Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi

Suhrawardi provided a new Platonistic critique of the peripatetic school of Avicenna that was dominant in his time, writing on logic, physics, epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics.

Training under Majduddin al-Jili is recorded. The recorded working language is Persian and Arabic. The field of work recorded is Islamic philosophy, Sufism and peripatetic school. Farabi is recorded as an influence. Places of work recorded in the authority are Persian Empire.

• Name — Shihāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash ibn Amirak al-Suhrawardī • Other Names — Sohrevardi, Shihab al-Din • Location — Suhraward • Title — Shaykh al-Ishraq, Shaykh al-Maqtul • Period — 12th century • School — Illuminationism Perennial philosophy • Born — 1154 • Birthplace — Sohrevard, Seljuk Empire • Died — 1191 • Place of death — Aleppo, Ayyubid Sultanate • Religion — Islam, Shafi Sunni • Honorific Prefix — Shaykh • Native Name — شهابالدین سهروردی Notable early • Illustration — Opening page from the manuscript of Hikmat al-ʿIshraq transcribed by Sayyid Muhammad Munshi for the library of sultan Mehmed II. Istanbul, dated 1477-8 (882 AH). Topkapı Palace Museum

Of Persian stock, Suhrawardi was born in 1154 in Suhraward, a village located between the towns of Zanjan and Bijar Garrus in Iran. He learned wisdom and jurisprudence in the city of Maragheh. His teacher was Majd al-Dīn Jīlī who was also Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s teacher. He then went to Iraq and Syria for several years and developed his knowledge while he was there. His life spanned a period of less than forty years during which he produced a series of works that established him as the founder of a new school of philosophy, called "Illuminism" (hikmat al-Ishraq). According to Henry Corbin, Suhrawardi "came later to be called the Master of Illumination (Shaikh-i-Ishraq) because his great aim was the renaissance of ancient Iranian wisdom". which Corbin specifies in various ways as the "project of reviving the philosophy of ancient Persia". In 1186, at the age of thirty-two, he completed his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Illumination. There are several contradictory reports of his death. The most commonly held view is that he was executed sometime between 1191 and 1208 in Aleppo on charges of cultivating Batini teachings and philosophy, by the order of al-Malik al-Zahir, son of Saladin. Other traditions hold that he starved himself to death, others tell that he was suffocated or thrown from the wall of the fortress, then burned by some people.

• The Philosophy of Illumination: A New Critical Edition of the Text of Hikmat Al-Ishraq, edited by John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai, Provo, Brigham Young University Press, 1999. • The Shape of Light: Hayakal al-Nur, interpreted by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti, Fons Vitae, 1998. • The Mystical & Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi, Translated by W.M. Thackson, Jr., London, The Octagon Press, 1982.

Suhrawardi left over 50 writings in Persian and Arabic.

• Partaw Nama ("Treatise on Illumination") • Hayakal al-Nur al-Suhrawardi [Sohravardi, Shihaboddin Yahya] (1154–91) Hayakil al-nur ("The Temples of Light"), ed. M.A. Abu Rayyan, Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijariyyah al-Kubra, 1957. (The Persian version appears in oeuvres vol. III.) • Alwah-i Imadi ("The tablets dedicated to Imad al-Din") • Lughat-i Muran ("The language of Termites") • Risalat al-Tayr ("The Treatise of the Bird") • Safir-i Simurgh ("The Calling of the Simurgh") • Ruzi ba Jama'at Sufiyaan ("A Day with the Community of Sufis") • Fi Halat al-Tufulliyah ("On the State of Childhood") • Awaz-i Par-i Jebrail ("The Chant of Gabriel's Wing") • Aql-i Surkh ("The Red Intellect") • Fi Haqiqat al-'Ishaq ("On the Reality of Love") • Bustan al-Qolub ("The Garden of Hearts")

• Kitab al-talwihat • Kitab al-moqawamat • Kitab al-mashari' wa'l-motarahat, Arabic texts edited with introduction in French by H. Corbin, Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1976; vol II: I. Le Livre de la Théosophie oriental • (Kitab Hikmat al-ishraq) 2. Le Symbole de foi des philosophes. 3. Le Récit de l'Exil occidental, Arabic texts edited with introduction in French by H. Corbin, Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1977; vol III: oeuvres en persan, Persian texts edited with introduction in Persian by S.H. Nasr, introduction in French by H. Corbin, Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1977. (Only the metaphysics of the three texts in Vol. I were published.) Vol. III contains a Persian version of the Hayakil al-nur, ed. and trans. H. Corbin • L'Archange empourpré: quinze traités et récits mystiques, Paris: Fayard, 1976, contains translations of most of the texts in vol. III of oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, plus four others. Corbin provides introductions to each treatise, and includes several extracts from commentaries on the texts. W.M. Thackston, Jr, The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi, London: Octagon Press, 1982, provides an English translation of most of the treatises in vol. III of oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, which eschews all but the most basic annotation; it is therefore less useful than Corbin's translation from a philosophical point of view) • Mantiq al-talwihat, ed. A.A. Fayyaz, Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1955. The logic of the Kitab al-talwihat (The Intimations) • Kitab hikmat al-ishraq (The Philosophy of Illumination), trans H. Corbin, ed. and intro. C. Jambet, Le livre de la sagesse orientale: Kitab Hikmat al-Ishraq, Lagrasse: Verdier, 1986. (Corbin's translation of the Prologue and the Second Part (The Divine Lights), together with the introduction of Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri and liberal extracts from the commentaries of Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi and Mulla Sadra. Published after Corbin's death, this copiously annotated translation gives to the reader without Arabic immediate access to al-Suhrawardi's illuminationist method and language)

Suhrawardi was a strong defender of Peripatetic philosophy, until he was influenced by those whom he described as those who "have traveled the path of God", like - as noted by Suhrawardi - Plato from the Greek tradition, Hermes (Thoth) from Egypt, and Pythagoras the Phoenician, and also figures in the Persian tradition. His philosophical project aims to revive the lost hikma of east and west. It is also apparent that Suhrawardi was strongly influenced by the Sufi tradition, bearing in mind his mystical spiritual journeys that he considered a necessary prerequisite for understanding his Illuminationist philosophy. Zoroastrianism also appears to have influenced Suhrawardi, as its symbols appear in some of his works.

Suhrawardi's Illuminationist project was to have far-reaching consequences for Islamic philosophy in Shi'ite Iran. His teachings had a strong influence on subsequent esoteric Iranian thought and the idea of “Decisive Necessity” is believed to be one of the most important innovations in the history of logical philosophical speculation, stressed by the majority of Muslim logicians and philosophers. In the 17th century, it was to initiate an Illuminationist Zoroastrian revival in the figure of the 16th century sage Azar Kayvan. Many later philosophers were influenced by the Illuminationist philosophy of Suhrawardi including Athir al-Din al-Abhari, Al-Allama al-Hilli, Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i, Jalal al-Din Davani, and also Mulla Sadra.

The Illuminationist project established by Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi exercised a profound and enduring influence on subsequent Islamic philosophy, particularly within Shi'ite Iran. His school attracted a lineage of Persian and Kurdish commentators and successors, including Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, Athir al-Din al-Abhari, Al-Allama al-Hilli, Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i, and Jalal al-Din Davani. Later, the Safavid philosopher Mulla Sadra formally characterised Suhrawardi as the reviver of the traces of ancient Iranian sages, combining peripatetic rigour with Illuminationist metaphysics. Beyond formal Islamic philosophy, Suhrawardi's adoption of Mazdean symbolism and angelology laid the foundation for a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Illuminationist Zoroastrian revival associated with the sage Azar Kayvan. In contrast to his extensive legacy in the East, Suhrawardi remained virtually unknown in medieval Europe. Modern scholarship presents contrasting evaluations regarding the fundamental nature of Suhrawardi's philosophical framework. Hossein Ziai maintains that the primary significance of Suhrawardi's oeuvre rests in his logical innovations and his systematic critique of peripatetic definitions. In opposition to this view, Mehdi Hairi Yazdi and Sayyid Jalal Addin Ashtiyyani hold that Suhrawardi did not break fundamentally from the peripatetic tradition, remaining instead within a broadly neo-Avicennian framework. Mehdi Amin Razavi rejects both positions, asserting that focusing exclusively on formal logic or peripatetic continuity fails to account for the essential mystical dimension running throughout Suhrawardi's writings. Other scholars foreground the spiritual and practical dimensions of Suhrawardi's teachings. Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr characterise Suhrawardi as a theosophist whose primary objective was the renaissance of ancient Iranian wisdom and its synthesis with Greek and Islamic traditions. John Walbridge identifies Suhrawardi's critique of Avicennism as a crucial turning point, attributing his shift from peripatetic thought to Platonism to a transformative mystical experience, while emphasising his distinction between discursive and intuitive methods of inquiry.

Suhrawardi thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient Persian wisdom. He states in Hikmat al-'Ishraq that: Suhrawardi uses pre-Islamic Iranian gnosis, synthesising it with Greek and Islamic wisdom. The main influence from pre-Islamic Iranian thought on Suhrawardi is in the realm of angelology and cosmology. He believed that the ancient Persians' wisdom was shared by Greek philosophers such as Plato as well as by the Egyptian Hermes and considered his philosophy of illumination a rediscovery of this ancient wisdom. According to Nasr, Suhrawardi provides an important link between the thought of pre-Islamic and post-Islamic Iran and a harmonious synthesis between the two. And Henry Corbin states: "In northwestern Iran, Sohravardi (d. 1191) carried out the great project of reviving the wisdom or theosophy of ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran." In his work Alwah Imadi, Suhrawardi offers an esoteric interpretation of Ferdowsi's Epic of Kings (Shah Nama) in which figures such as Fereydun, Zahak, Kay Khusraw and Jamshid are seen as manifestations of the divine light. Seyyed Hossein Nasr states: "Alwah 'Imadi is one of the most brilliant works of Suhrawardi in which the tales of ancient Persia and the wisdom of gnosis of antiquity in the context of the esoteric meaning of the Quran have been synthesized". In this Persian work Partaw Nama and his main Arabic work Hikmat al-Ishraq, Suhrawardi makes extensive use of Zoroastrian symbolism and his elaborate angelology is also based on Zoroastrian models. The supreme light he calls both by its Quranic and Mazdean names, al-nur al-a'zam (the Supreme Light) and Vohuman (Bahman). Suhrawardi refers to the hukamayya-fars (Persian philosophers) as major practitioners of his Ishraqi wisdom and considers Zoroaster, Jamasp, Goshtasp, Kay Khusraw, Frashostar and Bozorgmehr as possessors of this ancient wisdom. Among pre-Islamic Iranian symbols and concepts used by Suhrawardi are: minu (incorporeal world), giti (corporeal world), Surush (messenger, Gabriel), Farvardin (the lower world), gawhar (pure essence), Bahram, Hurakhsh (the Sun), shahriyar (archetype of species), isfahbad (light in the body), Amordad (Zoroastrian angel), Shahrivar (Zoroastrian angel), and the Kiyani Khvarenah. With regards to the pre-Islamic Iranian concept of Khvarenah (glory), Suhrawardi mentions: "Whoever knows philosophy (hikmat) and perseveres in thanking and sanctifying the Light of the Lights, will be endowed with royal glory (kharreh) and with luminous splendor (farreh), and—as we have said elsewhere—divine light will further bestow upon him the cloak of royal power and value. Such a person shall then become the natural ruler of the universe. He shall be given aid from the high heavens, and whatever he commands shall be obeyed; and his dreams and inspirations will reach their uppermost, perfect pinnacle." و هر که حکمت بداند و بر سپاس و تقدیس نور الانوار مداومت نماید، او را خرّه کیانی بدهند و فرّ نورانی ببخشند، و بارقی الاهی او را کسوت هیبت و بهاء بپوشاند و رئیس طبیعی شود عالم را، و او را از عالم اعلا نصرت رسد و سخن او در عالم علوی مسموع باشد، و خواب و الهام او به کمال رسد.»

There are different and contradictory views regarding the character of Suhrawardi's school. Some scholars such as Hossein Ziai believe that the most important aspects of his thought are his logic and critique of the peripatetic conception of definitions. On the other hand, scholars like Mehdi Hairi and Sayyid Jalal Addin Ashtiyyani, believe that Suhrawardi remained within the framework of peripatetic and neo-Avicennian philosophy. Mehdi Amin Razavi criticises both these groups for ignoring the mystical dimension of Suhrawardi's writings. In turn, scholars such as Henry Corbin and Hossein Nasr view Suhrawardi as a theosophist and focus on the mystical dimension of his work. Viewing in another way, Nadia Maftouni has analysed Suhrawardi's works to figure out the elements of philosophy as a way of life. As she holds, the priority of practical reason to theoretical reason, the emphasis on intuition, taking philosophy as a practice of attaining optional death, and proposing ways to heal mental diseases may well be considered the main elements of philosophy as a way of life in Suhrawardi's allegorical treatises.