أن‬ ‫يشاهد ويميز بينه وبين غيره وذلك العالم الذي يشاهد فيه هذه الصور ونتخيل فيه هذه الأشياء‬ ‫يسميه الحكماء الأوائل عالم المثل المعقلة في الهواء الروحاني والأشباح المنزه عن المكان والزمان‬ ‫والحلول في مح ّ‬ ‫ل فلا بد من إثبات هذا العالم المثالي‪ 7‬العظيم لئلا يلزم بعض المحالات المذكورة‬ ‫والحاجة إلى إثباته إنما هو للمبتدي في الحكمة وإلا فالفضلاء من المتألهين يشاهدونه أعظم من‬ ‫مشاهدة البصر للألوان فإن كذبتهم بالحجة الضعيفة كذبوك بالمشاهدة القو ية ويندفع بإثبات هذا‬ ‫العالم كثير من الإشكالات الواردة على العلوم المقدسة الحكمية ولا يتم المعرفة بالحكمة‪ 8‬إلا به‬ ‫وهو عالم عظيم غير متناه‪ 9‬الأشخاص وسيأتي تتمة بحيث فيه في الإلهيات فالإدراك إما أن يكون‬ ‫كليا أو جزئيا فإن كان كليا فإدراك بحصول صورة‪ 10‬في الذات المدركة وإن كان جزئيا فإن كان‬ ‫‪11‬‬ ‫هو ذات المدرك فإدراكه لها يكون بعدم غيبية عن ذاته وإن كان غير ذاته وكان مجردا عند‬ ‫المادة فإدراكه له بالمشاهدة التامة أو الناقصة وإن كان حاضرا عند الحس والتفتت النفس‬ ‫إليه أدركت بمجرد حضوره عند الحس وإن كان غائبا عن الحواس الظاهرة كالمدركات الخيالية‬ ‫ ‪ .4‬ن‪ :‬الميل‬ ‫ ‪ .5‬ن‪ :‬كثيرة‬ ‫ ‪ .6‬د‪ :‬في الا‬ ‫ ‪ .7‬ن‪ :‬المثال‬ ‫ ‪ .8‬ن‪- :‬‬ ‫ ‪ .9‬ن‪ :‬متناهي‬ ‫‪ .10‬ن‪ :‬سورة‬ ‫‪ .11‬د‪ :‬عن‬

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‫‪262 | the world of image in islamic philosophy‬‬

‫فإدراكه إنما يكون باتصال النفس واتحادها بالعالم المثالي ويشرط في ذلك المظاهر الصقيلة وهي‬ ‫المرايا من الحواس الباطنة والظاهرة والهواء والماء‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫”‪3. “aḥwāl al-nās fī l-dunyā ʿalā aqsām thalātha‬‬ ‫‪From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim 819,‬‬ ‫‪334a; Fazil Ahmad Paşa 880, 262a; Nuruosmaniye 2693, 294a; Leiden‬‬ ‫‪578, 231a. Cf. Ibn Kammūna Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 408 ff.‬‬

‫٭٭٭‬ ‫وأجاب بأن أحوال الناس فى الدنيا على أقسام ثلثة قسم أول بالغ فى الجمال والصحة وقسم‬ ‫ثاني متوسط فيهما وهم الاكثرون على مراتب بعضها يقرب من الطرف الأشرف وبعضها الى‬ ‫الارذل وقسم ثالث هم البالغون في النقصان من القبح والعاهات وهم أقل من المتوسطين‬ ‫بكثير وإذا نسبناهم إلى مجموع القسمين الاولين كانوا في غاية القلة فكذلك يكون أحوال النفوس‬ ‫الإنسانية في الاخرة على أقسام ثلثة الأول البالغون في تحصيل ا�لكمالات العقلية من العلوم‬ ‫النظر ية والعملية الثاني المتوسطون في تحصيل ذلك وهم الاكثر على تفاوت مراتبهم من القرب‬ ‫إلى الطرف الأشرف والأخس الثالث البالغون فى الجهالات البسيطة والمركبة والأخلاق السيئة‬ ‫‪12‬‬ ‫وهم أقل من القسم الثانى بكثير وإذا نسبناهم إلى مجموع القسمين الأولين كانوا في غاية القلة‬ ‫ولما كان القسم الأول من أهل الدنيا البالغين فى ا�لكمالات البدنية ينالون من السعادة العاجلة‬ ‫قسطا وافرا فكذلك أهل القسم الثاني أعني المتوسطين قسطا متوسطا و يختلف ذلك النيل بحسب‬ ‫القرب من الطرف الأشرف والأخس وكذلك أهل القسم الثالث أعني البالغين فى النقصان‬ ‫ينالون من ذلك قسطا حقيرا فهم عرض للأذى وهدف للبلاء فكذا حال الأقسام الثلثة فإن‬ ‫القسم الأول وهم البالغون فى تحصيل ا�لكمالات العقلية ينالون من السعادة الاجلة قسطا وافرا‬ ‫القسم الثاني وهم المتوسطون ينالون من ذلك قسطا متوسطا بحسب مراتبهم من‪ 13‬القرب إلى‬ ‫الطرف الأشرف والأخس والقسم الثالث وهم الأقلون ينالون من الشقاوة الاخرو ية ما توجبه‬ ‫حاله ولما كان الطرفان نزرا بالنسبة إلى المتوسطين فيهما وكان الوسط هو الغالب فإذا أضيف‬ ‫الطرف الأشرف إلى الأوسط كانت السعادة الأجلة الأخرو ية والفوز هو الغالب وظهر من‬ ‫ذلك أن ال�خير فى الإنسان هو الغالب لا الشر كما ذكروه‬ ‫٭٭٭‬

‫‪ .12‬د‪- :‬‬ ‫‪ .13‬د‪ :‬في‬

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‫‪appendix a: edited passages | 263‬‬

‫‪4. “al-hayʾāt wa-l-malakāt al-raddiyya idhā tamakkanat baʿd‬‬ ‫”‪al-mufāraqa‬‬ ‫‪From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim‬‬ ‫‪819,  346a; Fazil Ahmad Paşa 880, 272a; Nuruosmaniye 2693,‬‬ ‫‪305a; Leiden 578, 243a. Cf. Ibn Kammūna Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3,‬‬ ‫‪pp. 454 ff.‬‬

‫٭٭٭‬ ‫قوله والهيئات والملكات الردية إذا تمكنت بعد المفارقة‬ ‫‪14‬‬ ‫أقول يريد أن ينبه على بقاء الهيئات والملكات الردية المضادة ل�لكمالات النفسانية التي هي‬ ‫أسباب الشقاوة في النفس بعد المفارقة البدنية وحصول التألم لحصول السبب الموجب للألم فإنه‬ ‫الهيئات الردية إذا تمكنت من النفس بعد المفارقة كانت بعدها ككونها قبلها إلا أنها زال عنها‬ ‫مانع الألم و هو الاشتغال بالمحسوسات فتألم تألما‪ 15‬عظيما بتلك الهيئات الردية المضادة ل�لكمالات‬ ‫العقلية وعلاقة النفس بالبدن لما لم يكن علاقة انطباع بل علاقة شوقية فقط فإذا لم تحصل م�لكة‬ ‫الاتصال بالعقل الفعال بتحصيل الحكمة النظر ية والعملية وحيل؟ بينها وبين ما يشتهي من اللذات‬ ‫الحسية لفقد الحواس فيتألم بالجهل المركب الذي هو عدم العلم بالحق مع اعتقاد نقيضه فإن من‬ ‫كان في هذه أعمى فهو في الآخرة أعمى‪ 16‬واضل سبيلا فتبقى هذه النفس وأمثالها معذبة بأنواع‬ ‫العذاب الأليم مقهورة مخذولة ما لها من شفيع ولاحميم في نار روحانية أشد من النار الجسمانية‬ ‫والجهل المركب هو الذي لا يرجى فيه النجاة عند هؤلاء لعدم زوال ذلك الاعتقاد والموجب‬ ‫للعذاب‪ 17‬فإن الجهل المركب المضاد لليقين الذي صار صورة للنفس‪ 18‬لا يفارق فلا جرم يدوم‬ ‫التعذب به‪ 19‬وأنت إذا تأملت الأصول السالفة من أن كل نفس لها كمال عامة هو التجرد عن‬ ‫المادة والرحمة الإلهية يقتضي إيصال كل ما له كمال إلى كماله على أن في ذلك العالم تجددات‬ ‫ولولم يكن إلا تلاحق نفوس وفيض أنوار تكفي ذلك في زوال الهيئات الردية علمية كانت أو‬ ‫عملية وما عدا الجهل المركب من الهيئات الردية الحاصلة بسبب عوارض غريبة فإنه يزول ولا‬ ‫يدوم فيزول العذاب الحاصل بسببه وذلك كاعتقادات العوام والمقلدين الغير الراسخة وكالأخلاق‬ ‫والملكات الردية المستحكمة وغير المستحكمة‪ 20‬وكلها يكون بسبب غواش غريبة فيزول بعد الموت‬ ‫إما لعدم رسوخها أو لأنها هيئات مستفادة من الأفعال والأمزجة فيزول بزوالها ولما كانت هذه‬ ‫‪ .14‬د‪- :‬‬ ‫‪ .15‬ل‪ :‬بألما‬ ‫‪ .16‬ن‪- :‬‬ ‫‪ .17‬ل‪ :‬للداب‬ ‫‪ .18‬ل‪ :‬النفس‬ ‫‪“ .19‬فإن الجهل ‪ ...‬التعذب به” في الهامش‪ ،‬و�لكنه غير واضح‬ ‫‪ .20‬ن‪“ :‬وغير المستحكمة” ‪-‬‬

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‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬

‫‪264 | the world of image in islamic philosophy‬‬

‫الهيئات مختلفة في شدة الرداة وضعفها وفي سرعة الزوال وبطوة اختلف التعذب بها بعد المفارقة‬ ‫في ا�لكم وا�لكيف بحسب الاختلافين‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫”‪5. “yakūnu fī l-hawāʾ jirm murakkab min bukhār wa-dukhān‬‬ ‫‪From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim 819,‬‬ ‫‪346b; Fazil Ahmad Paşa 880, 272b (margin); Nuruosmaniye 2693,‬‬ ‫‪305b; Leiden 578, 243b.‬‬ ‫‪Cf. Ibn Kammūna Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 458 ff; Suhrawardī,‬‬ ‫‪al-Talwīḥāt, Œuvres philosophiques/Majmūʿa fī l-ḥikma al-ilāhiyya,‬‬ ‫]‪ed. H. Corbin, 4 vols. Tehran: Institut franco-iranien, [1945–1970‬‬ ‫;‪2009, vol. 1, p. 89; Suhrawardī, The Philosophy of Illumination, p. 148‬‬ ‫‪Shahrazūrī, Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, p. 550.‬‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫وأما ما قاله بعض الحكماء أنه يكون في الهواء جرم مركب من بخار ودخان موضوعا لتخيلات‬ ‫بعض نفوس البله لتحصل لهم سعادة وهمية وكذا‪ 21‬لبعض الأشقياء تحصل لهم شقاوة وهمية‬ ‫فهو كلام لا أصل ولا حاصل له ٭ فإنه إن قرب من كرة النار فتحيله إلى جوهرها بسرعة وإن‬ ‫كان ٭ في الهواء ٭ الحار يتحلل ٭ كما ذكرنا وإن كان في الهواء البار والزمهري‪ 22‬فكاثف‪ 23‬ونزل‬ ‫على ما عرفت وليس في كرة الهواء جرم محيط يغلب عليه اليبس‪ 24‬بحيث يحفظه عن التبدد‬ ‫ويمنع غيره عن ممازجته حتى يتعين فيه محل التخيل متشكلا‪ 25‬به ولا بد وأن يكون في ذلك‬ ‫الجرم جوهر يابس لتنحفظ فيه الصور وجوهر رطب لتقبل الصور ٭ ويريد ببعض العلماء إما‬ ‫أبا‪ 26‬نصر الفارابي أو‪ 27‬أبا‪ 28‬علي بن سينا رحمهما ﷲ تعالى‪ 29‬وأما أصحاب النفوس الساذجة من‬ ‫البله وهم الذين غلبت عليهم سلامة الصدر وقلة الاهتمام وكذى ‪ 30‬الصلحاء والزهاد فلكل منهم‬ ‫سعادة يليق به فإن نفوس هولاء يرتقى بعد المفارقة إلى عالم المثل المعلقة التي‪ 31‬مظاهرها بعض‬ ‫الأجسام السماو ية فكلما كانت النفس أشرف كان مظهرها ٭ أعلى ٭ والنفوس المتعلقة ٭‬ ‫‪ .21‬ل‪ ،‬ف‪ :‬كذى‬ ‫‪ .22‬ل‪ :‬الزمهريري‬ ‫‪ .23‬ل‪ :‬ىكاثف‬ ‫‪ .24‬ل‪ :‬النفس‬ ‫‪ .25‬ف‪ :‬متشكلا‬ ‫‪ .26‬د‪ .‬ف‪ :‬أبو‬ ‫‪ .27‬ل‪ :‬و‬ ‫‪ .28‬د‪ ،‬ف‪ :‬أبو‬ ‫‪ .29‬ن‪- :‬‬ ‫‪ .30‬ن‪ :‬كذا‬ ‫‪ .31‬ن‪- :‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬

‫‪appendix a: edited passages | 265‬‬

‫بالفلك الأدنى ٭ لا يزال يرتقى من الأدنى إلى‪ 32‬الأعلى بعد الاقامة في كل فلك ٭ زمانا طو يلا‬ ‫أو قصيرا بحسب الاستعداد القريب أو البعيد إلى أن يرتقى إلى الفلك الأعلى ٭ فقد يستعد ٭‬ ‫بعض النفوس التي انقطع شوقها إلى الجسمانيات للتجرد المحض فتخلص إلى عالم العقل ٭‬ ‫وإلا فبقي‪ 33‬هناك أو في بعض الأفلاك السافلة عنه لعدم تصورهم العالم العقلي وعدم انقطاع‬ ‫عن الأجرام وهم بعد على القوة التي لاجلها احتاجت النفس إلى علاقة البدن وهذه النفوس‬ ‫التي صارت الاجرام السماو ية مظاهر لها تتخيلون بها مثلا عجيبة وصورا غريبة أنيقة ٭ من حور‬ ‫عين حسان ومرد وغلمان صبحان كما قال وحور عين كأمثال اللؤلؤ‪ 34‬المكنون وكما قال في حق‬ ‫الغلمان إذا رايتهم حسبتهم لؤلؤا‪ 35‬منثورا ومن أطعمة مختلفة الألوان وأشربة مختلفة الطعوم‬ ‫ويثاب من الحرير والاستبرق ومساكن طيبة كما فصله‪ 36‬الباري تعالى في القرآن وتلك الصور‬ ‫أشرف مما في مدركات هذه الاجرام الحسية فإنه لا يشوبها شيء من هذه ا�لكدورات التي في‬ ‫العالم الحسي وهي أبقى وأبعد عن الكلال والملال لشدة قوتها وكمالها فلذلك يكون ألذ ّ وأطيب‬ ‫٭ ولا تنقطع علاقتهم ٭ عن‪ 37‬هذه الأجرام على قول بعضهم إذ لا فساد في الجرم السماوي‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫”‪6. “qāma harmas (Hermes) yuṣallī laylatan‬‬ ‫‪From Shahrazūrī’s Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt. Using Damad Ibrahim 819,‬‬ ‫‪365a; Fazil Ahmad Paşa 880, 288a; Nuruosmaniye 2693, 322a; Leiden‬‬ ‫‪578, 261b. Cf. Ibn Kammūna Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 529 ff.‬‬

‫٭٭٭‬ ‫قال الشيخ فصل‪ 38‬قام هرمس يصلي ليلة عيده شمس في هيكل النور‬ ‫‪41‬‬ ‫‪40‬‬ ‫أقول مراده بهرمس النفس الكاملة الشر يفة وبالصلوة التوجه إلى ذلك العالم وليلة عيد‬ ‫شمس ليلة حضور مقصود النفس من الر ياضة والسلوك وبانشقاق عمود الصبح ظهور النفس‬ ‫عن البدن لورود الأنوار الإلهية والبوارق القدسية عليها ولما كان عمود الصبح إنما يظهر عن أفق‬ ‫الأرض عندنا فكذا عمود هذا الصبح أعني النفس الناطقة بسبب ما وصل إليها من تلك الأنوار‬ ‫العقلية عن أرض البدن فيصدق‬ ‫‪39‬‬

‫‪ .32‬ل‪- :‬‬ ‫‪ .33‬ل‪ :‬تبقى‬ ‫‪ .34‬د‪ ،‬ف‪ :‬اللؤ‬ ‫‪ .35‬ن‪ :‬لؤلؤ‬ ‫‪ .36‬ل‪ :‬فضله‬ ‫‪ .37‬د‪ :‬من‬ ‫‪ .38‬د‪ :‬ليس “فصل” بتذهيب‪.‬‬ ‫‪ .39‬د‪ :‬عند‬ ‫‪ .40‬ف‪ :‬يوجد “وبالصلوة التوجه إلى ذلك العالم” في الهامش‬ ‫‪ .41‬د‪ :‬عند‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬ ‫‬

‫‪266 | the world of image in islamic philosophy‬‬

‫قوله فرأي أرضا تخسف بقوى غضب ﷲ‪ 42‬عليها أي رأي هذا السالك أعني النفس الناطقة‬ ‫الطاهرة من البدن عند التجلي الإلهي أرض البدن وقواه التي هي القرى يخسف بها �لكون‬ ‫النفس عند هذا ا�لكشف والظهور في حيز الأنوار العقلية والذوات العلو ية والبدن حينئذ‬ ‫وقواه في حيز العالم السفلى المغضوب عليه لغاية بعده بالمرتبة عن ذلك الجناب الإلهي فنادى‬ ‫هذا السالك المرتفع عن حضيض البدن إلى أوج العقل يا أبي إشارة إما إلى الواجب لذاته أو‬ ‫إلى العقل الذي هو العلة نجتنى؟ عن ساحة جيران سوء؟ يعني القوى البدنية والعلائق المادية‬ ‫فنودي أن أعتصم بحبل الشعاع الذي هو الحكمة النظر ية والعملية الموصلتان إلى العوالم العلو ية‬ ‫واطلع إلى شرفات ا�لكرسي التي هي المجردات العقلية فإذا تحت قدمه أرض وسموات لارتفاعه‬ ‫حينئذ عن العوالم الجسمانية الف�لكية والعنصر ية وقد جرت عادة بعض القدماء بتسمية المجردات‬ ‫أفلاكا لإحاطة الأشد نورا منها بالأضعف كإحاطة السموات بعضها ببعض ولهذا قال أفلاطن‬ ‫أني ريت عند التجرد أفلاكا نور ية وهي السموات المرئية لبعض الناس في قيامتهم يوم تبدل‬ ‫الأرض غير الأرض والسموات‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫”‪7. “wa-idhā samiʿta fī aqwāl al-qudamāʾ‬‬ ‫‪From Suhrawardī’s al-Mashāriʿ (al-Ṭabīʿāt, al-Mashriʿ al-rābiʿ, faṣl‬‬ ‫;‪fī l-ajsām wa-l-muḥaddad wa-l-makān). Using Leiden 365, 155b‬‬ ‫‪Topkapi 3377, 178a. Cf. Suhrawardī, Œuvres philosophiques, vol. 1, p.‬‬ ‫‪109, and Ibn Kammūna, Sharḥ al-Talwīḥāt, vol. 3, pp. 529–530.‬‬ ‫٭٭٭‬ ‫وإذا سمعت في أقوال القدماء وجود عالم مقداري هو غير العقل والنفس فيه مدن لا يكاد‬ ‫تحصى من جملتها ما سماه الشارع جابلقا وجابرصا فلا تبادر بالتكذيب فإن السا�لكين يرونه ولهم‬ ‫فيها مآرب وأغراض بل الفر يقة‪ 43‬من السحرة وا�لكهنة فإن كذبتهم بحجة كذبوك بالمشاهدة‬ ‫فاسكت واصبر فإن وصلت إلى كتابنا المسمى بحكمة الإشراق الذي ما سبقت إلى مثله ربما تفهم‬ ‫منه شيئا ً إن أرشدك معلمك وإلا فكن مؤمنا ً بالحمكة‬ ‫٭٭٭‬

‫‬ ‫‪ .42‬ن‪ :‬ﷲ عن وجل‬ ‫‪ .43‬كذا في نسخة ليدن‪ ،‬وفي نسخة طوپقپو‪ :‬الف َر َه َة‪ .‬وفي شرح التلو يحات لابن كمونة قال المحقق نجفقلي حبيبي ‬ ‫في الهامش‪“ :‬العر يقة اصيل؛ المشارع‪ :‬الف َر َه َة‪( .‬از ف ُره ‪ -‬يفر ُه) به معانى ماهران وحاذقان‪ ”.‬وربما الفر يقة أصح‪.‬‬

‫‪Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.‬‬

Appendix B: List of Persons Mentioned in this Study

Due to the large number of people I do not indicate the sources for the following dates. Common Era (ce) is based on the Gregorian calendar. Birth and death year are based on the Hijrī-Qamrī calendar. Dates for ce are calculated based on the Hijra year, using the first month, Muharram (a few exceptions apply). It is therefore possible that the ce death year should in fact be one higher.

EDL\Jl3URGH University Press

-

267 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

Daylamī

Suhrawardī

Sijistānī Kirmānī Ibn Sīnā Bahmanyār Ghazālī Lawkarī Nasafī Sāwī Shahrastānī Abū al-Barakāt Baghdādī

Pythagoras Empedocles Plato Aristotle Plotinus Kindī Bisṭāmī Sahl al-Tustarī Thābit ibn Qurra Kulaynī Fārābī

Name

Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī

Shihāb al-Dīn Yaḥyá ibn Ḥabash ibn Amīrak Abū al-Futūḥ al-Suhrawardī

al-Shaykh al-Maqtūl

Laqab

Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī Abū Yazīd Ṭayfūr ibn ʿĪsā ibn Sharūsān al-Bisṭāmī Abū Muḥammad Sahl ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī Thābit ibn Qurra Marwān Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqub ibn Isḥāq al-Kulaynī al-Rāzī Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān ibn Uzalāgh al-Muʿallim al-Fārābī al-Thānī Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq ibn Aḥmad al-Sijistānī Ḥamīd al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kirmānī Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Sīnā al-Shaykh al-Raʾīs Abū l-Ḥasan Bahmanyār ibn al-Marzabān al-Adharbayjānī Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī al-Ghazālī Ḥujjat al-islām Faḍl ibn Muḥammad al-Lawkarī Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar Nasafī ʿUmar ibn Sahlān al-Sāwī Tāj al-Dīn Abū l-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Aḥmad al-Shahrastānī Abū al-Barakāt Hibat Allāh ibn Malká al-Baghdādī al-Baladī

Full name

549

? 479 470

448

370

203 221 250

185

Birth

? 593

587

361 411 428 458 505 517 537 540 548 ? 560

256 261 283 288 329 339

? 1197

1191

971 1020 1037 1065 1111 1123 1142 1145 1153 ? 1164

–495 –430 –347 –322 270 870 874 896 900 941 950

Death Death ce

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

Jundī Ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī Ibn Taymiyya Kāshānī Qayṣarī Naṣīr al-Dīn Kāshī Ījī

Shahrazūrī

Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī Kātibī Rīzī Urmawī Ibn Kammūna

Najm al-Dīn Kubrā Āmidī Ibn ʿArabī Tūdhī Aharī Abharī ʿUrḍī Ilyās ibn Khiḍr Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī

Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī

Name

Maḥmūd ibn Masʿūd ibn Muṣliḥ Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī Jamāl al-Dīn al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿAlī ibn Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī Taqī l-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī Dāʾūd ibn Maḥmūd al-Rūmī al-Qayṣarī ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Kashānī (al-Qāshī) al-Ḥillī ʿAḍud al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rukn al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Bakrī al-Shabānkārī al-Ījī

Muʾayyid al-Dīn al-Jundī Kamāl al-Dīn Maytham ibn ʿAlī ibn Maytham al-Baḥrānī

Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Shahrazūrī

Laqab

Fakhr al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Imām al-Khaṭīb al-Rāzī Abū al-Jannāb Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar Najm al-Dīn Kubrā Sayf al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Abū ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Sālim al-Taghlabī Muḥyī l-Dīn ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿArabī Niẓām al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Faḍl Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Tūdhī al-Hamadhānī ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Ḥamza al-Aharī Athīr al-Dīn Mufaḍḍal ibn ʿUmar al-Abharī Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-ʿUrḍī Ilyās ibn Khiḍr Naṣīr al-Dīn Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-muʿallim al-Ṭūsī al-thālith Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūnus Qūnawī Najm al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Rīzī Sirāj al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Abī Bakr al-Urmawī ʿIzz al-Dawla Saʿd ibn Manṣūr ibn Saʿd ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Hibat Allāh Ibn Kammūna al-Baghdādī

Full name

? 680

634 648 661

636

594

605

597

540 551 558

543

Birth

1310 1325 1327 1329 1350 1354 1355

1292 1299

≥ 1288

1274 1276 fl. 1280 1283 1284

1220 1233 1240 ≥ 1252 1259 1264 1265 1272 1273

1209

(Continued)

710 726 728 730 751 755 756

691 699

≥ 687

673 675 fl. 679 682 683

617 631 638 ≥ 650 657 663 664 671 672

606

Death Death ce

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

Muẓaffar Isfarāʾinī Quṭb al-Dīn Rāzī Taḥtānī Ibn Khaṭīb ʿAtāʾiqī Ḥillī Ḥaydar Āmulī Taftāzānī Ibn ʿArafa Jurjānī Jīlī Fanārī Khayālī Najafī Muṣannifak ʿAlī Qūshjī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ṭūsī Khojazāda Jāmī ʿAbd al-Karīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī Ibn Abī Jumhūr Dawānī Maybudī Khafrī Nayrīzī Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī Ṭāshkubrīzāda Harawī ʿAllāmī

Name

Laqab

Lisān al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Salmāni ibn Khaṭīb Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ʿAtāʾiqī al-Ḥillī Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ḥaydar ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥaydar al-ʿUbaydī al-Āmulī Saʿd al-Dīn Masʿūd ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Taftāzānī Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿArafa al-Tūnisī al-Mālikī ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī al-Sayyid al-Sharīf ʿAbd al-Karīm Quṭb al-Dīn ibn Ibrāhīm al-Jīlī Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah al-Fanārī Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Mūsā al-Khayālī Sharaf al-Dīn Ḥasan al-Fattāl al-Najafī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Bisṭāmī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Qūshjī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ibn Muḥammad al-Batārikānī al-Ṭūsī Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā ibn Yūsuf ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Būrsawī Nūr ad-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jāmī ʿAbd al-Karīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥusaynī al-Dashtakī al-Shīrāzī Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ḥasan ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsāʾī al-Hajarī Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Asʿad al-Kāzirūnī al-Ṣiddīqī al-Dawānī Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn ibn Muʿīn al-Dīn ʿAlī Maybudī Qāḍī Mīr Muḥammad ibn Nūr al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Khafrī Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muhammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī Ḥajjī Maḥmūd Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr ibn Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī al-Ḥusaynī al-Dashtakī Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafā ibn Khalīl Abū al-Khayr ʿIṣām al-Dīn Ṭāshkubrīzāda Muḥammad Sharīf ibn al-Harawī Abū l-Faḍl ibn Mubārak al-Nāgawrī al-ʿAllāmī

Mubāriz al-Dīn Muḥammad Muẓaffar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Naṣr al-Isfarāʾinī al-Nīsābūrī Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Rāzī al-Taḥtānī

Full name

866 901

828 838 830

817

817

803

722 716 740 767 751

713 699

? 690

718

Birth

776 781 ≥ 787 793 803 816 ~ 832 834 870 fl. 870 875 879 887 893 898 fl. 900 903 ≥ 906 908 910 942 ≥ 943 949 968 ≥ 1008 1011

759 ? 760 766

1374 1379 ≥ 1385 1390 1400 1413 ~ 1428 1430 1465 fl. 1465 1470 1474 1482 1488 1492 fl. 1494 1498 ≥ 1500 1502 1504 1535 ≥ 1536 1542 1561 ≥ 1599 1602

1358 ? 1359 1364

Death Death ce

Kalanbawī Narrāqī Hamdānī Qaṣāb Bāshā Zāda Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī Ḥasan ʿAṭṭār Buyūk Zāda Sabzawārī Mīr Zāhid

Hamdānī Shaykh Bahāʾī Sirhindī Shirwānī Ḥasan al-Kurdī Mīr Dāmād Ismāʿīl Anqaravī Mullā Ṣadrā Siyālkūtī Ḥājjī Khalīfa ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhijī Mollā Mowbad Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī Qāryāghdī Mīr Zāhid Bihbahānī ʿAllāma Majlisī Jazāʾirī Madanī Tahānawī Shāh Walī Allāh

Name

Laqab

Ibrāhīm ibn Ḥusayn al-Ḥusaynī al-Hamdānī Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn al-ʿĀmilī Aḥmad al-Farūqī al-Sirhindī Muḥammad Amīn ibn Ṣadr al-Dīn Shirwānī Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Kurdī al-Zībārī Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir al-Astarābādī Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad Rusūkh al-Dīn al-Bayrāmī al-Mawlawī al-Anqarawī Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Qawāmī al-Shīrāzī ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm ibn Shams al-Dīn al-Siyālkūtī Muṣṭafā ibn ʿAbd Allāh Ḥājjī Khalīfa Kātip Çelebī ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn al-Gilānī al-Lāhijī Mīr Dhū l-Fiqār Adhar al-Sāsānī Muḥsin Muḥammad ibn Shāh Murtaḍā ibn Shāh Maḥmūd al-Fayḍ al-Kāshānī Muḥammad Ḥusayn ibn Qāryāghdī Mīr Muḥammad Zāhid ibn Muḥammad Aslam al-Harawī ʿAlī Naqī ibn Aḥmad al-Bihbahānī Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī Niʿmat Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Jazāʾirī ʿAlī Khān ibn Aḥmad al-Madanī Muḥammad Aʿlā ibn ʿAlī al-Tahānawī Quṭb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Wajīh al-Dīn ibn Muʿaẓẓam ibn Manṣūr al-Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dahlawī Ismāʿīl ibn Muṣṭafā al-Kalanbawī Muḥammad Mahdī ibn Abī Dharr al-Narrāqī ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-Hamdānī Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad Qaṣāb Bāshā Zāda Shaykh Aḥmad ibn Zayn al-Dīn ibn Ibrāhīm al-Aḥsāʾī Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ʿAṭṭār Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad Kūzī Buyūk Zāda Mullā Hādī ibn Mahdī al-Sabzawārī ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Anṣārī al-Farangī al-Maḥallī

Full name

EDL\Jl3URGH

University Press

-

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only. 1212

1166 1180

1114

1037 1050 1052

~ 1026 1006

1017

979

953 971

Birth 1616 1621 1624 1626 1630 1631 1631 1635 1656 1657 1661 ~ 1670 1679 ≥ 1687 1689 ≥ 1696 1698 1700 1708 ≥ 1745 1762 1205 1790 1209 1794 1216 1801 ? 1235 1819 1241 1825 1250 1834 1253 1837 1289 1872 1304 1886 (Continued)

1025 1030 1034 1036 1040 1041 1041 1045 1067 1068 1072 ~ 1081 1090 ≥ 1098 1101 ≥ 1108 1110 1112 1120 ≥ 1158 1176

Death Death ce

Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.

Kirmānī Afghānī Tūysirkānī ʿAbduh Mīrzā Muḥammad Dahkardī Haydajī Ḥaydarābādī Āl Kāshif Ghiṭāʾ Ṭabāṭabāʾī Khumaynī Āshtiyānī Ardabīlī Ḥasan Zāda Āmulī Shīrwānī Zāriʿī

Name

Mīrzā Āqājān al-Kirmānī Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn ibn al-Sayyid Ṣaftar al-Ḥusaynī al-Afghānī Muḥammad Nabī ibn Aḥmad al-Tūysirkānī Muḥammad ʿAbduh Mīrzā Muḥammad al-Hādī Abū l-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad Bāqir Āyat Allāh al-Dahgardī al-Iṣfahānī Muḥammad al-Haydajī Qāsim ʿAlī Akhgar al-Ḥaydarābādī Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn Āl Kāshif Ghiṭāʾ Āyat Allāh Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī Āyat Allāh Sayyid Rūḥ Allāh al-Mūsawī al-Khumaynī Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn al-Āshtiyānī Āyat Allāh Mīrzā ʿAlī ʿIlmī al-Ardabīlī Āyat Allāh Ḥasan Ḥasan Zāda al-Āmulī ʿAlī al-Shīrwānī ʿAbbās ʿAlī Zāriʿī al-Sabziwārī

Full name

Laqab

1347 1384 1389

1294 1321 1320 1343

1270

1266

1254

Birth 1314 1314 1319 1323 1350 1355 1354 ?≥ 1365 1373 1402 1409 1426 1433

1896 1896 1901 1905 1931 1936 1935 ?≥ 1945 1953 1981 1989 2005 2012

Death Death ce

Index

ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhijī, 160–161 ʿAbduh, 165 Abharī, 36, 116–118, 181, 221n, 225n abstract (al-mujarrad), 55, 56, 67, 69, 70, 79, 109, 120–121, 123, 131, 136, 146, 147, 148, 153, 158–159 accident (al-ʿaraḍ), 54, 65, 89, 105–106, 121, 128, 136, 153, 183 active imagination, 7, 65 active intellect (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl), 7 Afghānī, 165, 233n Aharī, 115–116 Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, 143, 167, 168, 186–187 Āl Kāshif Ghiṭāʾ, 169, 170–171, 186 Āmidī, 36, 40, 201n angel (al-malak), 38, 64, 78, 140, 141, 158, 159, 184, 203n animal (al-ḥayawān), 26, 36, 43, 94, 104, 108, 117, 118–119, 140 appropriation and preservation, 31, 119, 126, 171–172, 185, 187, 215n Ardabīlī, 169 Aristotle, 6, 59, 74, 178, 197n, 220n, 223n ascetics (al-zuhhād), 38, 49, 50, 133 Āshtiyānī, 170 astronomy (al-hayʾa), 71, 206n awareness (al-shuʿūr), 75, 93, 94, 139 Baghdādī, Abū al-Barakāt, 9, 28, 30, 74–77 Bahā’ī faith, 168

Bahmanyār, 28, 30 Bihbahānī, 162 Bisṭāmī, 71 body (al-jism) as though in a, 22, 24, 177–178, 194n celestial, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 36, 38, 44–47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 60, 61, 62, 67, 68, 74, 77, 79, 82, 100, 101, 104, 107, 115, 119, 123, 125, 133, 134, 135, 137, 166, 178, 179, 197n, 202n imaginable, 102, 104, 107, 108, 114, 120, 125, 134, 137, 139, 140, 153, 163 material, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 32, 36, 37, 39, 40, 54, 56, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 75, 102, 103, 105, 107, 116, 117, 119, 124, 129, 136, 137, 153, 178, 180, 197n, 201n, 226–227n need for a, 21–22, 25, 29, 32, 36, 39, 67, 181, 196n, 228n of smoke and vapor (al-jirm almurakkab min bukhār wa-dukhān), 26, 36, 39, 40–44, 46, 50, 115, 133, 179, 201n resurrection, 29–30, 103, 137, 140; see also resurrection (al-qiyāma) world of, 1, 51, 55, 57, 58, 60, 98, 99, 103, 105, 111, 125, 127, 128, 130–131, 136, 141, 144, 152, 179, 202n

273 Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.