For scholars interested in the exchange of philosophy, mysticism, and religious polemic, the intellectual debates found in Shiism in the early modern and modern periods might be considered the veritable motherlode. Indeed, the Iranian religio-philosophical sphere from 1500 onwards operates with such a wide range of notions and conceptual language that it has been difficult for scholars to engage in this topic without falling into traps of reductionism and naive fundamentalism. Part of the challenge is the fact that the terms, vocabulary, and general operating language used by religious scholars, jurists, Sufis, and philosophers to discuss “mysticism” shift constantly in meaning and application across time and place. Into this field ventures Ata Anzali in his thoughtful and deliberative study, “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept. Across six chapters, Anzali introduces the reader into the world of ʿirfan and how this notion – often rendered as “mysticism” – assumed a pivotal role in the ongoing religio-philosophical landscape of Iran and neighbouring “Persianate” lands, most notably Mughal India. Anzali's objective is significant: to provide ʿirfan with a conceptual space that is ontologically unique, and in doing so, follow and track its shifting morphology among premodern scholars and intellectuals who dominated philosophical and religious debates in the public sphere from 1500 (Safavids) until now (the Islamic Republic of Iran).

Anzali's introduction opens with a 2011 debate between two prominent public intellectuals, and how a conservative (Mahdi Nasiri) employed the term ʿirfan as an intellectual pejorative against his arguably more liberal opponent (Mohsen Gharaviyan). Anzali was clearly struck by the oddity of this situation in which a rich and venerable intellectual tradition that had shaped scholarly discourse in the medieval and early modern periods could be the subject of such abject scorn and ridicule. Indeed, Ayatollah Khomeini himself was a devotee of the study of ʿirfan, and Anzali clearly sees the current brand of conservative fundamentalism – essentially approved and encouraged following Ahmedinejad's 2005 election win and the rise of the Basij – as an alarming societal trend focused against “New Age” mysticism or anything else which smacked of ecumenical leanings. In this way, his book is a tale of redemption and salvation for a concept increasingly under threat in the IRI, as well as a corrective for those who naively synonymize Sufism and ʿirfan.

Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the development of ʿirfan during the medieval period (“ʿIrfan in the Pre-Safavid period”) and into the sixteenth century under the Safavids (“The Safavid opposition to Sufism”). Without a doubt, the term itself was not widely used until Ibn ʿArabi looked to hadiths like the “Hidden Treasure” tradition to define the notion of a hidden divine beauty and its manifestation through epiphany (tajalli) on multiple planes of existence. In these chapters, Anzali makes note of other pre- and early Safavid philosophers (Ibn Sina, Suhravardi, Ghiyath al-Din Dashtaki) who discuss ʿirfan explicitly, but he does not discuss the popularity of ʿirfan, for instance, in poetical traditions leading up to the Safavid period. The great mystical poet Fakhr al-Din ʿIraqi (d. 1289) wrote about the idea of ʿirfan in his Lamaʿat, so much so that ʿAbd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492) wrote a commentary on ʿIraqi (Ashiʿʿat al-lamaʿat, c. 1481) which in turn likely inspired ʿirfan-centric verses in his Silsilat al-zahab and his masnavi poem, Salaman va Absal. The issue of ʿirfan certainly becomes complicated as the Safavids came to power and instituted policies of repression against Sufi brotherhoods; but the persecution of public, antinomian Sufi tariqahs should not necessarily be equated with the suppression of ʿirfan-inspired intellectual discourse. I would argue that part of ʿirfan’s resilience amongst writers, poets, and scholar-bureaucrats is also a result of the Safavid and Mughal adoption of the Timurid intellectual and courtly tradition in the early sixteenth century. However, the author is right to foreshadow the imminent showdown between orthodox Twelver Shiism and ʿirfan, as the latter was popularly associated with the Sunni tradition.

Anzali moves into deeper and more complex waters in his third chapter, “The Sufi response”, which examines how intellectuals, philosophers, and scholars in the mid-seventeenth century engaged with the ʿirfan tradition. This is, to be sure, a variegated chapter in that the author discusses a number of different authors and their sources in this period (Mu'min Mashhadi, Shaikh Husain Zahidi, Muʿazzin Khurasani, Najib al-Din Reza) and which then breaks into specific discussions of appealing scholarly models offered in recent studies by the likes of Peter Berger in The Sacred Canopy and Said Arjomand in The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam. The book assumes a more direct course in chapter 4 (“The invention of ʿIrfan”) which focuses on the foundation built up by key Shiraz-based scholars and intellectuals in the seventeenth century like Mulla Sadra and his student Mulla Muhsin Fayz Kashani; this foundation, in turn, was expanded and elaborated by the likes of Shah Muhammd Darabi (d. 1718), ʿAli-Naql Istahbanati (d. 1714), and Sayyid Qutb al-Din Nayrizi (d. 1760). By the close of the eighteenth century, ʿirfan was understood to be a unique mysto-philosophical approach to understanding the unique hidden Truth enshrined not necessarily in institutional Sufism (tasawwuf), but within Twelver Shiism. This appropriation of ʿirfan by Twelver Shiite intellectuals was a profound development, and the remainder of Anzali's book examines (in chapters 5 and 6) how this epistemological shift was concretized and institutionalized across Iranian madrasas, hauzas, and other intellectual discursive spaces through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ata Anzali's book is an invaluable contribution in that it not only sheds light on a complicated tradition being debated and contested among philosophers and Sufi-theosophists but it also contextualizes the importance of ʿirfan in religio-political discourse during the earlier Pahlavi period and as contemporary Iran plots its post-revolutionary future. Additionally, we must applaud the author for underscoring the importance of approaching terms like ʿirfan as more than simple synonyms for mysticism, or Sufism, but as complex notions which themselves can be moulded, defined, and applied differentially on the basis of a wide array of contexts.