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Hikma mutaaliya in Qajar Iran: Locatingthe Life and Work of Mulla HadiSabzawari (d. 1289/1873)Sajjad H. Rizvi

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Sajjad H. Rizvi

Hikma mutaaliya in Qajar Iran: Locating the Life and Work of MullaHadi Sabzawari (d. 1289/1873)

The Qajar period witnessed a revival of traditional Islamic philosophy based on thephilosophical method of the Safavid sage Mulla Sadra Shirazi. This was philosophy asa way of life, an ethical commitment born of a method that combined both rationaldiscourse and mystical intuition, deployed to defend the intellectual and cultural normsof the old learning against the new European inspired centers in Qajar Iran. Aprominent figure in this process of revival was Mulla Hadi Sabzavari, who trained inthe seminaries of Mashhad and Isfahan and became the most famous teacher of theworks of Mulla Sadra and of philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century.This paper examines his life and intellectual and pedagogical contribution, and tracessome lines of his impact on seminarian philosophy into the twentieth century throughthe many students who came to study with him in his hometown, including hisinfluence on modern trends within Shii jurisprudence and legal theory.

This age is devoid of wisdom and suffers from a drought of the waters of the grace ofcertainty (amtar al-yaqin) from the clouds of Mercy (sahab al-rahma) and from amultitude of sins committed by those who are negligent and ignorant. The gatesof heaven [acquired by] the intellect have been barred to them, and true understand-ing of the Lord of Heaven has been made forbidden to them as deceit has contami-nated their love. They have forsaken the Truth for falsehoods and have becomeaddicted to ornamentation and affectation. They no longer traverse the land of abso-lutes nor swim in the seas of the realities of Revelation; they have exchanged everlast-ing, righteous deeds (al-baqiyat al-salihat)1 for partial, transient deeds (al-juziyatal-dathirat) that will become obsolete. Their deeds reveal the conjectural nature oftheir aims, and the purpose of their desires is self-centered and mal-intended

When I saw philosophy, it was woven by spiders of forgetfulness, and its characterand dominance had been discarded to a corner where it languished, exiled.2

Sajjad Rizvi is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the Institute of Arab and IslamicStudies at the University of Exeter where he directs the Centre of Islamic Philosophy.

1The reference is to Quran 18:46 (and also 19:76).2Hadi Sabzavari, Sharh al-manzuma: qism al-hikma, ed. Masud Talibi (Tehran, 1374s./1995),

I: 378.

Iranian Studies, volume 44, number 4, July 2011

ISSN 0021-0862 print/ISSN 1475-4819 online/11/040473242011 The International Society for Iranian StudiesDOI 10.1080/00210862.2011.569327

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This lament for the state of philosophy in his time was written at the beginning ofhis major philosophical work by the subject of this article, Mulla Hadi Sabzawari. It isnot uncommon for philosophers and thinkers in the Islamic period to lament theintellectual lassitude and decline of their times; such a complaint provides a justifica-tion for insisting upon their own world-historical importance and bombast. It signals aplea for the reader and the student to take notice of the contents of what is to followbecause ignorance is cured by knowledge: the absence of philosophy and its misuserequires a response that establishes philosophy at the heart of human, religiously com-mitted inquiry. But in the context of the nineteenth century, the lament signifiedmore: it punctuated a sense of revolution, change and anguish in society. The intellec-tual and spiritual turmoil of Qajar Iran, somewhat mirroring political uncertaintiesand vagaries allowed for the flourishing both of new (and at times heterodox)ideas; this was further exacerbated through the challenges brought on by fresh encoun-ters with European thought and the revival of modes of traditional reasoning. Theproblems of the Qajar period were exacerbated by messianic and chiliastic movementsassociated with the millennium of the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The revivalof charismatic authority and the inflated claims of extreme social, religious and politi-cal agents coupled with the social class divisions emerged into the Shaykhi, Babi,Bahai, and Ismaili revolts and upheavals of the nineteenth century. Messianism tar-geted at the moral order of society and eschatological expectation clashed with the tra-ditional orders in the absence of central authority and its legitimacy, and the sense ofintellectual and cultural instability heightened by new moves towards social, politicaland cultural modernization, even soft colonialism.3 The retreat of the central politi-cal authority and its lack of a standing army allowed the encroachment of colonialpowers leading to the major defeats at the hands of the Russians in the wars of180513 and 182628 culminating in the humiliating Treaty of Turkmanchay.4

The advent of new learning in philosophy and science triggered a traditionalist(even nativist) response from the ulema as the class of specialists with vested interestsin the current systems of education.5 At the same time, the upheavals of the eighteenthcentury had given way to relative stability in some major Iranian cities; in particular,Isfahan had retained some of its past cultural glories. Despite the calamitous sack of1722 at the hands of the Afghans that struck a death blow to the Safavid Empire,

3Nikki Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, CT, 1981),408; idem, Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism, Comparative Studies in Society andHistory, 4 (1962): 270; Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: the Making of the Babi Movementin Iran, 18441850 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), 29; Said A. Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the HiddenImam (Chicago, 1984), 14; D. MacEoin, Charismatic Authority in Qajar Shiism, in Qajar Iran,ed. E. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 1983), 169; M. Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent: Sociore-ligious Thought in Qajar Iran (Syracuse, NY, 1982).

4Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 18311896 (London, 1997), 1516.

5Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 351405; David Menashri, Education and the Making of Modern Iran(Ithaca, NY, 1992), 2775; Monica Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform inQajar Iran (Costa Mesa, CA, 2001). One of the best studies of the role of the ulema in society and poli-tics in the period remains Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 17851906 (Berkeley, CA, 1969).

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the pursuit of knowledge and its transmission continued unabated.6 It was to this citythat students eager to study in the traditional Shii seminaries, the hawza-ha-yiilmiyya, flocked.7 One of these students in the early nineteenth century was a khur-asani, Hadi ibn Mahdi Sabzawari, who would later become the most importanttraditional philosopher of the Qajar period.8 It was his training in the revived philo-sophical tradition of Mulla Sadra (d. c. 1045/1635) and his espousal of that traditionin his commentaries and especially in his new textbook on philosophy, Sharh ghuraral-faraid (Commentary on the Whites of the Pearls) better known as Sharh-imanzuma (Commentary on the Poem), that established the intellectual hegemonyof the philosophical system known as hikma mutaaliya (transcendent philosophy)that dominates the hawza (at least in Iran) to this day. Hikma mutaaliya is a philo-sophical method that combines rational discourse and mystical intuition, and thus isconsidered to be superior, on the one hand, to the mere discourse of the Avicenniantradition and, on the other, to the mystical claims that lacked logical grounding in theworks of the Sufis.9 Sabzawari considered the critical intellectual need of his time wasfor a revived philosophical tradition, one which examined reality through the twinprisms of intellect and intuition and which posed a rigorous and religiously rootedresponse to intellectual challenges in his time, a true philosophy unencumbered bythe weight of the mere rehearsal of tradition and unrestricted by the cobwebs of unim-aginative presentation.

I contend that it was the contribution of Sabzawari to the intellectual history of theQajar period that established the school of Mulla Sadra, to the exclusion of other intel-lectual trends. He was the critical link (even if not the sole one) in the transmission of

6On the sack of Isfahan, see Willem Floor, The Afghan Occupation of Safavid Persia, 17211729(Paris, 1998); Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia Nader Shah: From Tribal Warrior to ConqueringTyrant (London, 2006), 1754; Andrew Newman, Safavid Iran (London, 2006), 11516.

7There are now a number of studies on the functioning of the Shii seminary both at the shrine citiesof Iraq and in Iran, and on the three stages of becoming a jurist: preliminaries (muqaddimat), intermedi-ate jurisprudential training (sutuh), and advanced independent reasoning based on responses to the workon a living model of emulation (marja) known as bahth (or dars) al-kharij. See Sabrina Mervin, La qutedu savoir Nag af: Les tudes religieuses chez les chiites immites de la fin du XIXe sicle 1960, StudiaIslamica, 81 (1995): 16585; Chibli Mallat, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr,Najaf and the Shii International (Cambridge, 1993), 3545; Muhammad Jawad Mughniyyah, Maulama al-najaf al-ashraf (Beirut, 1992); Nur al-Din al-Shahrudi, Tarikh al-haraka al-ilmiyya fiKarbala (Beirut, 1990); Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran(London, 1987); M. M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, MA,1980), 12103; Meir Litvak, Shii Scholars of Nineteenth-century Iraq: The Ulama of Najaf andKarbala (Cambridge, 1998); Abd al-Hadi al-Fadli, Dalil al-Najaf al-ashraf (Najaf, 1966).

8Although there is a considerable literature on Sabzawari in Persian, there is very little in Europeanlanguages. A few useful studies are: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Renaissance in Iran: H j Mull Hd Sabzi-wr, A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M. Sharif (Wiesbaden, 1966), II: 154356; ToshihikoIzutsu, The Fundamental Structure of Sabzawrs Metaphysics, in Sabzawari, Sharh Ghurar al-faraid maruf bih Sharh-i Manzuma-yi hikmat: qismat-i umur-i amma wa jawhar wa araz,ed. T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1969), 1152; and Wahid Akhtar, Sabzawrs Analysis ofBeing, Al-Tawhd, II, no. 1 (1984): 2970.

9See Sajjad Rizvi, Mull Sadr and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being (London, 2009), 2126.

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the school to themodern period.He taught the works ofMulla Sadra, commented uponthem and was instrumental in their dissemination through the lithographic publicationof the texts in the middle of the Qajar period. After providing an account of his intel-lectual formation in Iran, I will discuss his curriculum formation, pedagogical methodand writings, giving an account of what has sometimes been described as the school ofKhorasan (by analogy to the famed Safavid school of Isfahan as defined by HenryCorbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr); and finally conclude with some observations ofhis legacy, the parallel developments in the so-called school of Tehran and the per-petuation of traditional Shii philosophy in the face of the encroachment of new Euro-pean thought in the reformed educational institutions of the late Qajar state.10

Life and Intellectual Formation

One thousand, two hundred and twelve lunar years after the migration of the Prophetto Medina (corresponding to the year 179798 of the Common Era), Hadi, son ofMahdi, was born in the town of Sabzawar (in the district of Bayhaq), a Shii centerof learning some 230 kilometers west of Mashhad, the famous shrine city dedicatedto the eighth Shii Imam Ali b. Musa al-Rida.11 Some years later, the European tra-velers and scholars Arthur de Gobineau and Edward Browne were to meet him at theheight of his fame. Browne famously described him as the last great Islamic philoso-pher and provided the following physical description:

[He] was tall of stature, thin and of a slender frame; his complexion was dark, hisface pleasing to look upon, his speech eloquent and flowing, his manner gentle,unobtrusive and even humble.12

10See Isfahan, School of, Encylopaedia Iranica, XIV, 11925. On the notion of the school of Isfahanand later of Tehran, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present: Philosophyin the Land of Prophecy (Albany, NY, 2006), 20957.

11Sabzawaris modern biographer Ghulam-Husayn Riza-Nizhad Nushin argues on the basis of achronogram of the author in which he alludes to his year of birth with the term gharib that he wasborn in 1212 AHsee Hakim-i Sabzawari: zindagiatharfalsafa (Tehran, 1371s./1992), 35. Animportant source is his own autobiography that was written in Sabzawar around 1280/186364 and pub-lished by Qasim Ghani in Yadgar, I, no. 3 (1944): 4547. A short introduction is Seyyed Hossein Nasr,Hd Sabzavr, EIr. The biographical sources on his life are: Riza-quli Khan Hidayat (d. 1871), Tadh-kira-yi riyaz al-arifin (Tehran, 1316s./1937), 41720 (Asrr-i Sabzawari); Muhammad Hasan KhanItimad al-Saltana (d. 1896), Matla al-shams: tarikh-i arz-i aqdas wa Mashhad-i muqaddas (Tehran,1363s./1965), III: 984; Masum-Ali Shah Shirazi (d. 1926), Taraiq al-haqaiq, ed. M. J. Mahjub(Tehran, 1339s./1960), III: 46566; Muhammad Hirz al-Din (d. 1946), Maarif al-rijal fi tarajim al-ulama wa-l-udaba (Qum, 1985), III, 22023; Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin (d. 1952), Ayan al-shia,ed. S. H. al-Amin (Beirut, 1983), X: 234; Muhammad Ali Muallim-i Habibabadi, Makarim al-athardar ahwal-i rijal-i dawra-yi Qajar (Isfahan, 195863), II: 45052; Mudarris-i Tabrizi (d. 1954), Rayha-nat al-adab (Tehran, 132633s./194754), II: 15658; Shaykh Abd Allah Nima, Falasifat al-shia:hayatuhum wa-arauhum (Beirut, 1961), 621; Manuchihr Saduqi Suha, Tarikh-i hukama wa urafa-yi mutaakhkhirin az Sadr al-mutaallihin (Tehran, 1980), 10955.

12E. G. Browne, A History of Persian Literature Volume 4 (Cambridge, 1924), 411; idem, A Yearamong the Persians (London, 1983), 133.

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His father Mirza Mahdi ibn Muhammad Sadiq was an educated merchant andlandowner, whose interest in learning (his son later referred to him as my noblefatherwaliduna-l-fadil) and relative wealth provided the conditions of leisureand encouragement for the young Hadi.13 On his return from the pilgrimage toMecca in 1220/180506, his father died in Shiraz and left the young Sabzawari anorphan at the age of eight.14 His cousin Mirza Husayn took charge of the boy as asurrogate father and in pursuit of his education installed him around 1222/180708 in Mashhad at the Madrasa-yi Hajj Hasan near the shrine to undertakethe preliminaries (muqaddimat) of his study.15 There, he shared Mirza Husayns quar-ters and the latter initiated him into the study of Arabic grammar, syntax and mor-phology, fiqh and jurisprudence and legal theory and Euclidean mathematics(riyaziyyat) and some logic (mantiq). Mirza Husayn was both his paternal and hismaternal cousin (pisar-i amm wa khala-zad). Sabzawari later gave an account ofthese beginnings:

Until I was ten, I remained in Sabzawar The possessor of excellences, the complete savant who practiced what he knew, thecomprehensive sage, the pious and abstemious scholar, the penitent worshipper, thecream of the notables (zubdat al-ashraf), who needs no introduction, the son ofmy aunt, Hajj Mulla Husayn Sabzawari who had studied for years in the holy city ofMashhad took me from Sabzawar to Mashhad. The late scholar was my teacher inArabic, law and jurisprudence, but, as for those disciplines to which I was myselfinclined and desirous of pursuing, namely systematic theology and philosophy(kalam wa-falsafa), he taught me little, but he did teach me logic and some math-ematics (mantiq wa-qalili az riyazi).16

He stayed in Mashhad for ten years and acquired a taste for mystical speculationand philosophy.17 In 1232/1817, he returned to Sabzawar and was married. A sonMuhammad was born the following year and soon after, desiring to perform the pil-grimage to Mecca and to undertake the study of philosophy in Isfahan, he set outalone from Sabzavar in 1233/1818 leaving his family in the care of his cousin.18

13Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 54; Masud Talibi, Introduction, to Sabzawari, Sharh al-manzuma, 4.

14Riza-Nizhad,Hakim-i Sabzawari, 40. Murtaza Mudarrissi Chahardahi argues that he died in Meccaduring the Hajjsee Zindagani wa falsafa-yi Hajj Mulla Hadi Sabzawari (Tehran, 1334s./1955), 16.

15This madrasa no longer exists but was located on the north side of the khiyaban-i haram-i mutahharbetween the Madrasa-yi Baqiriyya where Muhammad Baqir Sabzawari (d. 1683) had taught law and jur-isprudence and the Madrasa-ye Nawwab. The western side of the Baqiriyya was next to the eastern side ofHajj Hasan. It had some one hundred students housed in about twenty-five rooms. With the modernexpansion of the shrine complex, these two madrasas have been demolished. Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sab-zawari, 46.

16Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 4041.17Browne and Habibabadi suggest that he only stayed in Mashhad for five years but this seems to be

incorrectsee Habibabadi, Makarim al-athar, II: 451; cf. Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 4346.18Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 47.

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There, he lodged and studied at the Madrasa-yi Kasa-Giran also known as theMadrasa-yi Shamsiyya. This madrasa was founded in 1104/169293 by Shams al-Din Muhammad Yazdi, after whom it was named, and was located in the neighbor-hood of Kasa-Giran.

Isfahan was witnessing a revival of interest in philosophy and generally in the studyof the Islamic humanities and he soon became devoted to the study of the school ofMulla Sadra. In Isfahan, he studied with major figures. In the scriptural and jurispru-dential disciplines, he began his studies with a young scholar Shaykh Muhammad AliNajafi (d. 1245/1829), attending his classes at the Madrasa-ye Dhu-l-Fiqar for twoyears.19 Najafi was also renowned for his skill in theology and wrote marginalia onthe Shawariq al-ilham (Illuminations of Inspiration) of Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji (d.1661) and on the commentaries on the Tajrid al-Itiqad (Summary of Belief) ofNasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274).

However, Sabzawaris main teachers in jurisprudence were famous in their time. Hehimself said that he was excited by the city of knowledge that was Isfahan and within amonth of arriving he began to attend the classes of Hajji Kalbasi and Shaykh Muham-mad Taqi.20 The former was Mulla Muhammad Ibrahim Kalbasi (or Karbasi, d. 1261/1845).21 Kalbasi had studied in the shrine cities of Iraq with Mulla Mahdi Naraqi (d.1209/1794), Sayyid Muhammad Tabatabai Bahr al-Ulum (d. 1797) and Muham-mad Baqir Vahid Bihbahani (d. 1791). He had also studied philosophy with thefamous sage of the later eighteenth century Aqa Muhammad Bidabadi (d. 1198/1783) and with his contemporary Mulla Muhammad Rafi Gilani. Kalbasi was themost important jurist of his time and his works Shawari al-hidaya (Paths ofGuidance) and Isharat al-usul (Pointers in Jurisprudence) in jurisprudence andMinhaj al-hidaya (Way of Guidance) and Irshad al-mustarshidin (Directing thosein Need of Direction) on positive legal judgments became major sources of studyand reference.22

His other main teacher in jurisprudence was Shaykh Muhammad Taqi ibn Abd al-Rahim Isfahani (d. 1248/1832), an important jurist and author of Hidayat al-mustar-shidin (Guidance of those in Need of Direction).23 He had studied in Najaf with theeminent Shaykh Jafar Najafi Kashif al-Ghita (d. 1227/1812).

In philosophy, he studied with two prominent teachers of the school of MullaSadra: Mulla Ismail and Ali Nuri. Mulla Ismail Darbkushki Isfahani (d. 1268/1853), known as wahid al-ayn because he was blind in one eye, taught the majorworks of Mulla Sadra such as al-Hikma al-mutaaliya fi-l-asfar al-aqliyya al-arbaa(The Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Journeys of the Intellect) and al-Shawahidal-rububiyya (Divine Witnessings) and al-Mabda wa-l-maad (The Beginning and the

19Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 55.20Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 57.21Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 29; Mirza Abu-l-Qasim Muhammad Mahdi Kashmiri Lakhnawi, Nuju al-

sama (Qum, 1976), 68.22Hossein Modarressi Tabatabai, An Introduction to Sh Law: a Bibliographical Study (London,

1984), 93, 99.23Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 29. For some reason unclear to me, Riza-Nizhad does not mention him.

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Return), on which he wrote marginalia (hashiya), and the theological texts of Tusiand Lahiji.24 Mulla Ismail was a comprehensive scholar known for his piety andSabzawari studied with him for at least five years. He himself had been a student ofNuri, Sabzawaris more famous instructor.

Mulla Ali ibn Jamshid Mazandarani Nuri (d. Rajab 1246/1830) was the true heirand reviver of the school of Mulla Sadra.25 He had himself studied with Bidabadi andhence had an intellectual genealogy stretching back to Mulla Sadra in the followingchain: NuriBidabadiIsmail Khajui (d. 1173/1759)Haydar Amuli (d. 1150/173738)Muhsin Fayd Kashani (d. 1680)Mulla Sadra. He wrote commentarieson all the major works of Mulla Sadra, and Sabzawari studied with him for at leastthree years. Along with Kalbasi, he was the reviver of the intellectual fortunes ofIsfahan and when he died his funeral prayers were led by the prominent jurist andshaykh al-islam of the city Mulla Muhammad Baqir Shafti (d. 1260/1844).

In 1240/1824, the (in)famous Shaykh Ahmad ibn Zayn al-Din al-Ahsai (d. 1241/1826),supposed founder of the controversial Shaykhi school and a philosopher highlycritical of the school of Mulla Sadra, came to Isfahan. On the advice of Nuri, Sabza-wari attended his class for about two months.26 While he respected Ahsais piety andreputation, he was influenced by Mulla Ismails hostile attack on his commentary onthe Hikma Arshiyya (Wisdom of the Throne) of Mulla Sadra, and later back in Sab-zawar, he was quite critical of the ideas of Shaykh Ahmad.27 Yet in his autobiography,Sabzawari wrote of Ahsai: He had no equal in asceticism, but he did not make a showof his excellence and eminence before the scholars of Isfahan.28

He remained in Isfahan for eight years and in 1242/182627 returned toMashhad to complete his study of jurisprudence.29 This was the same year that oneof his teachers in philosophy Mulla Ismail left for Tehran to teach there.30 In thesame year, he began his magnum opus, the philosophical poem Ghurar al-faraidknown simply as manzuma (the poem), and then later its commentary which wascompleted in 1261/1845. Having taught and studied in Mashhad for a further fiveyears, he returned to Sabzawar and then once again set out for the pilgrimage toMecca, returning in 1250/1834.31 The recent death of Fath Ali Shah and the sub-sequent turmoil made a quick return to Sabzawar dangerous so Sabzawari went toKirman and stayed at the Madrasa-yi Masumiyya for around a year. There he

24Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 5865.25Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 6569.26Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 6974.27For example, he defended Fayd Kashani against Ahsais criticism of his treatise on knowledge in al-

Muhakamat wa-l-muqawamat in Rasail-i hakim-i Sabzawari, ed. S. J. Ashtiyani (Tehran, 1376s./1997),581601. For a discussion of these texts, see Todd Lawson, Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in TwelverShiism: Ah mad al-Ah s on Fayd Kshn, Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, ed. R. Gleave(London, 2005), 12754.

28Mohaghegh, Introduction,, to Sabzawr, Sharh Ghurar al-faraid, 11.29Browne, A Year among the Persians, 132 mentions a stay of seven years; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sab-

zawari, 52.30Talibi, Introduction, 4; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 220.31Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 82.

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married a woman known as Bibi Kuchik Khanum who bore him two further sons,Muhammad Ismail and Abd al-Qayyum, and four daughters, Nuriyya, Zakiyya,Safiyya and Qudsiyya.32 His time in Kirman may explain some elements of his mys-tical inclinations and even possible Sufi affiliations. Riza-Nizhad and Ibrahimi Dinaniclaim that his father-in-law Mulla Muhammad Arif was his spiritual master in thatcity.33 Of course, some of his students were well known Sufis and we shall returnto the question of Sabzawari and Sufism.

In 1252/183637, he returned to his birthplace, stopping in Mashhad on the wayto teach and perform the visitation to the shrine of the Imam where it is said that heremained for ten months.34 Back in Sabzawar, he began to teach at the Madrasa-yeFasihiyya, which had been founded in 1126/1714 by a Safavid notable Abd al-Sani.35 From here, his fame spread and he attracted students from around the Persia-nate world. In 1863, Comte Arthur de Gobineau (d. 1882), the French ambassadorvisited him and was much impressed. In his Religions et philosophies dans lAsie centrale(first published in 1865), he left an important account of philosophy in Iran sinceMulla Sadra and the role of Sabzawari:

Son Excellence le Hadjy Moulla Hady, de Sebzewar, qui vit encore aujourdhui, g peu prs de soixante-dix ans. Il est tout fait hors ligne. Cest un savant minent,un rudit solide, un matre accompli dans les tudes mtaphysiques, et dans tout cequi tient aux hautes connaissances. Il a compos un grand nombre de commentairessur les uvres diverses de Moulla Sadra.

Ce personnage jouit en Perse dune considration sans gale Sa rputation descience est tellement tendue, quil lui vient Sebzewar, son lieu de naissance, oil est rentr depuis de longues annes, pour nen plus sortir, des lves et des audi-teurs partis de lInde, de la Turquie et de lArabie Le grand mrite de Hadjy Moulla Hady est davoir repris luvre de MoullaSadra. De mme que celui-ci restaurait Avicenne dans la mesure possible, demme celui-l restaure la fois et Moulla Sadra lui-mme et son auteur, usantde toute la latitude que peut lui donner la libert plus grande du temps onous vivons. Il est, en effet, bien que voil encore, plus explicite que lAkhound,et se rapproche du grand matre avec une plnitude de franchise qui navait past vue depuis des sicles. L est la cause de lenthousiasme quil excite, et pourcette raison on ne peut nier quil marque un moment intressant dans lhistoirephilosophique du pays.36

32Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 8384, 257; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 220.33Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 82; personal interview with Prof. Ghulam Husayn Ibrahimi

Dinani at the University of Tehran on 3 January 1996.34Browne, A Year among the Persians, 132; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 8586.35Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 87.36Arthur de Gobineau, Religions et philosophies dans lAsie centrale (Paris, 1933), 9597.

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At the height of his fame, he was visited by the ruler Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar on28 Muharram 1284/1 June 1867 while the king was on a visit to the shrine atMashhad.37 The king was struck by his piety and poise and arranged for thecourt photographer Aqa-yi Riza to make a portrait of him. He also asked the phi-losopher to pray for him; Sabzawari, not wishing to be drawn into the ambit ofthe rulers court, insisted that he prayed for all believers but on being pressed,declaimed, O God, preserve the ruler of Islam!, an ambiguous formula that didnot name Nasir al-Din. The king also presented him with a gift of 500 tomansbut Sabzawari did not directly accept the money; instead, he distributed it amongthe poor. Nevertheless, he acquiesced to a royal commission to write a shortPersian work on philosophy; this was Asrar al-hikam (The Secrets of Philosophy),which was lithographed and distributed to scholars free of charge at the expenseof the court vizier.38

Sabzawari died at the age of 77 on 22 Dhu-l-Hajja 1289/20 February 1873 and wasburied near his house at the Darvaza-yi Nisabur. There is some dispute about the dateof his death.39 His son-in-law Sayyid Hasan stated that he died in 1290. His sonsMuhammad Ismail and Abd al-Qayyum, however, mentioned late Dhu-l-Hajja1289. Browne opts for 1295/1878 but this seems to be a confusion for the date ofthe construction of his shrine built by the court vizier Mirza Yusuf Ashtiyani Mus-tawfi al-mamalik (d. 1303/1886).40 But some date at the end of 1289 seems mostlikely and is attested by a number of chronograms such as that composed by hisstudent Mulla Muhammad Kazim Sirr Sabzawari who was present at his deathand after:

Asrar [Sabzawaris pen-name] has left the world suchLament reaches up to the empyrean from the earth.If you ask the date of his passing,We say: he did not die, but became more alive (kih na-murd, zinda-tar shud =1289).41

Contribution

Sabzawari was a prolific writer. Before discussing his works and his legacy through hisstudents, I want to sketch his pedagogy as expressed in his autobiography and in theaccounts of his many students.

A demanding teacher, Sabzawari divided his classes by ability. New and elementarystudents were required to follow the basic program: grammar through the Alfiyya of

37Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 25961; Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, 416.38Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 15; Mohaghegh, Introduction, 14.39Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 3539.40Browne, A Year among the Persians, 133; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 265; Mohaghegh,

Introduction, 21.41Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 36.

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Ibn Malik (d. 672/1274), logic taught with the Sharh al-matali (Commentary on theRising Places) of al-Sharif al-Jurjani (d. 816/1413) and al-Risala al-Shamsiyya ofDabiran Katibi Qazwini (d. 674/1276), basic Euclidean mathematics and fiqh, theol-ogy through the Shawariq al-ilham of Lahiji and the Sharh al-hidaya of Mir HusaynMaybudi (d. 909/1504). The foundational course in philosophy lasted eight yearsbased almost exclusively on the works of Mulla Sadra: this emphasis on the work ofthe Safavid sage is a distinguishing factor in Sabzawaris pedagogy. Later in life, hedivided his philosophical teaching into three: an introductory class of three hours aday based on his own Sharh-i manzuma, an intermediate class based on the worksof Mulla Sadra, and an advanced class of higher speculation based upon Sabzawarisown experience.42 For those more interested in philosophical mysticism (irfan), hetaught the major texts of the school of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) namely Misbah al-uns(Lamp of Intimacy) of Hamza Fanari (d. 1431), Matla khusus al-kalim fi sharhFusus al-hikam (The Rising-point of the Properties of Words Commenting uponthe Ring-settings of Wisdoms) of Dawud Qaysari (d. 1350) and Tamhid al-qawaid(Introduction to the Rules) of Sain al-Din Turka Isfahani (d. 830/1437).43 Thisrange of teaching reflected his own interests and ideas about pedagogy but also therequirements of his students: some wanted an intellectual training, others wanted aphilosophical understanding of the faith and a grasp of definitions that could aidtheir study of jurisprudence, and a small group were attracted to the introspectiveand mystical speculation and taste. Using a Sufi motif of the law, the spiritual pathand the truth (shariat, tariqat, haqiqat), his son-in-law wrote that he adorned thelaw, the spiritual path and the truth with rays of wisdom and divine sparks of inspi-ration.44 He was generous and would support and feed the poor. He had a reputationfor piety, never forsaking the night prayer (tahajjud) and establishing mourning forImam Husayn in the month of Muharram. He lived in the same frugal house forforty-five years near the Darvaza-yi Nisabur. A number of accounts describe hisascetic way of life and contentment and lack of want (qanaat). The followingaccount is provided by his son Muhammad Ismail as recounted by Itimad al-Saltana:

The late Hajji spent the last third of the night awake in the dark engrossed inprayer, regardless of whether it was winter, summer, autumn or spring, untilsunrise. He would then drink two cups of pure, very dark tea with twelve mithqals[about twelve teaspoons] of sugar in each mixed in and he used to say that I drinkthis very sweet tea to keep up my strength.He certainly had no taste or inclination

42Talibi, Introduction, 4.43Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 9697; Hamza Fanari, Misbah al-uns sharh Miftah al-ghayb,

ed. M. Khajawi (Tehran, 1996); Dawud Qaysari, Matla khusus al-kalim fi maani Fusus al-hikam,ed. M. H. Saidi, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1995); Sain al-Din Turka, Tamhid al-qawaid, ed. S. J. Ashtiyani(Tehran, 1976). On Sain al-Din, see Leonard Lewisohn, Sufism and Theology in the Confessions ofSin al-Dn Turka Isfahn, Sufism and Theology, ed. by Ayman Shihadeh (Edinburgh, 2007), 6382,and Sayyid Ali Musawi Bihbahani, Ahwal wa athar-i Sain al-Din Turka Isfahani, Collected Papersin Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. H. Landolt and M. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1971), 97132.

44Mohaghegh, Introduction, 14.

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to take opium or any sort of tobacco. Two hours into the day, he would go to themadrasa and teach for four hours. He would then return home for lunch and wouldeat some simple bread and drink a thin yogurt drink (dugh) made with little yogurt After lunch he would sleep for an hour if it were summer. He would not drinktea in the afternoon. He would spend three to four and a half hours of the night inprayer in the darkness and then have some supper comprising some rice and asimple meat-less, usually spinach, soup because of his old age and lack of teeth.For a half hour before supper, he would take a walk in the garden He wouldlater sleep on a simple, hard and uncomfortable bed in the cellar.

He used to wear a simple black Mazandarani cloak (aba), a green coat (qaba) thatwas tattered and patched. In winter he would wear a yellow coat and pants(shalwar). He would wear a white imama [turban] and at night a karbasi hat.He did not have a library, just a few volumes and a beautiful, hand-crafted Isfahanipen with which he solved the dilemmas and problems of philosophy He would not keep the income from his lands but distribute them to the poor.Every year for the last ten days of Safar, he would convene mourning for ImamHusayn and lament and wail loudly, inviting people to join him in the mourning.One day he gave the reciter (rawza-khwan) five Qurans and would feed the poorbread and abgusht (meat broth) Every year he would fulfill his duty of paying thezakat and khums directly into the hands of the sayyids and the needy.45

For those more mystically and spiritually inclined, these accounts sound more akinto the life of a saint and one who wrought miracles and possessed spiritual qualities(sahib-i karamat wa-maqamat). Accounts are given of his miracles: Riza-Nizhad men-tions eleven such extraordinary events in his life and significantly after his death (a suresign of sanctity and spiritual power).46 These incidents cover the normal range of Sufimiracles: supernatural knowledge, telekinesis, and spiritual healing. Some commenta-tors have described him as a Sufi master and he certainly sought the company ofSufis.47 One ambivalent Sufi Mulla Abbas Ali Kayvan-i Qazvini (d. 1938) claimedthat he was close to the Nimatullahi Gunabadi shaykh Saadat Ali Shah (d. 1289/1872) and that Sabzawari was the true Sufi pole (qutb) of his time:

First, it is worth stressing that the sole person who bore the signs of being the qutb(spiritual pole of his time) was Hajj Mulla Hadi. In knowledge, wisdom and pietyhe had no peer and no one possessed deep knowledge like him. He lived frugally andowned little. He was so liked that if he had ever wanted people to prostrate to himthey would have done so. He did not seek any leadership and would even shunleading the prayer. He would not seek the company of the elites but insteadlived in seclusion, was ascetic, and would constantly beseech his Lord

45Itimad al-Saltana, Matla al-shams, III: 197201; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 11113.46Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 24449.47Nasr, Sabziwr, 1544.

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He represented a life without pretence and with simplicity, and he would not drawattention to his own distinction nor attract people towards him. He would not pri-vilege his children nor squander wealth. Thus his disciples of all sorts were free tofollow spiritual masters as they wished.48

It was through his association that he introduced his student Muhammad ibnHaydar to Saadat Ali Shah; the student later succeeded him in the Nimatullahiorder as Sultan Ali Shah (d. 1327/1909) and was famed for his commentary onthe Quran and his Walayat-nama (Treatise on Sanctity).49 It is difficult to verifySabzawaris position in this Sufi order; it is undeniable that he had a close relationshipto these Sufis but that does not entail his affiliation to their spiritual lineage. Sufismcan, of course, in a Shii context be seen rather negatively and it may be that he wantedto keep his distance. Irfan was acceptable (and remains so) in the hawza; tasawwuf is,however, more problematic.50

Sabzawari wrote around forty works in Arabic and Persian. They can be dividedinto four categories: marginalia on the works of Mulla Sadra, original works in phil-osophy, commentaries on supplications and Persian literature, and works on theology.He also composed verse under the pen-name Asrar.51 His commentaries are on thewhole based on his teaching at the Madrasa-ye Fasihiyya and included other philoso-phical, theological, grammatical and legal texts such as Hikmat al-ishraq (The Philos-ophy of Illumination) of Suhrawardi (d. 1191), Shawariq al-ilham of Lahiji (d. 1661),Zubdat al-usul (The Essence of Jurisprudence) of Shaykh Baha al-Din Amili (d.1621), Sharh alfiyyat ibn Malik (Commentary on the Thousand Verses of IbnMalik) of Jalal al-Din Suyuti (d. 1505), and al-Abhath al-mufida (Beneficial Discus-sions) of Allama al-Hilli (d. 1325). None of these works has been published.However, most of the works from the four categories have been.

Among the marginalia on the works on Mulla Sadra, Sabzawari wrote thefollowing:

1) Hawashi on al-Asfar al-arbaa, the magnum opus of Mulla Sadrathis wasplaced in the margins of the first lithographic printing of the Asfar in 1282/1865.52 The modern edition from the 1950s includes five sets of marginaliabut the most recent critical edition published by the Sadra Islamic Philosophy

48Kayvan Qazvini, Razgusha: bihin sukhan (Tehran, n.d.), 24.49Masum-Ali Shah, Taraiq al-haqaiq, I: 240; Masud Humayuni, Tarikh-i silsila-h-yi tariqa-yi

Nimatullahi (Tehran, 1980), 13236; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 124; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari,1057; Leonard Lewisohn, An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism Part I: TheNimatullhi Orderpersecution, revival and schism, BSOAS, 61 (1998): 45052; Ali TabandaMahbub-Ali Shah, Khurshid-i tabanda (Tehran, 1377s./1998), 4750; Sultan Ali Shah, Bayan al-saada fi maqamat al-ibada, 4 vols. (Tehran, 1344s./1965); idem, Walayatnama (Tehran, 1380s./2001).

50Cf. Ahmad Ahmadi, Irfn and tas awwuf, Al-Tawh d, 1 (1984): 6376.51Diwan-i Asrar, ed. S. H. Amin (Tehran, 1993).52Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 140; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari,

68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 116.

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Research Institute only reproduced the marginalia of Sabzawari, signaling itsparamount importance.

2) Hawashi on al-Mabda wa-l-maadthis was lithographed in 1314/189697.53

3) Hawashi on al-Shawahid al-rububiyyathis marginalia on the epitome ofSadrian philosophy was lithographed in 1286/1869 and then reprinted in theedition of the text produced by Sayyid Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani in 1960.54 Theglosses are extensive and around the same length as the original text.

4) Hawashi on Mafatih al-ghayb (Keys to the Unseen)these glosses on theQuranic and philosophical hermeneutics of Mulla Sadra have never been pub-lished.55 The marginalia of Sabzawaris teacher Ali Nuri are better known andhave been published in the edition of the work.56

5) Hawashi on Asrar al-ayat (Secrets of the Verses/Signs)Ashtiyani claims thathe saw a manuscript of this but it is not mentioned by other sources and I havenot managed to find any other reference to it.57 Since the work is often associ-ated withMafatih al-ghayb, it would not be surprising to find Sabzawari writingglosses upon it.

Among his original works, three stand out:

1) Al-Laali al-muntazima (493 verses on logic) and Ghurar al-faraid (1,039verses on philosophy) upon both of which he later wrote a commentary(sharh) and gloss (taliqa)this is his famous sharh-i manzuma, a major didacticwork (hence versified) and its explanation that since its publication in 1298/1881 until well into the 1980s was the major introduction to philosophy inthe hawza.58 The work is divided mainly into three parts: a section on logic,semantics and proof theory; al-ilahiyyat bi-l-mana l-amm covering basicissues of ontology; and al-ilahiyyat bi-l-mana l-khass on philosophical theol-ogy.59 I discuss this work in more detail below.

53Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 145; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari,68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 116.

54Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 143; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari,68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 116.

55Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 146; Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 116.56Mulla Sadra, Mafatih al-ghayb ma taliqat Mulla Ali Nuri, ed. M. Khajawi (Tehran, 1984).57Sayyid Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani, Muqaddima,Mulla Sadra, al-Shawahid al-rububiyya fi-l-manahij al-

sulukiyya (Mashhad, 1967), cliv.58Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 15055; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 22223; Chahardahi, Sab-

zawari, 63; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 115. The text was supplanted by Allama Tabatabais Bidayat al-hikma and Nihayat al-hikma (Qum, 1984). The former is available in an excellent translation: TheElements of Islamic Metaphysics, trans. Ali-quli Qarai (London, 2003).

59There are two editions of the textone is complete in four volumes edited by Talibi with the mar-ginal glosses of the contemporary hakim Aqa Hasan Hasanzada Amuli of Qum and published in 1995,and another edition of the two sections on metaphysics edited by Mehdi Mohaghegh and ToshihikoIzutsu and originally published in the 1970s by the Tehran branch of the McGill Institute of Islamic

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2) Asrar al-hikam fi-l-mufattatah wa-l-mukhattatam (Secrets of Wisdom concern-ing Openings and Closures)this Persian work on philosophy was commis-sioned by Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and completed in 1286/1869.60 It waslithographed first in 1300/1883 in Tehran with the glosses of Abu-l-HasanShirani and reprinted in 1972. There are two sections: metaphysics or theoreti-cal philosophy (hikmat-i nazari) and ethics or practical philosophy (hikmat-iamali). The former, comprising seven chapters, analyses philosophical theologyfrom discussions on the nature of being and the oneness of God to the nature ofthe imamate. The latter includes four chapters on spiritual explanations ofprayer, fasting and other ritual practices. The style of the text is consistentwith Sabzawaris mystical and poetic taste and the work is replete with quota-tions from the Persian classics. This text played a pivotal role in the populariza-tion of the thought of Mulla Sadra in the Qajar period.61

3) Hadi al-mudillin (Guide for the Astray)a Persian epitome of philosophicaltheology that is attributed to Sabzawari.62 According to the modern editor,Ali Awjabi, the work was probably written by a student of Sabzawari and com-pleted in 1290/1874. It examines the basic elements of Shii doctrine with fourchapters on divine unity (tawhid), justice (adl), prophecy and the imamate(nubuwwat wa-wilyat), and the afterlife (maad).

The third category also contains three important works:

1) Sharh al-asma (Commentary on the Divine Names)a commentary on thefamous supplication of the divine names known as Jawshan kabir which wasfirst lithographed in 1281/1865 along with the following commentary.63 Thesupplication itself is transmitted by the third Shii Imam al-Husayn ibn Alifrom his father and became quite popular in the revival of Shii heritageunder the Safavids, quoted in the prayer and supplication manual al-Baladal-amin (The Secure Abode) of Ibrahim al-Kafami (d. 904/1499) and the ency-clopedia of Shii tradition Bihar al-anwar (Seas of Lights) of Muhammad Baqir

StudiesSharh Ghurar al-faraid maruf bih Sharh-i manzuma-yi hikmat: qismat-i umur-i amma wajawhar wa araz (Tehran, 1969); trans. T. Izutsu and M. Mohaghegh as The Metaphysics of Sabzavari(Tehran, 1983); Sharh Ghurar al-faraid, maqsad-i siwwum fi-l-ilahiyyat bi-l-mana l-akhass,ed. M. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1999).

60Asrar al-hikam, ed. H. M. Farzad (Tehran, 1982); Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 173; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 115. This work is thebasis of the assessment of Sabzawaris contribution to philosophy in Muhammad Iqbals doctoral disser-tation at Heidelberg, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (London, 1908), 17679.

61Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Metaphysics of S adr al-Dn Shrz and Islamic Philosophy in QajarPersia, in Qajar Iran, ed. C.E. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh, 1983), 190.

62Hadi al-mudillin mansub bih Hajj Mulla Hadi Sabzawari, ed. A. Awjabi (Tehran, 1383s./2004);Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 172.

63Sharh al-asma, ed. N. Habibi (Tehran, 1375s./1996); Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-e Sabzavr, 164; Hirzal-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 115.

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Majlisi (d. 1699).64 Sabzawari completed the commentary in Jumada II 1260/July 1844. It is an extensive philosophical and mystical meditation upon thesupplication drawing upon the school of Mulla Sadra, Neoplatonic traditionsin Islam and the rationalizing mysticism of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240).

2) Sharh dua al-sabahof Imam Ali also known asMiftah al-falahwa-misbah al-najatfi sharh dua al-sabah (Key to Salvation and Lamp of Deliverance Commentingupon the Supplication of the Morning) was originally composed in 1267/1851.65

3) Sharh-i asrar (Commentary of Asrar)a commentary on some one hundredor so difficult verses of theMathnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1274) commis-sioned by the Qajar prince Sultan Murad Mirza Husam al-Saltana, the governorof Khurasan, and lithographed in 1285/1868 by Aqa Muhammad BaqirTihrani.66 The commentary once again allows Sabzawari to relate his learningin the philosophical and mystical traditions to an explanation of the poetry.67

Sabzawaris legacy did not reside merely in his works that were lithographed, copiedand distributed. More significant for the dissemination of the school of Mulla Sadrawere his students. Various sources mention between sixty-five and a hundred impor-tant students, and another twenty-five spiritual disciples. This significant number andthe roles that they played in Qajar cultural and intellectual life attests to Sabzawarisimportance in the period. Alongside the general body of hawza students, there arethree important groups influenced by Sabzawari. The first group were his studentswho were cultural figures of the time. One example was Sayyid Ahmad RizaviAdib-i Pishavari (d. 1349/1930), a Suhravardi Sufi from India who had fled theBritish repression after the revolt of 1857 to Afghanistan and then Iran and whostudied in Sabzawar for the last two years of Sabzawaris life.68

The second group were important jurists whose years of study ushered in a para-digm shift in jurisprudence. Perhaps the most important Shii jurist of the middleQajar period, Shaykh Murtaza Ansari Dizfuli (d. 1864), author of the Faraid al-usul (Gems of Jurisprudence), studied philosophy and theology at the Madrasa-yiHajj Hasan with Sabzawari for two years before he moved to Najaf in 1250/1834.69 The other outstanding jurist of the Qajar period, Akhund Muhammad

64Al-Kafami, al-Balad al-amin (Tehran, 1963), 402; Majlisi, Bihar al-anwar (Beirut, 1982), XCI:38297.

65Sharh dua al-sabah (Beirut, 1997); Riza-Nizhad,Hakim-i Sabzawari, 14849; Hirz al-Din,Maarifal-rijal, 223.

66Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 163; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, 223; Chahardahi, Sabzawari,68; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 115. It has been recently published: Sharh-i mathnawi, ed. M. Burujirdi,3 vols. (Tehran, 137477s./199598).

67For a study of this text, see John Cooper, Rm and h ikmat: Towards a reading of Sabziwrs com-mentary on the Mathnawi, in The Heritage of Persian Sufism I: Classical Persian Sufism from its Originsto Rumi, ed. L. Lewisohn (Oxford, 1999), 40933.

68Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 12122; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 114; Munibur Rahman, AdbPvar, EIr.

69Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 44.

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Kazim Khurasani (d. 1329/1911), a prominent constitutionalist and author of themain hawza text in legal theory and jurisprudence of the modern period Kifayat al-usul (The Sufficient in Jurisprudence), studied in Sabzawar for two years before hetransferred to Najaf in 1861.70 Usul al-fiqh had always been influenced by epistem-ology and logic from the medieval period, especially in what was known as theShafii method (al-tariqa al-shafiiyya) exemplified in al-Mustasfa (The Clarification)of Ghazali (d. 1111).71 But the metaphysical shift, particularly noticeable in the pro-cedural principles in jurisprudence (usul amaliyya), was influenced by Sabzawariwhich made the teaching of philosophy more acceptable in Najaf, a center of learningtraditionally hostile to philosophy.72 Shii jurisprudence broadly comprises two sets ofdiscussions: semantic theory (mabahith al-alfaz) and procedural principles (usul ama-liyya). The latter has seen a considerable growth, complication and sophistication thatcan be traced to the work of Ansari and especially Khurasani. The philosophicalimpact of Khurasani, reflecting the incorporation of the school of Mulla Sadra via Sab-zawari, was particularly mediated by his student Shaykh Muhammad Husayn IsfahaniKumpani (d. 1361/1942) in his commentary Nihayat al-diraya fi sharh al-Kifaya(Culmination of Study Commenting upon the Sufficient).73 For most of the medievalperiod, the main textbook in jurisprudence and legal theory was Mabadi al-wusul ilailm al-usul (Principles for Achieving Knowledge of Jurisprudence), a short work byAllama al-Hilli.74 It is almost exclusively concerned with semantics and hermeneuticsand engages in two areas of concern in Sunni jurisprudence: the nature of scholarlyconsensus (ijma) and evaluation and adjudication of contradictory hadith reports(tarjih). The structure and contents of Khurasanis Kifayat al-usul are quite distinct.The text begins with an epistemological introduction and considers categorization andits metaphysical implication. It then progresses to discuss semantics and hermeneuticsand the nature of legal commands and prohibitions. Even in this section, there is amore systematic appreciation that linguistic analysis involves an appreciation of therelationship between three metaphysical realities: ideas and concepts, speech and com-munication, and objective reality. There is also a final section on the nature of legalreasoning (ijtihad) and the necessity to follow (taqlid) and emulate a model jurist.Before that comes the crucial section on procedural principles namely, exemption(al-baraa al-asliyya), presumption of continuity (istishab), precaution (ihtiyat), andoptional choice (takhyir).75 These principles pertain to issues in the absence of scrip-tural evidence and the inability to formulate clear rational judgments in a case.

70Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 123; Abdol-Hadi Hairi, khnd Korsn, EIr, I, 73234.71For a useful sketch of the history of usul al-fiqh in the Shii seminary, see Sayyid Mundhir al-Hakim,

Tatawwur al-dars al-usuli fi-l-Najaf al-ashraf, Mawsuat al-Najaf al-ashraf, ed. Jafar al-Dujayli (Beirut,1997), VII: 173216.

72Sabrina Mervin, La qute du savoir Najaf, Studia Islamica, 81 (1995): 181.73Al-bahth al-falsafi fi usul al-fiqh, Mawsuat al-Najaf al-ashraf, VIII: 6166; Gharawi Kumpani,

Nihayat al-diraya fi sharh al-kifaya, 6 vols. (Qum, 1998).74Allama Al-Hilli, Mabadi al-wusul ila ilm al-usul, ed. Abd al-Husayn al-Baqqal (Qum, 1983).75Khurasani, Kifayat al-usul (Qum, 2001), 384495. Similarly, roughly half of Ansaris text concerns

these procedural principles.

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The third group, and most central to the perpetuation of the Sadrian legacy, werethose students who comprised the next generation of philosophers. Luminariesincluded the philosopher known for his proclivity to irfan Husayn-quli Hamadani(d. 1311/1893) who later taught in Karbala and whose own disciples included theinfamous agitator Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani (d. 1897), Sayyid Ahmad Tihrani Kar-balai (d. 1332/1914) and Sayyid Ali Qazi Tabatabai (d. 1365/1947).76 The lattertwo taught the philosopher par excellence of the twentieth century Sayyid MuhammadHusayn Tabatabai (d. 1981) whose students Sayyid Muhammad Husayn HusayniTihrani (d. 1995), Shaykh Murtaza Mutahhari (d. 1979), Ayatollah HasanzadaAmuli and Ayatollah Abd Allah Javadi Amuli have since dominated the school ofMulla Sadra in Iran.77 Another prominent student was Mirza Javad Malaki Tabrizi(d. 1343/1924), author of Asrar al-salat (Secrets of Prayer) and teacher of ethics inQum where his disciples included Ayatollah Khumayni.78 A student of Sabzawari pro-minent in Tehran later was Mirza Husayn Sabzawari, who taught at the Madrasa-yiAbd Allah Khan.79

Establishing Mulla Sadra in the Curriculum

Alongside the glosses on the works of the Shirazi philosopher that were printed in themargins of the Qajar lithographs produced in Tehran (and hence it was with the aidand guidance of Sabzawari that students read and understood Mulla Sadra), it wasthrough the Asrar al-hikam and the Sharh-i manzuma that the thought of MullaSadra was simplified, vernacularized and disseminated.

76Muhammad Jarfadaqani, Ulama-yi buzurg-i shia az Kulayni ta Khumayni (Qum, 1364s./1985),2956; Hirz al-Din, Maarif al-rijal, I: 270; Tabrizi, Rayhanat al-adab, IV: 325; Suha, Tarikh-ihukama, 13233; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 13435.

77On Tabatabai and his lineage, see Ayatollah Husayni-yi Tihrani, Mihr-i taban: yadnama wa musa-hibat-i tilmidh wa Allama Tabatabai (Mashhad, 1996); Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: TheIdeological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York, 1993), 273323; Hamid Algar,Allma Sayyid Muhammad H usayn Tabt ab: Philosopher, Exegete, and Gnostic, Journal ofIslamic Studies, 17 (2006): 32651. The spiritual lineage of Tabatabai, which survives through hisstudent Husayni-yi Tihrani and his circle in Mashhad as well as his disciples in Qum, is a continuationof the lineage of Husayn-quli Hamadani which traces back to the famous Sufi Qutb al-Din Nayrizi in thefollowing manner: HamadaniSayyid Ali Shushtari (d. 1283/1866)Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Kashif (d.Shaban 1257/1841)Aqa Muhammad Bidabadi (d. 1197/1783)the Dhahabi Sufi Sayyid Qutb al-Din Muhammad Nayrizi (d. 1173/1760)see Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 1513. On Nayrizi himself,see Leonard Lewisohn, An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part II, BSOAS,62 (1999): 367; Hidayat, Riyaz al-arifin, 4826; Masum-Ali Shah, Taraiq al-haqaiq, III: 978;Asad Allah Khavari, Dhahabiyya: tasawwuf-i ilmi wa athar-i adabi (Tehran, 1362s./1983), 297307.The Hamadani lineage survives in Karbala and its most prominent twentieth century figure wasSayyid Hashim al-Haddad (d. 1984)see Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Husayni Tihrani, Ruh-i mujarrad(Mashhad, 1375s./1996). One of the texts of this lineage that is taught is Risala-yi sayr wa-suluk attrib-uted to Sayyid Mahdi Tabatabai Bahr al-Ulum who was a disciple of Nayrizi (ed. H. Mustafawi,[Tehran, 1367s./1988]).

78Jarfadaqani, Ulama-yi buzurg-i shia, 3545; Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 13334.79Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 121; Nasr, Islamic Philosophy, 246; Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 112.

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Let us consider the Sharh-i manzuma first. As one twentieth century author wrote,the sharh-i manzuma from its composition to the present has been the central textfor students of the intellectual disciplines (maqulat).80 While in recent years it hasbeen eclipsed as the preliminary text by the Bidayat al-hikma (Beginning Philosophy)and Nihayat al-hikma (Completing Philosophy) of Allama Tabatabai, it remains theframework for these works and has been transformed into a more exacting intermedi-ate text to be read and digested after these two textbooks. Through some commen-taries, it functions as a touchstone and inspiration for the development of the new(liberation) theology (kalam-i jadid) pioneered by Mutahhari among others.

The text ismadeupof three layers.The first level is the poetic form, the dense collectionof words demanding explanation and commentary. The medieval tradition of themadrasa often privileged short versified tests designed for memorization as a vehicle forteaching ideas; it was a popular genre particularly in the study ofArabic grammar andmor-phology as well as jurisprudence and creedal theology. While Sabzawari was a respectedpoet in Persian, the Arabic of these verses is typical of its genre and perhaps not intendedto be the most elegant. But given that the function of the verse was ease of memorization,this is to be expected. The second level is the commentary that expounds the sense of thewords and their connotation and significations. This was based on his own classes and thedefinitive explanation of the poem, expounding on some obscurities. The third level com-prises the later glosses that Sabzawari himself wrote on the poem and in it he expands onsome issues unresolved in the commentary. Already inhis lifetime it was used as a textbookin philosophy and soon after his deathwith the appearance of the lithograph it was taughtin Tehran. The first part (maqsad) on general ontology reads like a more systematicsummary of the first safar of Mulla Sadras Asfsr and is divided into the followinggems ( fardas): properties of being and non-being (al-wujud wa-l-adam), necessityand possibility (al-wujub wa-l-imkan), eternity and incipience (al-huduth wa-l-qidam),actuality and potentiality (al-fil wa-l-quwwa), essence and its properties (al-mahiyyawa-lawahiquha), unity and multiplicity (al-wahda wa-l-kathra), and cause and effect(al-illa wa-l-malul). The Asfar actually has three further sections on mental being, onthe intellect and on motion that are not covered separately in the Sharh-i manzumabut that is partly because aspects of these discussions are subsumed in the existing sections;for example, the discussion of mental being is found in the first gem on the properties ofbeing.81

The comprehensive character of the text mirrors earlier encyclopedic works such asal-Shifa of Avicenna and the Asfar of Mulla Sadra. The preliminary part concernslogic. But it is more than the Aristotelian or even Avicennian organon. Rather, itdraws upon semantic theory, hermeneutics and category theory. It is divided intoseven dives (ghaws) evoking the image of diving for pearls (laali): on universalsand particulars, on the isagogic predicables, on definition (tarif), on propositional

80Chahardahi, Sabzawari, 28.81Cf. Mulla Sadra, al-hikma al-mutaaliya fi-l-asfar al-aqliyya al-arbaa, ed. G. Awani and

M. Muhammadi, 3 vols. of the first safar (Tehran, 138083s./200105).

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logic, on opposition and contradiction, on the syllogistic (qiyas) and on types of dem-onstration (burhan).

The philosophical work also comprises seven parts that cover the totality of issues inmetaphysics and philosophical theology, culminating in ethics which is a distinguish-ing feature often absent from such works in the medieval period. The first section onontology deals with core issues around the question of being and its properties andconstitutes the sort of speculative metaphysics that was starting to be disapprovedin Europe at his time. The second section on substance and accident deals with theAvicennian modification of Aristotelian category theory. In this he follows MullaSadra. But it is worth bearing in mind that, in effect, the metaphysical shift inSadrian philosophy towards focusing upon events and acts of being-becominginstead of Aristotelian immutable substances made category theory redundant. Sabza-wari did not, however, reflect upon this processual turn in philosophy. The thirdsection on philosophical theology concerns the nature of God and the Godhumanrelationship and includes a discussion of determinism and will. It is only these firstthree sections that have ever been published. Section four concerns natural philosophyor medieval physics and includes some of his stranger ideas such as the cause of earth-quakes lying with subterranean monsters. Not surprisingly, this is the section of thetext made wholly obsolete by modern science and consequently has not be taughtfor some time. The fifth section moves on to prophecy and the its features such asmiracles and oneiromancy. He also raises the question of why and how God commu-nicates to humans. A corollary of this discussion and its extension is the exposition ofthe imamate, since we are dealing with a Shii philosophy. The sixth section is difficultbut critical on the nature of resurrection and the afterlife. Sabzawari extends MullaSadras desire to prove the elusive or what had been hitherto undemonstrable,namely the orthodox position of corporeal resurrection. Since the section on the after-life in the Asfar was criticized for failing to adhere closely to Shii doctrine, this textprovides a more grounded Shii disquisition on the question. The final and in someways rather unique aspect of the text is a section on the science of character traits(akhlaq) better known as ethics, remarkable given that by this point in the intellectualhistory ethics had been broadly expunged from the philosophical tradition and wasconfined to fiqh, belles-lettres, mirrors-for-princes, the akhlaq-andarz literature andpoetry.

A number of later students and scholars in the line of Sabzawari have commented,expanded upon and translated the text.82 Over forty such works have been written.This number attests to the significance of the work given that it was written only150 years ago. The earliest commentaries (which have never been published) werecomposed by his direct students who had benefited from directly reading the textand they are often closer in style and taste to the original work. Probably the firstamong these were the brief marginalia of the jurist Akhund Khurasani. More exten-sive was an Arabic commentary by Sayyid Muhammad Assar Tihrani (d. 1356/1937),

82Riza-Nizhad, Hakim-i Sabzawari, 20825.

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father of the renowned Sayyid Kazim Assar (d. 1975).83 This work entitled Ishraqatal-radawiyya is extant in a manuscript numbered 324 in the Astan-i Quds Library atthe shrine in Mashhad and dated 16 Jumada II 1349/8 November 1930. Anotherstudent who wrote a gloss was Sayyid al-Atibba Ali Marashi, the father of themarja and founder of one of the great Islamic manuscript collections, SayyidShihab al-Din Marashi (d. 1990).

Popular commentaries for a wider non-hawza readership include Jafar Zahidisthree volume work Khwud-amuz-i manzuma (Teach Yourself the Poem), writtenby a Mashhad university professor, an extensive multi-volume work by SayyidJawad Dhihni Tihrani, and a sharh-i jadid by Manuchihr Saduqi Suha.84 Themost creative commentary in Persian is the Sharh-i mabsut-i manzuma (DetailedCommentary on the Poem) penned in four volumes by Mutahhari.85 It is a criticalwork that juxtaposes and engages with modern European philosophy and may beregarded as a premier and even foundational work of kalam-i jadid. One can seehow it emerged from his theology classes at Tehran University. The roots of thisnew theology lie in the Qajar period but it was formulated in the twentieth centurydefending realism, rationalism and religious epistemology against materialist empiri-cism, positivism and scientism. Mutahharis commentary is one of two centralworks of the new theology; the other is Allama Tabatabais Usul-i falsafa warawish-i rializm (Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism) with theglosses of Mutahhari.86

Another category of commentaries are glosses by teachers of philosophy in thehawza. One set of scholia are written by the twentieth century hakim MirzaAhmad Ashtiyani. The glosses of Mulla Muhammad Tihrani, known as Akhund-iHidaji, were completed in 1346/1927.87 It is a sophisticated Avicennian commentarythat is one of the few to deal systematically with the section on logic. Perhaps the bestone volume introduction for students is Durar al-fawaid fi sharh ghurar al-faraid(Beneficial Pearls: Commentary on the Whites of Pearls) of Shaykh MuhammadTaqi Amuli.88 More recently, there is a good extensive set of glosses written by Aya-tollah Sayyid Rida Sadr.89 Another Avicennian commentary by Ziya al-Din Durri isconsistently hostile. Durri was a student of Mirza Hasan Kirmanshahi (d. 1917) andan accomplished teacher, translator and commentator upon the works of Avicenna in

83On Sayyid Kazim Assar, see the account of his daughter Shusha Guppy, The Blind Horse: Memoriesof a Persian Childhood (London, 1988), especially 3947. One collection of treatises was published in hislifetime: Thalath rasail fi-l-hikmaa al-islamiyya (Tehran, 1971). Other posthumous publications include:Majmua-yi athar-i Assar, ed. S. J. Ashtiyani (Tehran, 1376s./1997); Durus-i mantiq wa falsafa (Qum,1383s./2004).

84Two elementary paraphrases by jurists in Arabic need not detain us much: one by the late marjaSayyid Muhammad Husayni Shirazi (d. 2001), and another by the London-based Sayyid Fadil Milani.

85Murtaza Mutahhari, Sharh-i mabsut-i manzuma, 4 vols. (Tehran, 1404/1983).86Tabatabai, Usul-i falsafa wa rawish-i rializm, ed. with notes of Mutahhari, 4 vols. (Qum, 1368s./

1990).87Taliqat al-Hidaji ala-l-Manzuma (Tehran, 1363s./1984).88Shaykh Muhammad Taqi Amuli, Durar al-fawaid fi sharh ghurar al-faraid (Tehran, 1960).89Sayyid Rida Sadr, Sahaif min al-falsafa [taliqa ala Sharh al-manzuma] (Qum, 1379s./2000).

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Tehran. Critical evaluation and modification is often rejected in the hawza; outrightattacks upon canonical authors are considered quite unacceptable. While Durri makessome significant and telling criticisms, his tone and style jar and thus make it unlikelyfor his critique to find a place in the commentary culture.

The final category of commentary I want to discuss is the philosophically mysticalor irfani. The Tehrani rationalizing mystics Sayyid Abu-l-Hasan Qazwini and SayyidKazim Assar both wrote scholia in this vein. However, the outstanding example is theTaliqat of Mirza Mahdi Ashtiyani (d. 1952).90

Beyond the hawza, the role of the Asrar al-hikam in disseminating the philosophy ofMulla Sadra is perhaps more critical. The style of the text is worthy of mention: it iswritten in accessible prose and the demonstrative nature of the argument set forthclearly with discursive explanations of the premises of each syllogistic argument, corro-borated and supplemented by poetic citations and allusions to famous scripturalsources. On numerous points, he follows the method of Mulla Sadra in the Asfar: hefirst sets forth the argument in a demonstrative manner, and follows it with a discussionof the scriptural sources that corroborate it. I want to consider two examples that rep-resent the Shii philosophy that Sabzawari and his mentor espoused. The first sectionof the ontology is concerned with knowledge of the origins of being, addressing thefamed question in philosophy: why is there something rather than nothing? The firstchapter of this broaches a central issue in Islamicmetaphysics: the proof for the existenceof aCreator, aGod, and a Principle. Sabzawari presents fiveways of establishing the exist-ence of God: the way of the metaphysicians (hukama-yi ilahiyyin) and their Avicennianontological proof for the Necessary Being (wujib al-wujud), the way of the natural phi-losophers (hukama-yi tabiiyyun) who infer from motion the existence of an UnmovedMover (the argument originates in Aristotles Physics VIII), the psychological way of themetaphysicians which is a form of teleological proof based on the analysis of the humansoul, the way of the theologians (mutakallimin), and finally his preferred method thatderives from Mulla Sadra, namely, the way of the veracious (tariqa-yi siddiqin).91 Thisfinalmode of proving the existence ofGod is preferable but also difficult to comprehend.Sabzawari uses poetic citations to explain it, drawing upon Rumi and Firdowsi. He alsocites the famous hadith man arafa nafsahu faqad-arafa rabbahu (whosoever knows hisself, knows his Lord) and the language that considers the cosmos to be a series of mani-festations and disclosures of divine being at whose pinnacle is the perfect man (insankamil), exemplified in the person of Ali ibn Abi Talib.

The second case occurs in the sixth chapter on prophecy and the imamate. A centralShii concept is walayah, the intimacy, sanctity and spiritual and ontological authority

90Mahdi Ashtiyani, Taliqa bar Sharh-i manzuma-yi hikmat-i Sabzawari, ed. J. Falaturi andM. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1352s./1973).

91Sabzawari, Asrar al-hikam, 3657. The Avicennian tradition held to the three-fold division of theontological (philosophers), cosmological (theologians) and from motion (natural philosophers) proofs forthe existence of God that one finds mentioned in Nasir al-Din Tusi, Sharh al-isharat wa-l-tanbihat,ed. M. Shihabi (Qum, 1375s./1996), III: 66. Sabzawari is faithful to Sadras language: he describes theargument as a way and not as a demonstration (burhan), which is the common mode of referring toit in modern secondary discussions.

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that the Prophets and Imams possess.92 This reality arises from the divine truthshidden within the essence and from proper recognition of the divine essence, attri-butes and acts through vision. Being is hidden (deus absconditus) and it is onlythrough sanctity that it is manifest in the cosmos (deus revelatus) and then onlythrough the seekers contemplation of the transcendent that it becomes apparent.Concomitantly, it is only those with vision who truly recognize the saints andImams. It is the perfect man who is the summation and loftiest degree of humanity,of intellect, and of being after the One. Below the saint and Imam is a spiritual hier-archy, comprising worshippers (abid), ascetics (zahid) and gnostics (arif). Theseinsights and the affirmation of horizontal and vertical hierarchies in existence andwithin the category of sanctity is an expression of the concept of the singular butgraded reality of being (tashkik al-wujud) articulated by Mulla Sadra; this is arguablythe central doctrine of Sadrian metaphysics.

Philosophers in the Qajar Period

Sabzawari was one of the four axial philosophers of the Qajar period who representedthe major tendencies in philosophical and rational mystical speculation.93 The otherthree are often cited as the pillars of the school of Tehran: Aqa Ali mudarrisZunuzi (d. 1307/1890), son of Abd Allah Zunuzi (d. 1841) who was a teacher ofMulla Sadras work in Isfahan, Aqa Muhammad Riza Qumshihi (d. 1306/1889),and Mirza Sayyid Abu-l-Hasan ibn Muhammad Tabatabai Jilwa (d. 1314/1896).94

Like Sabzawari, these three thinkers had trained in Isfahan either with Ali Nuri orwith his circle of students: Zunuzi and Qumshihi had studied with Mulla MuhammadJafar Langarudi Lahiji (d. after 1255/1839), a commentator on the philosophicalepitome Kitab al-mashair (Book of Ontological Inspirations) of Mulla Sadra; Qum-shihi had also read with Mirza Hasan (d. 1306/1888), son of Nuri, as had Jilwa. FromIsfahan, Sabzawari had returned to his hometown while the other three went toTehran in response to the royal request: Zunuzi taught at the new Madrasa-yiMadar-i Shah and Madrasa-yi Sipahsalar (now renamed Mutahhari), Qumshihi wasan instructor at Madrasa-yi Sadr-i Azam, and Jilwa resided at the Madrasa-yi Daral-Shifa. They were all recipients of the Shahs patronage in different ways andresponded to requests to write in defense of Iranian Shii intellectual culture. We

92Sabzawari, Asrar al-hikam, 372.93Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 45174; Nasr, Islamic Philosophy, 23946; Ali-quli Qarai, Post-Ibn

Rushd Islamic philosophy in Iran, Al-Tawhd, III, no. 3 (1985): 2455. For a useful sketch of thehistory of philosophy from the circle of Nuri to the later Qajar period, see Ashtiyani, Muqaddima,cxxivcxliv.

94Another thinker who was a student of Nuri and who later taught Qumshihi and moved to Tehranwas Sayyid Razi Larijani (d. 1270/185354). The Nuri circle and the study of Mulla Sadra did not die inIsfahan after the middle of the nineteenth century but continued with Jahangir Khan Qashqai (d. 1328/1910) and Mirza Rahim Arbabsee Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 8490. Famous students in the next gen-eration of this school included the prominent jurisprudent Diya al-Din Iraqi (d. 1942), the jurist andmodel of emulation Sayyid Husayn Burujirdi (d. 1962), and Aqa Najafi Quchani.

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have already seen how Sabzawari reciprocated through his writings; Zunuzi, too, at therequest of the Shah, wroteBadayi al-hikam (Wonders ofWisdom), a defense of Sadrianphilosophy against the new ideas emanating from Europe and being disseminated at theDar al-funun.95

Their students inTehran perpetuated the legacy ofMulla Sadra up to the present.Qum-shihis studentMirzaHashimAshkivari Lahiji (d. 1332/1914) taught at the Sipahsalar. Hisstudents there included two of the most significant teachers of philosophy and irfan in thetwentieth century.MirzaMahdi Ashtiyani (d. 1372/1952, who had also studiedwith Jilwa)wrote an illuminating andmystically inclinedmarginaliaon theSharh-imanzuma aswell asan independent metaphysical treatise Asas al-tawhid (Foundation of Divine Unity).96 Hehad also studiedwith another important student ofQumshihi and conduit for the school ofTehran in the twentieth century, Mirza Hasan Kirmanshahi (d. 1336/1917). Ashtiyani inturn taught a significant generation of twentieth century thinkers: Abu-l-Hasan Shirani,Murtaza Mutahhari (d. 1979), Shaykh Muhammad Taqi Jafari (d. 1998), Jawad Falaturi(b. 1926), Mahdi Hairi Yazdi (d. 1999), and Sayyid Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani (d. 2005).97

The other famous student of Hashim Ashkivari was Sayyid Abu-l-Hasan Rafii Qazvini(d. 1976).98He did not publish in his lifetime but he was known as an excellent and criticalteacher of theAsfar ofMulla Sadra and the Sharh-i manzuma.99 His students included theaforementioned Jalal al-DinAshtiyani andMahdiHairi aswell as SeyyedHosseinNasr, theone academic who has done most to introduce the philosophical traditions in Iran to theacademic study of Islamic philosophy.100 Zunuzi had a number of significant studentssuch as Aqa Muhammad Baqir Istahbanati who taught in Najaf and later in Shiraz and

95Badayi al-hikam, ed. A. Vaizi (Tehran, 1376s./1997). The collected works of Zunuzi have beenpublished: Majmua-yi musannafat-i hakim-i muassis Aqa Ali Zunuzi Tihrani, ed. M. Kadivar, 3 vols.(Tehran, 1378s./1999).

96Mahdi Ashtiyani, Taliqa bar Sharh-i manzuma-yi hikmat-i Sabzawari, ed. J. Falaturi andM. Mohaghegh (Tehran, 1352s./1973); idem, Asas al-tawhid (Tehran, 1952).

97Nasr, Islamic Philosophy, 24748. Shirani edited some crucial works including Asrar al-hikam ofSabzawari and the theological treatise Kashf al-murad sharh tajrid al-Itiqad of Allama al-Hilli (d.1325). Jafari was a prolific writer and taught at the hawza in Qum for many years as well as TehranUniversity, engaging with contemporary European philosophy and theology. He is best known for hisvoluminous commentaries on the Mathnawi of Rumi and the Nahj al-balagha, the famous collectionof sermons, letters and sayings of Imam Ali. Mutahhari was a prominent thinker of the revolutionand professor in the theology department of Tehran University. As an ideologue, he wrote an influentialwork on theodicy, Adl-i ilahi, as well as important glosses and explanations on the Sharh-i manzuma andthe Usul-i falsafa of Tabatabai. Falaturi taught in Germany for many years. Hairi received his doctoratein philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1978. He has written some important analyses ofIslamic philosophy from the perspective of an Anglo-American analytical philosopher: Kavush-ha-yiaql-i nazari (Tehran, 1968), Kavush-ha-yi aql-i amal (Tehran, 1982), Ilm-i kulli (Tehran, 1980),Knowledge by Presence (Tehran, 1982). Ashtiyani was the most prolific of this group as an editor andhas produced far too much to mention in detail.

98Nasr, Islamic Philosophy, 24849.99Ghawsi dar bahr-i marifat, ed. Hasanzada Amuli (Tehran, 1376s./1997). The volume includes a

treatise that criticizes Mulla Sadras notion of intellection by union (ittihad al-aqil bi-l-maql).100Nasr also wrote a useful article on Qajar philosophyThe Metaphysics of S adr al-Dn Shrz and

Islamic philosophy in Qajar Persia, Qajar Iran, 17798.

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whose students included the famous (recently deceased) philosopher Sayyid Jalal al-DinAshtiyani.101 Jilwas students included Sayyid Husayn Badkubihi (d. 1358/1939), whotaught philosophy in Najaf (and was one of the teachers of Tabatabai), Aqa MuhammadAli Shahabadi (d. 1950), the famed preceptor of Ayatollah Khumayni (d. 1989) in philos-ophy, and Akhund Muhammad Hidaji (d. 1314s./1935), commentator on the Sharh-imanzuma of Sabzawari.102

Zunuzi was famed as a teacher of Sadrian philosophy, Jilwa was best known for hisespousal of Avicennism and critique of Mulla Sadra, while Qumshihi was primarily ateacher of irfan, rational mysticism based on the texts of the school of Ibn Arabi.However, Sabzawari dwarfed the others by his reputation and fame as well as thedepth of his learning and teaching, encompassing the core curriculum of themadrasa, the work of Mulla Sadra, Avicennism and irfan.

The success of this revival of Sadrian philosophy lay in its claim to constitute a rigorousShii philosophy that could survive in the modern world and provide the intellectual foun-dations for faith in the Qajar period. All of the four philosophers pursued this goal by ana-lyzing the relationship between Being (wujud) and its perfect manifestation in walayah orthe being of the PerfectManwho encompasses and discloses the totality of the perfection oftheOne.103Walayah is the hermeneutics of being and the parousia of Being. As the pivot ofreality, the Imamaswali discloses the divine realities (al-haqaiq al-ilahiyya).104 Just asMullaSadras theory of the modulated but singular reality of being (tashkik al-wujud) offers anaccount that reconciles our desire for a unifying discourse with our phenomenal experienceof multiplicity, so too does the modulated manner in which being is manifest in walayahprovide a spiritual hierarchy guiding humanity towards the One, at the apex of which isthe pole, the perfect man, the Imam of the Twelver Shia.105

Ultimately, contemporary Shii philosophy in Iran and the hegemony of Mulla Sadracan be traced back to the Qajar period and the role played by Sabzawari in commentingupon his works, disseminating and popularizing his ideas, and training a generation of stu-dents who established institutions of learning and spread Sadrian philosophy in Iran, Iraqand the Indian subcontinent. Sabzawari remained the colossal figure around and belowwhom all others gravitated and were given meaning. In his thought, there is little that iseither original or uniquehe merely presents critically and defends positions of MullaSadra. But that is enough to ensure his significance. Pre-modern pedagogy and thepursuit of knowledge were far less concerned than we are with imagination, creativityand originality, and our notion of art and its function are quite distinct. There were signifi-cant thinkers proposing alternatives to Sadrian philosophy both within an Islamic idiomand beyond it, and yet the influence of Sabzawari was such that it dwarfed their attempts.For his time and for his successors, it was enough that he was the living Mulla Sadra.

101Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 157.102Suha, Tarikh-i hukama, 16769.103For a further examination, see Sajjad Rizvi, Being (wujd) and sanctity (wilya): Two poles of

intellectual and mystical inquiry in Qajar Iran, Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, 11326.104Sabzawari, Sharh al-asma, 552.105Zunuzi, Badayi al-hikam, 17383.

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