I. The Beginning: Coming out of the Shadow of Theology (Kalam)

Popper, whose conjecture concerning the fruitfulness of dialogue among diverse frameworks I use as a yardstick in this paper, discusses, in a yet another influential paper entitled, ‘The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions’,Footnote ⁵ a very important thesis concerning the growth of knowledge. According to Popper, all organisms learn through the mechanism of adaptation which in turn consists of a dual mechanism of instruction and selection, and constitutes a method of trial and error.Footnote ⁶

The crucial point about this evolutionary/adaptive model is that instructions always come from within organisms. But selections and error elimination always come from without, from the environment. The environment also, by means of posing various challenges to the organism in question, introduces ‘problems’ for it. It is the organism's proposed ‘solutions’ (i.e. its responses to the challenges introduced by the environment) which will be assessed by the environment. If the ‘solutions’ are on the right track, organism's adaptive ability gets enhanced. If they are not, the proposed solutions will be rejected. This means that the organism has not been successful in its bid to adapt to the environment. Such an outcome could be costly for the organism.

‘The organism’ in question, to which the above evolutionary model is applied, can be a biological or a culturally and socially constructed entity such as a scientific theory or an intellectual traditionFootnote ⁷. While, for biological organisms the environment will be their natural surroundings, for intellectual traditions other traditions and cultures play, at least to some extent, the role of the ‘environment’.

Applying Popper's insight to the case of the emergence of philosophical traditions in Islamic civilisation, it is not difficult to see that instructions concerning the importance of rational thinking and making use of the power of the intellect are something which can be found in the main sources of Islamic civilisation, namely the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet and, (in the case of the Shi‘i Islam), also the traditions of Shi‘i Imams.

There are many verses in the Quran in which Muslims are instructed to use their reason as their guide in exploring reality, studying natural phenomena, understanding various aspects of reality, and enriching their knowledge of God. The Quran has also reserved some of its harshest admonitions for those who do not use their intellects:

Similarly, plenty of the sayings quoted from the Prophet and Imams (in the case of the Shi‘i Islam) are about the importance of reason and intellect and knowledge for living according to the Islamic standards. In this sense it can be argued that with respect to the question concerning the origin of rational approaches (in the extended sense of the term, ‘rational’) in Islamic civilisation, as against purely faith-based attitude of blind acceptance, one needs not to look further than the Quran itself and the main Islamic teachings.Footnote ⁸ These internal resources, however, as we shall see later, were further enriched, when Muslims embarked on a mission of digesting and incorporating into their own internal resources, wisdoms of other cultures.

As for the challenges, perhaps, the first intellectual challenges presented themselves to the early Muslims in the shape of political disputes concerning the issue of the succession of the Prophet who died in 632. The question which demanded a satisfactory answer was how Allah would want the believers to go about the task of choosing the political authority. In their efforts to respond to this question, early Muslims were divided along different doctrinal lines; Sunnis, Shi‘as, Kharijites, and Murji'ites were among the first sects which appeared in the newly established Muslim societyFootnote ⁹.

The above political question soon gave rise to troubling theological questions concerning the standards which would demarcate a true believer and would determine the after-life station of those who would fall short of (some of) those standards. Out of these disputes and in the second half of the first century Hijri (Islamic calendar, 7^th century Christian calendar) the first abstract problem, which was a bridge between theological issues and genuine philosophical problems, emerged. The problem in question was the dilemma of the free will and pre-destination (qadar) which, naturally in the context of a religious culture, was related to the issues of Divine justice and Divine power.Footnote ¹⁰

Two rival schools of Kalam (theology) namely the Ash‘arites and the Mu‘tazilites were developed in response to the above problem. The Ash‘arites maintained that God's omnipotence means that He directly intervenes in all aspects of the whole realm of being including what is related to human beings in their life in this world and in the hereafter. A direct corollary of this position was that man had no free will. The Mu‘tazilites, on the other hand, argued for man's free will. They maintained that God has endowed human beings with the power of intellect, which they regarded as man's inner prophet. Man, according to the Mu‘tazilites, is free to choose his path and station in life. Of course, in the hereafter he will be judged according to the choices he has made in this life. It is for this reason that man should use his power of intellect as wisely and as extensively as possible. For the Mu‘tazilites justice was an objective value; even God's deeds could and should be judged against such an objective criterion. The Ash‘arites would not accept such a thesis. In their view this would mean limiting God's power. To preserve God's omnipotence they developed an alternative theory of justice and argued that justice is tantamount to whatever God does.Footnote ¹¹

For almost two centuries and before the emergence of systematic philosophical approaches amongst Muslims in the ninth century CE, it was the Mutakallimun (theologians) who were dealing with issues which were philosophical in nature. Early Muslim theologians however, were not in favour of imported philosophical ideas. In particular they were against Greek's philosophical thoughts. They even rejected Aristotelian logic since they regarded it to be like Aristotelian philosophy an anti-religious knowledge. In place of Aristotelian logic they developed a rudimentary, and to some extent, faulty system of logic. The following quotation from Ibn Khaldun's Muqadimah (Introduction) (written in 1377) provides an informative account concerning the Mukallimun's attitude towards logic. We should bear in mind that Ibn Khaldun was writing at a time when the Ash‘arites had established themselves as the official theological doctrine in the world of Sunni Islam:

But later generations of theologians (Mutkallimun) realised that without logic they will not be able to avoid committing mistakes such as the fallacy of affirming the consequent which Abu Bakr al-Baqillani, one of the most prominent Asha‘ri theologians, had committed. They adopted Aristotelian logic and applied it to theological as well as philosophical arguments. This approach gradually paved the way for a closer relationship between Kalam and philosophy.Footnote ¹³ As Ibn Khaldun reports [in his Muqadimah (Introduction) (written in 1377)]:

What Ibn Khaldun is suggesting, as some scholars have pointed out, is that Islamic Kalam after a period of remaining alien to Islamic philosophy gradually came closer to it until it somewhat merged with it. From the time of Ghazzali (Algazel d. 1111), who first wrote a masterpiece in explaining the intentions of the philosophersFootnote ¹⁵ and tried to expose their incoherence by writing yet another epoch making workFootnote ¹⁶, and Fakhr Razi (d.1209), who obtained the nickname, the leader of sceptics (Imam al-Moshakkekin), onward, Kalam came very close to resemble philosophy and Islamic philosophy, which emerged in an intellectually hostile environment in which the theologians (mutakallimun), the mystics (‘urafa), and the jurists (fuqha) were against it, also tend to pay more and more attention to theological and mystical issues and took a cautious approach towards the fiqh.Footnote ¹⁷

II. Emergence of Islamic Philosophy– The Era of Philosopher-Scientist/Philosopher-Technologist

Translation of scientific, mathematical, technological, cultural and philosophical achievements of ancient civilisations like the Greeks, the Indians and the Persians into Arabic, provided the educated Muslims of the classic period of Islam (3^rd–7^th centuries AH/9^th –13^th CE) with a rich intellectual heritageFootnote ¹⁸. They soon managed to digest and internalise what they had learnt through these sources and embarked on developing new synthetic systems which were novel innovations informed by their newly gained knowledge through translated materials and in tune with the teachings of their religion.Footnote ¹⁹

All great Muslim philosophers of the classic period were not only first rate thinkers with regard to abstract philosophical topics they were also excellent natural scientists or master technologists (usually in fields such as medicine or chemistry or logic & linguistics). This trend was so prevalent that the Quranic term, Hakim, which means ‘wise or endowed with wisdom’, and is one of God's names, soon came to refer to philosophers who were being regarded as wise individuals who were capable of curing people from their intellectual/spiritual ills as well as illnesses in their bodies.Footnote ²⁰

Even a quick glance at the fields of expertise of Muslim philosophers of the classic period, reveals the extent to which these scholars had combined philosophical thinking with other disciplines. For example, Al-Kindi (d. 873), the first Muslim philosopher, was also an astronomer, a physicist, a mathematician and a cryptographer; Farabi (Alpharabius d. 951) who was known as Mu‘alim al-thani (the second teacher after Aristotle who was regarded as the first teacher) was logician, philosopher, chemist, psychologist, physicist, political philosopher, and musicologist; Abu Rayhan Biruni (Alberonius d. 1048) was astronomer, historian, botanist, pharmacologist, geologist, philosopher, mathematician, and geographer; Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037) was logician, philosopher, physician, chemist, geologist, psychologist, astronomer and philosopher of science; Ibn Rushd (Averroës, d. 1198) was philosopher, physician, physicist, astronomer, and psychologist; Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274) was astronomer, physicist, chemist, mathematician, and logician. Other great figures in Islamic civilisation during its classic period were similarly polymaths and experts in a variety of disciplines.Footnote ²¹

Scientific exchanges between Muslim philosophers and thinkers in this period testify to the extent and diversity of the areas of their expertise.Footnote ²² A case in point is the correspondence between Abu Rayhan Biruni and Ibn Sina over a number of philosophical, physical and cosmological issues. Abu Rayhan put eighteen questions to ibn Sina, ten of which were related to various issues in Aristotle's De Caelo (al-Sama' wa'l-‘Alam).Footnote ²³ This correspondence, which in the words of a contemporary Muslim philosopher ‘marks one of the highlights of Islamic intellectual history and in fact medieval natural philosophy and science in general’Footnote ²⁴ could be compared with Newton-Clark and Leibniz correspondence.Footnote ²⁵

In his letters, Abu Rayhan criticizes reasons given by Aristotle for denying levity or gravity to the celestial spheres and the Aristotelian notion of circular motion being an innate property of the heavenly bodies. Biruni also rejects Aristotle's reasoning for his assertion that if the heavens were to be elliptical rather than spherical, a vacuum would be created, and that the motion of the heavens begins from the right side and from the east. He also asks how is it that Aristotle considered the element fire to be spherical. He further asks about the transformation of elements into each other, the natural tendency of the four elements in their upward and downward movements. In his other questions he discusses theories of vision, the habitation on different quarters of earth, and how two opposite squares in a square divided into four can be tangential. There are further questions about vacuum, nature of heat and the burning of bodies by radiation reflecting off a flask filled with water. In this context he also asks if things expand upon heating and contract upon cooling, why does a flask filled with water break when water freezes in it? And that why does ice float on water?Footnote ²⁶

Ibn Sina in his replies tries to defend Aristotle's position. Both masters demonstrate that they are well familiar with not only the philosophy of their time but also the physics of the day. A point worth mentioning here is that they both make use of empirical and logical arguments, including the two important arguments of reductio ad absurdum and modus tollens.

Being at home with respect to both philosophy and sciences of the day had enabled Muslim philosophers to apply their power of intellect to a wide variety of real problems in different intellectual and practical fields. The achievements of Muslim philosophers and scholars were so impressive that some commentators have rightly termed the classic period of Islamic philosophy as the ‘Renaissance of Islam’.Footnote ²⁷

Muslim philosophers in this period welcomed acquiring knowledge from all sources. Al-Kindi for example, in his Fi al-Falsafa al-Ula (On First Philosophy), writes:

This was, of course in complete agreement with famous saying attributed to the Prophet emphasising the importance of seeking knowledge, such as, ‘seek knowledge even if it is in China’, or ‘seeking knowledge is an ordinance obligatory upon every Muslim’. Muslim philosophers developed an approach to learning which can be dubbed ‘religious humanism’. It was based on the idea of cultivating individuals through teaching them various sciences and good habits so that they acquire a personal quality which is called adab, a concept very close to the Greek notion of paideia.Footnote ²⁹ According to philosophers the path to true education (adab haqiai) was only through philosophy (i.e. rational deliberation). Ibn Miskawayh (932–1030) a philosopher from Rey and a chancery official at the Buwayhid court, in his Tahdhib al-akhlaq (the Refinement of Character) and Jawidan khirad (Perennial Philosophy) places Adab haqiai higher than adab sharʿi (religious education). According to him and other philosophers, it was only through the former path, which would include the latter, that salvation could be achieved.Footnote ³⁰

The outcome of the intellectual efforts of Muslim philosophers and scholars in the Golden age of Islam (9^th–12^th CE) was not only greatly beneficial to the flourishing of Islamic civilisation but also provided European scholars with a rich reservoir of fresh ideas.Footnote ³¹ These ideas played a significant role in bringing about the European Renaissance. In the words of one Western scholar:

Many of the works of Muslim scholars, philosophers, scientists, and theologians, were translated into Latin. Their counterparts in Europe greatly benefitted from the fruits of the intellectual labour of their colleagues in the Muslim world. The works of philosophers such as of al-Kindi, Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd were eagerly studied by European scholars and their ideas were incorporated in the theses produced by these scholars. In the assimilation of Islamic thought, as Charles Burnett has observed, several stages can be observed:

But while the Latin west was benefiting from the views of Muslim thinkers and foundations for the Renaissance were gradually being laid, a dynamism of a different type was at work in the land of Islam.Footnote ³⁴ I deal with this development in the next part of this paper.

III. Decline of Scientific Spirit in Islamic Civilisation

Despite all the emphasis in the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet and Imams (in the case of Shiʿi Islam) on the importance of acquiring and developing knowledge, scientific and philosophical spirit in Islamic civilisation took a nose dive and experienced a gradual decline from the twelfth century onward. However, the seeds for this decline had already been sowed in the soil of Islamic intellectual life when in the middle of the ninth century al-Mutawkkil (d. 861) became caliph. He put in motion a programme of purging the rational theologians, the Mu‘tazalites, and supporting their literalist rivals, the Ashʿarites. Philosophers like Kindi, who were at the receiving end of Mutawakkil's anti-rationality campaign and his policy of repression, also suffered a reversal of their personal fortuneFootnote ³⁵. Given Mutawkkil's role in promotion of the orthodoxy and dogmatic approaches to theology, it is somewhat amusing to read the following entry in Wikipedia:

The dominance of the Ashʿari thought provided grist for the mills of those who maintained that Islam is a self-sufficient system in every respect, including knowledge production. The gradual but consistent and continuous ascendency of fuqha (jurists), ʿurafa (mystics), and mutikallimun (theologians) of Ashʿari persuasion, helped to create an intellectual environment in which rational thinking and scientific pursuits were regarded as either non-Islamic or not suitable for the believers and alien to the spirit of Islam. The following story about Abu Rayhan Biruni nicely shows the attitude of the clerics and theologians towards science and scientists. Abu Rayhan, as the story goes, ‘was accused by a contemporary divine of heresy when he used the Byzantine (solar) calendar for an instrument he had invented for determining the times of the prayers. Al-Biruni retorted by saying, “the Byzantines also partake of bread. Will you now promulgate a religious sanction against bread?”’Footnote ³⁷

By the time of the great Persian Ashʿari jurist, sufi-saint, and mutikallim, Abu Hamed Mohammad Ghazzali (d. 1111), the orthodoxy was firmly in place in all parts of Muslim lands in which one of the four Sunni schools of fiqh (jurisprudence) was being practiced. Ghazzali, who was for some years the head of the largest university (Niẓamiyeh) in Baghdad, in his capacity as a defender and promoter of the orthodoxy produced a number of extremely influential books which were hugely influential in the intellectual eco-system of both the Sunni and the Shiʿa worlds. Although, his influence on the latter's views was indirect. In his Tahafut al-Falasifa he argued against many of the main doctrines of the mashsha'i (Peripatetic) philosophers in their own terms. At the end of this long, important and carefully argued book, Ghazzali, in the very last page of the book which was titled, ‘Conclusion’, suddenly put on his other hat as a faqih and in the space of just one page, issued a fateful fatwa (religious edict) against philosophers and philosophy. He wrote:

He went on to suggest that there are seventeen other doctrines, including ‘Their argument against God's attributes, Their argument that it is impossible that something should share a genus with God, Their argument that God is pure existence with no quiddity’ which makes philosopher guilty of the lesser charge of heresy (bid‘ah).Footnote ³⁹

Having declared philosophy as an unsuitable subject for study in the eco-system of Islamic culture, Ghazzali, in his magnum opus, Ihya al-‘Ulum al-Din (the Revival of Islamic Sciences) which is a forty-volume encyclopaedia of Islamic sciences of his day, introduced a new classification of sciences.Footnote ⁴⁰ He divided sciences into two general groups, religious and non-religious. And made it clear that only the first group has intrinsic value. Religious sciences are those which ‘have been acquired from the prophets and are not arrived at either by reason, like arithmetic, or by experimentation, like medicine, or by hearing, like language.’Footnote ⁴¹ Non-religious sciences ‘are divided into praiseworthy (Mahmoud), blameworthy (madhmum), and permissible (mubah). Using another set of fiqhi (juristic) terminology, Ghazzali suggested that sciences, from another point of view, are further divided into two categories. One, whose study is compulsory for all Muslims (Frad ʿayn or wajib ʿayni). The other, which is fard kifayah or wajib kifa'i, which covers all those sciences whose study become compulsory if no one in the Islamic society study them. But if at least one individual studies them, then religious obligation will be lifted from others.Footnote ⁴² Ghazzali, then went on to explain that among the non-religious praiseworthy sciences there are some whose acquisition is fard kifayah (conditionally obligato) and he singled out medicine and arithmetic as two prime examples of those type of sciences which are indispensable for the welfare of this world.Footnote ⁴³

After defining fiqh (jurisprudence) as another type of science whose acquisition is conditionally obligatory, he raised the following question in the form of a dialogue with his reader:

Immediately after the above he makes it clear to the reader that: ‘whenever the science of the road to the hereafter is compared with jurisprudence the superiority of the former is evident’.Footnote ⁴⁵

Ghazzali's classification of sciences was whole-heartedly accepted by both the Sunni and the Shiʿa Muslims. The latter produced a Shiʿatized version of Ghazzali's book under the title of Mahajja al-Bida fi Tahdhib al-Ihya (the clear path in refining ihya).Footnote ⁴⁶

The tendency of placing religious sciences on a higher plane than non-religious sciences was further amplified in the works of Muslim mystics (ʿurfa) and Sufis. In their teachings, non-religious sciences were regarded as tools and instruments whose purpose was to help Muslims in this life to dedicate themselves to the study of truly worthwhile sciences. The story of an alleged meeting between Ibn Sina and Abu Saʿid Abu al-Khayr (d. 1049), the great Persian mystic is very illuminating in this context. According to one version of the story whose authenticity cannot be corroborated, the two great scholars upon their first encounter remained in private conversation for three consecutive days, only took breaks for performing their daily prayers and having some sustenance. After the meeting, disciples of Ibn Sina asked him how he had found the mystic. Ibn Sina, reportedly, had replied that whatever he knew the mystic also knew not through philosophical arguments but by means of his mystical visions. Devotees of Abu Saʿid asked their master how he had found the philosopher. Abu Saʿid had replied, wherever he had gone in his mystical journeys he had seen the philosopher, in the shape of blind man, who was trying to find his way by means of his stick of reason.Footnote ⁴⁷

To better appreciate the intellectual changes that took place between the 10^th and 12^th centuries from Farabi to Ghazzali, it would be useful to briefly compare Farabi's classification of sciences with that of Ghazzali's. In his Ihsa al-‘Ulum (The Enumeration of Sciences), Farabi classified all known branches of knowledge of his time under five headings:

In the above table there is no mention of irfan (mysticism). For Farabi the most important sciences are metaphysics and physics. Philosophers, and not mystics or jurists or theologians, are held in the highest esteem and compared with the prophets. Fiqh and Kalam are regarded as practical sciences.

Another factor which was instrumental in the eclipse of rational trends in Muslim countries was closing of the door of ijtihad among the Sunni Muslims dealt another severe blow to the spirit of critical thinking in Islam. As Joseph Schacht has observed:

To the above intellectual trends, social and political upheavals in Muslim countries should be added. The decline of the Buyid dynasty (934–1055) which was the prime-mover behind what Kraemer has dubbed ‘the Renaissance of Islam’ and the restoration of the orthodoxy by the Saljuqs (1016–1307), the animosity between the Abbasid dynasty (750–1258) in Baghdad and the Fatimid dynasty (909–1171) in Egypt, the Crusades (1095 and 1291), the invasion of the Moghuls, Hulago Khan (1218–1265) and later Taymour (Tamerlane, 1336–1405) all helped the creation of an environment which was not amenable to free and critical thinking.

The collective result of all the above factors was that philosophy as a discipline and a tradition died a sudden death among the Sunni Muslims in the Eastern flank of Islamic civilisation. Philosophical thinking, however, did not die away among Muslims. It followed two different paths in the eastern and western parts of Muslim lands. In Spain, Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Bajjah (Avempass, 1095–1143), Ibn Tufayl (1105–1185) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës, 1126–1198) continued the Mashsha'i (peripatetic) tradition.Footnote ⁵⁰

Ibn Rushd achieved fame among European scholars as master commentator of Aristotle works. He also established himself as a first rank philosopher by producing a philosophical defence of his fellow-philosophers against Ghazzali's devastating criticisms,Footnote ⁵¹ and further developing earlier theories of intellect, by suggesting a new model in which individuals' acquired knowledge after unification with the active intellect would lose their identities and instead would collaborate in creating a collective pool of knowledge and ideas. This view somewhat resembles Popper's notion of World 3.Footnote ⁵² However, with the collapse of Muslim dynasties in Spain in the late fifteen century, development of Islamic philosophy in the Sunni Islam came to an end and philosophical spirit vanished from its eco-system.

Even the heroic efforts of Ibn Rushd to show the compatibility between reason and religionFootnote ⁵³ could not save philosophy and rational thinking from its fate. The orthodoxy would only endorse the application of reason strictly within the limits of religion alone. And even here, only a literal interpretation of religion was allowed. The victory of Ahl Hadith (the literalist transmitters of the tradition of the Prophet) meant that even the Quran could only be studied in the light of a literal or at most analogical understanding of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet.

Philosophy however, survived in the Shiʿi Islam. It is to this development that we now turn.

IV. From a predominantly rational mode of philosophising to developing novel systems of theosophy

A Closer look at the development of philosophical thought in Islam from its early stages onward reveals that the relationship between Philosophy, Kalam (theology) and Irfan (mysticism) has not been unambiguous and their boundaries have not been clear-cut. Such a study makes it clear that Kalam and Irfan have always had some sort of influence on rational approaches to philosophising and philosophers have always been acutely aware of the need for addressing the concerns of not only Mutikallimun and ‘Urafa, but also Fuqha. Exceptions to this rule have remained in a small minority.

Almost all of the first rank thinkers who contributed to development of intellectual heritage of Islamic civilisation were devout Muslims. This trait, amongst other things and as far as Muslim philosophers were concerned, meant that although they were bolder in their intellectual investigations than their theologian counterparts, nevertheless, they did not seem to be willing to go as far as to reject Islamic doctrines. Even someone like Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (Rhazes d. 925) who had critical views about prophets and prophecy was a God-fearing Muslim and a respected personality amongst his contemporaries and subsequent generation of Muslims. Some contemporary scholars in the West have appreciated this point and have noted that al-Razi ‘far from being a heretic; … was simply an individualistic thinker, merely anti-establishment or anti-orthodox’.Footnote ⁵⁴

Religious outlook of these philosophers and thinkers had impacted upon their views. Many of these philosophers had developed ideas which were compatible with their religious beliefs. For example, al-Kindi, the first proper Muslim philosopher, using neo-Platonic ideas, had argued for a creator God and had rejected Aristotelian notion of the Prime Mover. He had also developed arguments against creation ex nihilo and also in defence of the possibility of the occurrence of miraclesFootnote ⁵⁵.

Likewise Farabi, while placing philosophers on the highest rung of the intellectual ladder equating them with prophets, developed an argument for the existence of God based on a difference between a necessary being that is self-subsistent and contingent beings which are dependent upon the necessary being. This is the third form of cosmological argument. The earlier two forms, as formulated by Aristotle, were based on the ideas of motion and potentiality.Footnote ⁵⁶

Ibn Sina, who is undoubtedly the greatest peripatetic philosopher in Islamic philosophy and more than any other Muslim philosopher has emphasised the importance of intellectual exploration of reality, was proud that for the first time he had been able to develop a completely novel argument for the existence of God. He dubbed this argument, ‘Burhan-e Siddiqin = the argument of the righteous’. The novelty of this argument lies in the fact that contrary to other arguments for the existence of God, like the cosmological argument or the argument from design whose starting points are existence of contingent beings and from there they argue for the need for positing a necessary or wise being, it concentrates on the notion of existence itself and demonstrates that this very notion, without any need for making use of the notion of contingent beings, suffices to prove the existence of God as a necessary being.Footnote ⁵⁷ Ibn Sina goes even further than this in taking care of the religious sensitivities of his time; in his discussion of the vexed issue of resurrection he states that rationally he can only establish the resurrection of humankind souls but not their bodies; but then he goes on to emphasise that the bodily resurrection is warranted by shar‘ (religion) and ‘there is no way to demonstrate bodily resurrection save through the way of shari‘a [religious (Quranic) teachings] and assent to Prophetic sayings’.Footnote ⁵⁸

The last great Muslim polymath philosopher of the Golden age of Islam, namely, Khwaja Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Hasan Tusi, better known as Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201–1274), while producing scientific and philosophical doctrines, also assumed the mantle of a proper theologian and penned a number of important theological books. In fact, his Tajrid al-I‘tiqad (Simplifying the Articles of Faith) has been regarded as one of the most important Shi‘a theological books, on which both Shi‘i and Sunni theologians have written commentaries.Footnote ⁵⁹

Mystical and Sufi tendencies were also discernible in the works of almost all Muslim philosophers of the classic period of Islam. In this respect it is worth noting in passing that Pythagoras and his mystical school were received more warmly than Thales and his school by Muslim scholars of the classic period and in particular Ikhwan al-Safa (the Brethren of Purity) who were one of the major forces behind the Renaissance of Islam in ninth-tenth centuries.Footnote ⁶⁰ Muslim scholars were familiar with the pre-Socratic thinkers like Thales, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Democritus, Heraclitus and Parmenides. However, Empedocles and Pythagoras received more attention. Muslims believed that Empedocles had ‘received instruction in wisdom from Luqman, the legendary sage mentioned in the Quran’Footnote ⁶¹ while the latter had been taught by Solomon. As Fakhry has observed, ‘many of Pythagoras' moral aphorisms are given in the Arabic anthologies’.Footnote ⁶² Osman Baker has noted that in the classic period of the Islamic civilisation:

Immediately after the above observation, Osman adds another remark which, though he does not develop it further, is directly relevant to the topic under discussion in this paper. He says, ‘Certain elements of this method [metaphysical and symbolic interpretation of things] are also to be found in the scientific methodology of those scientists whom are usually identify with Peripatetic school such as Ibn Sina’.Footnote ⁶⁴

The case of Ibn Sina is of particular importance. Ibn Sina, the Persian philosopher is, as pointed out before, undoubtedly the greatest peripatetic philosopher in Islamic philosophy and his encyclopaedic philosophical work, al-Shifa is a paragon of rational thinking. Yet despite all his penchants for rational approaches later in his life and in his later works, he laid down the foundations of an intellectual legacy whose hallmark was an emphasis on mystical methods of acquiring wisdom in contrast to rational methods of acquiring knowledge.Footnote ⁶⁵ Ibn Sina's later philosophy, known as al-Hikmat al-Mashreqiyah (The Eastern Philosophy) turned into the dominant trend of thought among subsequent generations of Muslim philosophers.Footnote ⁶⁶

In turning away from his peripatetic phase towards his new philosophy, Ibn Sina made a move, which though mostly symbolic and formalistic, proved to be very influential: in his Danishnama-yi ‘ala'i, which was the first encyclopaedia of philosophy written in Persian in the Islamic era he, for the first time in the history of Muslim intellectual thought, began his discussion with the section on metaphysics (ilahiyat) and from there proceeded to natural philosophy (tabi‘iyat). This was in sharp contrast to the way Aristotle and many Muslim authors, including Ibn Sina in his other works on philosophy, would organise the chapters of their books; they would all start with a chapter on natural philosophy (physics) and then move on the metaphysics. Ibn Sina's innovation was emulated by the subsequent generations of Muslim philosophers who came to the scene few centuries after Ibn Sina. As Nasr has observed, ‘Later Safavid and Qajar authors, among them Sadr al-Din Shirazi, Mulla Muhsin Faid [Kashani], and Hajji Mulla Hadi Sabzivari, have followed the precedent of the Danishnamah’.Footnote ⁶⁷

The unwanted consequence of this seemingly innocent change was an unfortuante influence on the further development of philosophy: later generations of philosophers and theologians, by and large, paid less and less attention to the study of natural philosophy. Instead, as we shall see below, most of them chanelled their energies into developing theosophical doctrines and systems of theosophy. The section on natural sciences and physics (tabi‘iyat) in subsequent books on philosophy remained almost the same as it was at the time of Ibn Sina or thereabout. Few centuries after renunciation of peripatetic philosophy by Ibn Sina, many of philosophers and theologians had no competence in further developing in natural sciences. Apart from few exceptions, most of the rest, at best, could only explicate the achievements of their predecessors to their students, and at worse, did not have a good grasp of the issues discussed in the sections on tabi‘iytat. Nevertheless, out of reverence for the past masters, they would dutifully reproduce these sections, now regarded as relics, in their own books on philosophy and Kalam.Footnote ⁶⁸

The main charctristic of Ibn Sina's new school, al-Hikmat al-Mashreqiyah, was its emphasis on the power of intuition and mystical experiences, as against rational thinking, as the most effective tool for exploring reality and acquiring knowledge about it.Footnote ⁶⁹

Al-Hikmat al-Mashreqiyah was further developed into a comprehensive philosophical system by another great Persian philosopher, Shahab/Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (1158–1191), the founder of Maktab-i Ishraq (the School of Illumination) who was killed at the tender age of 38 by the fatwa (edict) of the orthodox jurists in Syria.Footnote ⁷⁰ Suhrawardi's system was a novel synthesis of various trends of thought, including Platonic and neo-Platonic ideas, doctrines from the wisdom of ancient Persian sages (Hukamaye- Pahlavi), doctrines extracted from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet. Suhrawardi also, introduced a whole set of new vocabularies into the discourse of Islamic philosophy. The central theme in his philosophy was the notion of light which, to some extent, represented the concept of wujud (being) in the earlier philosophies. God for example, was Nur al-Anwar (Light of Lights).Footnote ⁷¹

In his captivating works both in Persian and Arabic, Suhrawardi narrated an epic story on a metaphysical plane whose main hero was man who had fallen from the realm of light into the realm of darkness and was longing to get back to his origin. Suhrawardi's philosophical system was, in a sense, a somewhat rational reconstruction of various stages of this existential journey and an explanation of its cosmic scale and stages. The grand metaphysical plot of the story is an augmented neo-Platonic system: The whole realm of being is divided into three or four sub-relams which are sandwiched between the extereme poles of the Light of Lights, whose place in the geographical plane of this cosmic map is above and top, and darkeness, which represents hyle (matter) or mere potentiality and therefore nothingness, at the bottom or down. Suhrawardi writes:

And he writes elsewhere:

Man can obtain salvation by God's grace and through the assistance of the active intellect, which is identified as the archangel Gabriel, and also the spritual masters (pirs or ulia) which earth is never without them.

Suhrawardi had a profund influence on almost all the subsequent generations of Muslim philosophers. From Suhrawardi onward, Islamic philosophy, in a systematic fashion dedicated all its attention to theosophical issues, i.e. issues related to understanding God and His manifestations by means of rational argumentation, intuition and mystical experiences. It took as its main sources of exploration and investigation, the holy Quran and the teachings of the Prophet and the Shi‘i Imams.

The result of a full-fledged promotion of a religious outlook in this new econiche in which the notions of Vali (friend, Guardian .pl. Ulia’) and Vilayat (friendship, guardianship) had prominent places was, as far as philosphy was concrened, the emrgence of two exteremly sophisticated intellectual schools, which introduced some of the finest systems of theosophy. These two schools are known as the School of Isfahan and the School of Shiraz. However, before discussing some of the main achievements of these schools, I need to say a few words about the views of a highly influential mystic whose ideas played some important role in the subsequent development of Islamic theosophy. The personality in question is Muhi al-Din al-Arabi, better known as Ibn Arabi.

Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), born in Moorish Spain, is one of the greatest Muslim Sufi masters and mystics.Footnote ⁷⁵ In fact the only other mystic whose standing, fame and influence is equal to, if not slightly greater than, that of Ibn Arabi, is Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (1207–1273), known in the West as Rumi. While many common themes can be found in the ideas of the two grand Sufi masters, many significant differences could also be discerned in their views and approaches.Footnote ⁷⁶

Generally speaking, Sufis and mystics played two important roles in the intellectual life of Muslims. On the one hand, they introduced a badly needed element of tolerance and open-mindedness towards other cultures, religions, doctrines, traditions, and practices; and that in an environment which was dominated by a literalist and orthodox approach to religious creed. On the other hand however, they, in a fashion not dissimilar to present day post-modern writers, opened up the floodgate to all sorts of unbounded interpretations and unbridled flights of fancy. The end result was further weakening of rational approaches which were caught between the rock of the dogmatism of the orthodoxy and the hard place of relativism of Sufism.

Ibn Arabi was a master story teller and a prolific writer. His magnum opus, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah (The Mekkiyan Revelations) runs into many volumes.Footnote ⁷⁷ Through his powerful writings he gave further credence to a cultural tradition which became prevalent in almost all fields of scholarly investigations in Islamic lands. The tradition in question was confirming one's knowledge claims not by resorting to rational argumentation but by citing one's visions and personal experiences. Ibn Arabi was very adept in this art of confirmation of knowledge claims. He begins both of his masterpieces, al-Futuhat and Fusus al-Hikam (the Gems of Wisdom) by narrating two dreams which he confirms as genuine and truthful visions (al-roya al-sadiqa). According to Ibn Arabi, in the course of these two visions, the Prophet revealed to him the contents of the two books. With this ingenious stratagem, Ibn Arabi outwitted all of his would-be detractors not only during his own time but throughout the centuries afterwards. With few exceptions, almost all subsequent scholars, whether Sunni or Shi‘a, did their best to justify even the most exaggerated claims of Ibn Arabi, since apparently whatever is stated in Ibn Arabi's books, is the Prophet's wisdom and has got nothing to do with Ibn Arabi. It seems one of the important factors which made Ibn Arabi's views, despite his Sunni background, appealing to his Shi‘i followers was his great emphasis on the significant role of the ulia’ (Spiritual Guardians, Sufi Saints) in the great schemes of things. In his writings he placed ulia' on a higher plane than even the prophets, claiming that the former are concerned about unveiling truth whereas the latter concentrate on promoting the message and are not much concerned about disclosing truth.Footnote ⁷⁸ Ayatollah Khomeini's theory of vilayat al-faqih (the Guardianship of jurists) is among many Shi‘i doctrines influenced by Ibn Arabi.Footnote ⁷⁹

The intellectual trend towards combining mystical, gnostic, and illuminationist insights with the Quranic and Prophetic teachings, and rational thinking reached its zenith, as was stated above, in two influential philosophical Schools with distinct Shi‘i flavour, namely the School of Isfahan and the School of Shiraz. The emergence of both of these Schools was greatly facilitated, if not became possible in the first place, because of the coming to power of the Safavids dynasty in Persia (1501–1736). The fact that Safavids belonged to a Sufi order which traced its lineage as well as its name to the great Sufi-saint, Sheikh Safi al-Din ArdibiliFootnote ⁸⁰, provides some explanation for their support of the two philosophical Schools which flourished during their reign, and for the general theosophical orientation of these schools.Footnote ⁸¹

V. Schools of Isfahan and Shiraz

The founder of the School of Isfahan was Muhammad Baqir Damad (d. 1631), better known as Mir Damad. His difficult style of writing and his novel neologisms earned him a reputation not dissimilar to what is ascribed to Hegel in the West. He became known as the Third Teacher (Mu‘allim al-thalith) after Aristotle and Farabi. Many popular anecdotes about his complex philosophical system were in circulation even during his own lifetime. According to one such story after his death the two angels, nakir and monkar who, according to popular Muslim beliefs, are in charge of interrogating deceased souls to ascertain whether they should be handed over to the angels of mercy or the angles of punishment, went to him and asked him about his deeds and his beliefs. Mir Damad's philosophical replies were so baffling that the poor angels could not make head or tail of them. In desperation they went to God and asked Him about this strange individual. God told them they better leave him alone since the philosopher during his lifetime had said things which even God could have not comprehended!Footnote ⁸²

Mir Damad's main project was to develop a system of philosophy based on the wisdom revealed by God to the prophets, known as the Yamani wisdom (Hikmat-i Yamani) in contrast to the rationalistic philosophy of the Greeks.Footnote ⁸³ The name of Mir Damad's system was apparently inspired by a Prophetic hadith (tradition), namely, ‘al-Imanu al-Yamani va al-Hikmatu al-Yamaniyatu’ (The true faith is the Yamani faith and the true wisdom is the Yamani wisdom).Footnote ⁸⁴ Moreover, Yaman (Yemen) also has mystical connotations in gnostic literature in that it symbolizes the mashriqi (i.e. the oriental as well as the illuminated) side of the world and is therefore the source of divine illumination in contrast to the Occident, which is the source of Peripatetic [rationalistic] philosophy’.Footnote ⁸⁵

Following the precedent set by Ibn Sina in his al-Hikmat al-Mashreqiyah, Mir Damad, in his major philosophical writings such as Qabasat and Jadhawat relegated discussions of logic and themes in natural philosophy to the last chapters and began his discussions with issues concerning the notion of Being and its attributes following by chapters on the appeal to the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet and the Shi‘i Imams to shed light on the intricacies of philosophical issues.

In the dispute among Muslim philosophers concerning the status of existence (wujud) and quiddity (mahiyyat) in the grand scheme of things, Mir Damad argued against Ibn Sina (in his Peripatetic phase) by endorsing the principality of quiddity (mahiyyat) and the accidental nature of existence (wujud). Among his philosophical innovations the notion of huduth-i dahri (a temporal createdness/coming into being/origination/emergence) which he contrasts with two other notions, namely, huduth-i zamani (temporal createdness or coming into being) and huduth-i dhati (essential createdness or originatation) deserves to be mentioned.Footnote ⁸⁶ He maintained that all entities, apart from God, i.e., all contingent beings, have an unchanging existence in a realm which is called dahr (aeon). God is outside of this realm, his existence is sarmadi (without beginning and end). According to Mir Damad, all temporal beings, in any moment of their existence have a dahri counterpart. Dahr acts as a cosmic memory in which whatever is in God's mind has a copy.Footnote ⁸⁷

Mir Damad rational behind postulating this realm was his view that the notion of emanation, which had been devised in order to solve the problem of the existence of eternal yet contingent entities, could not do justice to God's unique position in the whole realm of being by placing Him over and above all other entities which were totally dependent upon Him. According to Mir Damad, in the theory of essential contingency, each contingent being before coming into being and in respect to its essence alone, is neither existent nor non-existent. This indifference of contingent entities towards non-existence, in Mir Damad's view, means that they are not absolutely non-existent and this is enough to imply that they enjoy some sort of existence, even before coming into the realm of being. By contrasting absolute non-existence with the dahri existence, Mir Damad, tried to argue that nothing but God deserves to be regarded as existent.Footnote ⁸⁸

Mir Damad's theory of huduth-i dahri was not further developed by his successors, despite the fact Mir Damad was able to provide solutions for a number of philosophical as well as theological issues including the problem of ‘createdness of time’, ‘rejection of the Platonic realm of Ideas’, the issue of God's foreknowledge, and the changes He effects in the grand design of things (naskh va bada').Footnote ⁸⁹

The trend of emphasising on the significance of ishraqi, illuminationist and esoteric approaches to philosophy in contrast to more rational approaches, and giving priority to religious sciences in contrast to natural philosophy was further emphasised by another prominent member of the school of Isfahan, Sheikh Bahaei', who was among the clerics migrated from Lebanon to Iran.Footnote ⁹⁰ Sheikh Bahaei', a close friend and colleague of Mir Damad, was a true polymath in the tradition of philosophers of the Golden age of Islam; he was the foremost theologian and jurist of his time, an accomplished mathematician and astronomer who had published a widely read treatise on algebra, Khulasah fi al-Hisab, and several treatises on astronomy, a knowledgeable physicist, a skilful poet, an adept Quranic commentator, and a capable architect.Footnote ⁹¹ And yet, despite being well-versed in natural sciences and also maths and technology, in his poems which were critical reflections on his own life and achievements, poems, which were very influential due to their simple and powerful language, he openly and explicitly condemned not only rational philosophy but also all other sciences as mere waste of time, distractions from coming to know God, and obstacles in the way of gnostic experiences. In his Nan and Halwa (Bread and Sweet) he says (and I quote just a few lines):

Islamic philosophy in the tradition of combining gnostic, religious and rational strands, reached its apex in the teachings of Sadruddin Muhammad Shirazi (1571–1640), better known as Akhund Mulla Sadra and also as Sadr Al-Muti'allihin (the foremost amongst the theosophists).Footnote ⁹³ Mulla Sadra was contemporaneous with Descartes and was as influential a philosopher in Islamic culture as was Descartes in the context of European thought. However, the approaches of these two intellectual giants were poles apart. Whereas Descartes was well-versed in philosophy, theology, physics, maths, and had a deep and lasting effect on the development of medicine, despite the fact that he was not a physicianFootnote ⁹⁴, Mulla Sadra dedicated his whole intellectual energy to the development of perhaps the finest theosophical system ever introduced within the econiche of Islamic culture. He, like his predecessors in the gnostic tradition, maintained that the only worthwhile knowledge is theosophy. He explicitly criticised Ibn Sina for wasting his time composing works on mathematics and medicineFootnote ⁹⁵.

Mulla Sadra's exquisite system in which rational thinking was combined with esoteric approaches and applied to the teachings of the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet and the Shi‘i Imams, came to be known as Hikmat al-Muta‘aliyah (The Transcendent Theosophy). It seems the use of the term Hikamt with its rich connotations in the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet and Imams, was chosen deliberately by the founders of the two Schools of Isfahan and Shiraz to name their respective philosophical systems in a bid to quell the concerns of the orthodox fuqha who wield a great deal of power, especially during the Safavid period.

Hikmat al-Muta‘aliyah is rich with novel ideas and brimming with interesting arguments and fecund metaphors. It has long been established as the received wisdom and official philosophical doctrine, or to borrow a not very accurate term from Thomas Kuhn, the dominant theosophical paradigm, in all of those Muslim seminaries in which philosophy is being taught.

Of course the road to success was not as easy for Mulla Sadra as was with his teacher, Mir Damad, who was a respected figure at the court of Safavid kings. In fact, under the pressure from the more orthodox ‘ulama (clerics) and fuqha (jurists), Mulla Sadra was forced to spend fifteen years in self-exile in a small village, Kahak, near the city of Qom, before being able to return to Shiraz and establish his School there at a seminary which is still up and running today.Footnote ⁹⁶ It should be noted that some decades before Mulla Sadra other philosophers from Shiraz, such as Sadr al-Din Muhammad Dashtaki (1425–1564) and his son Ghyiath al-Din Mansur Shirazi (d. 1542) had established a school of philosophy, also known as the School of Shiraz. Mulla Sadra has discussed their views in some of his works. Footnote ⁹⁷

Like Suhrawadri and Mir Damad before him, Mulla Sadra presented a complete metaphysical system which provides explanation for every aspect of reality, whether God, angels, man, afterlife, the day of judgement, and so on. His system however, in contradistinction to the systems developed by his two eminent predecessors was based on the notion of existential primacy (Taqaddum Rutbi) of being (wujud) over quiddity (mahiyyat) or the principality (i.e. reality) of being and accidentally (non-reality) of quiddity.Footnote ⁹⁸

In constructing his own system, he tried to combine the best aspects of the views introduced by previous sages, whether the Presocratic or neo-Platonic or Peripatetic or Ishraqi philosophers, with the wisdom of Sufis and mystics like Ibn Arabi, and the arguments of the theologians, and the teachings of the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet and the Imams, in order to create a coherent theosophical system, while exposing, a rational manner, the shortcomings of the views of his eminent predecessors.Footnote ⁹⁹

In the realistic outlook of Mulla Sadra the whole realm of being consists of just one reality, namely God. All the rest are His manifestations and therefore have no genuine reality on their own. God is the only necessary being, all the rest are contingent entities. For this particular type of contingency Mulla Sadra has coined a new term, imakan-e Faqri (contingency due to existential dependence) which was different from the common notion of contingency, namely, imkan-e mahuwi, contingency related to the quiddity or essence, which was used by previous philosophers.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

The general picture of Mulla Sadra's worldview was somewhat like the model presented by the neo-Platonic, though with many more added details and extra layers and structures plus a much more pronounced emphasis on the dual principle of unity in diversity and diversity in unity and primacy of being over quiddity.

God, as the only genuine, self-subsistent, being is the cause of all causes. But causes and effects are not different in essence: an effect is just an aspect of its cause. Moreover, since from unity only unity can issue forth, God's first emanation or manifestation, can only be a simple and unified being. This being is referred to by various names, including, the ‘supreme intellect’, ‘the first emanation, and also haghighat-e Muhammadiyah (the reality of Muhammad). While the first two terms were common among philosophers of neo-Platonic tendency, this last description was an invention of Muslim mystics.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Mulla Sadra introduced many novel themes and theories into Islamic philosophy and provided convincing solutions for many outstanding problems in not only the field of philosophy but also theology and mysticism. Apart from his doctrine of the unity and existential primacy of existence (isalat al-wujud), other doctrines such as the theory of substantial motion (al-harakat al-jawhariyyah); God’ knowledge (including His knowledge of particulars); a general theory of knowledge; a novel theory concerning human soul; a theory concerning time as the fourth dimension in material beings (though of course not in the sense discussed by Einstein); the theory of bodily resurrection; and rejection of the theory of reincarnation should be included in the long list of his achievements. Close harmony amongst various aspects of Mulla Sadra's philosophical system which has made his system a powerful intellectual tool stems from the unity of its author's thought.Footnote ¹⁰²

I will not be able to do justice to Mulla Sadra's numerous and rich achievements. Perhaps few words concerning his theory of Substantial Motion could provide a flavour of his approach. For Mulla Sadra, the primacy and principality of existence, means, among other things, that each entity has a personal or individual identity. Existence ought to be contrasted with non-existence. The more perfect an entity the richer its existence, in the sense that it is less contaminated with non-existence, is less dependent upon other beings, has less potentiality and possess more actuality. For non-material entities, their imperfection manifests itself in their absolute dependence upon God for their existence. But in the sub-lunar realm which is the abode of material entities, imperfection obtains an added feature. Here, the degrees of actuality and potentiality determine the degree of perfection of a particular entity with regard to its particular identity.

In this context, change means turning potentiality into actuality. Mulla Sadra argues that individual beings in the sub-lunar realm have their own distinct identities, are experiencing, on a continuous basis the process of actualisation of their potentialities. This process, first and foremost, happens in individual's existential substance and as a result changes in other categories such as quantity (kamm), quality (kaif), and place (makan) will be effected. Time is also a dimension which displays the above sequence of continuous and seamless turning of potentiality into actuality. Human soul is at the beginning just a mere potentiality, under favourable circumstances, it gradually emerges as a result of the interaction of the body of the newly conceived embryo with the environment. The process of actualisation of the potentials embedded in soul continues until the last moment the individual is alive and active. Since both the body and the soul have many different potentials, actualising particular aspects of such potentials becomes a matter of interaction between the individual and its environment. At the end of one's life in this world, one's soul leaves one's body and, depending on the degree of perfection it could have achieved while still in this world, it enters the realm of purgatory or higher up in the chain of being.Footnote ¹⁰³

In the period after the death of Mulla Sadra until the twentieth century, Islamic philosophy has mostly been a footnote to the Sadraeian system. Grand masters like Mulla Muhsin Faid Kashani, ‘Abd al Razzaq Lahiji, Qadi Said Qomi, Mulla Ali Mudarris Zunuzi, Mulla Ali Nuri, Jahangir Khan Qashqaei and many more have, by and large, been busy explicating the intricacies of Hikmat al-Muti‘alliyah and further developing its latent capacities and potentials. Apart from small steps from within the Sadraeian paradigm to better clarify this or that point or re-present or re-formulate this or that argument by improved versions, the only noteworthy development, which was only significant due to its pedagogical novelty, was the efforts of Mulla Haji Sabzevari (1797–1873), a nineteenth century philosopher to represent the whole of Sadra's system in term of easy to remember poems. His Manẓumeh (or collections of poems) became the standard textbook in all Persian speaking seminaries for teaching Sadra's philosophy.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

It is worth emphasising that parallel with the development of Sadraeian system which was the representative of rational approach among Muslim scholars, anti-rational movements and schools were also on the rise. Ironically the founder of one such movement, Sheikh Ahmad Ahsaei (the founder of Sheikhi movement) had produced an authoritative commentary on Mulla Sadra's Asfar.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Another influential figure was Muhammad Amin Astarabadi, the founder of Akhbari School in fiqh which advocates a literalist approach to fiqh and Islamic teachings. Mulla Sadra's son-in-law, Muhsin Fayd was among the main promoters of this school.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Another interesting, though aborted development, was the efforts of an enlightened Qajar prince, Badi‘ al-Mulk Mirza, to introduce the views of Immanuel Kant to two grand masters of Islamic philosophy, Mulla Ali Mudarris Zunuzi and Mirza ‘Ali Akbar Mudarris Yazdi and encourage them to respond to the challenges of the German philosopher by using the machinery of Islamic (mostly Sadraeian) philosophy. ‘There is however, little evidence to show that any real dialogue and meeting of minds took place on this occasion. What caused the discussion on Kant's view to come close to some sort of ‘dialogue of the deaf’ was that, on the one hand, the prince was not competently familiar with Kant's views. And on the other, the masters, perhaps understandably, had stuck to their traditional canons and were not prepared to venture out of their intimate paradigm.'Footnote ¹⁰⁷