al-Shawahid al-Rububiyyah fil Manahij al-Sulukiyyah

This book is one of the latest works of Mulla Sadra written after many of his treatises and, particularly, his magnum opus, al-Asfar al-arba'ah. This great philosopher maintains that he wrote al-Shawahid following an order that he received by his heart from above and an indication sent to him from the Hidden Indicator and the Kingdom of God illuminating his soul.

Seyyed Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani believes that al-Shawahid is the same as the undifferentiated intellect, and al-Asfar is the differentiated form of al-Shawahid. He maintains that, in comparison to al-Asfar, this book enjoys the advantage of excluding many of the previous redundancies by the writer. He also believes that the writer has adopted a balanced method for expressing his ideas in this book.

al-Shawahid al-rububiyyah fil manahij al-sulukiyyah consists of five chapters. The writer calls each chapter a mashad, its peripheral parts a shahid, and the branches of a shahid an ishraq. In this way, the book enjoys a longitudinal order.

The first mashad is on the issues required by all sciences and called general metaphysics by commentators on Mulla Sadra. It includes five shahids.

 First shahid: This part consists of 12 ishraqs, in each Mulla Sadra deals with a point concerning the realization, externality, and characteristics of existence.

Second shahid: This part includes 10 ishraqs or points about the existence and nature of knowledge.

Third shahid: In this part, Mulla Sadra deals with the demonstration of the Necessary Being and His Attributes in 12 ishraqs.

Fourth ishraq: This part consists of 10 ishraqs concerning some of the general issues in metaphysics that had remained intact previously.

Fifth ishraq: This part involves 7 ishraqs on the states of quiddity and the related considerations.

 In the second mashad, Mulla Sadra discusses the existence of Almighty God, the creation of the world, and the Hereafter. This is one of the shortest chapters of the book and consists of two shahids.

 First shahid: This part discusses a number of issues that theologians deal with in metaphysics in its particular sense.

Second shahid: This shahid is devoted to immaterial forms and Platonic Ideas.

 The third mashad is on the topics related to resurrection and is organized in three shahids.

First shahid: Here, Mulla Sadra refers to the quality of creation and maintains that there are two types of it in the world: innovative creation and genetic creation.

Second shahid: This part is on the demonstration of the existence of the rational soul, the affairs superior to it, and the affairs that the soul encounters in its own destiny, i.e. the issues related to the Day of Resurrection.

Third shahid: This part is on the demonstration of resurrection for human souls.

The fourth mashad is on the demonstration of corporeal resurrection and whatever the Holy Legislator has promised to His servants or asked them to avoid, such as the grave, prophethood, Paradise, Hell, etc., and consists of three main shahids.

The first shahid has nine ishraqs. In the second Mulla Sadra discusses the Hereafter in detail, and in the third he speaks about the three-fold worlds, the world of reckoning and reward, and the world of peace and tranquility in a number of ishraqs employing a different language.

Fifth mashad: This part is on prophets and guardians and consists of two main shahids. It discusses the attributes of the Prophet (s).

In one of the ishraqs of the first shahid, Mulla Sadra refers to the necessary moral characteristics of the leader of society, whom he calls the "first leader", and summarizes them in twelve attributes as follows: 1. having deep and correct understanding and sharp perception, 2. having a powerful memory, 3. enjoying a healthy nature (fitrah), sound and balanced temperaments, and good morality, 4. using an eloquent language, 5. loving knowledge and wisdom, 6. lacking any greed for lustful acts and bodily desires, 7. enjoying a great soul and loving grace and dignity, sublimity, purity, nobility, and avoiding vice and malevolence, 8. having a kind heart for God's people, 9. possessing a brave heart and not fearing death, 10. being bountiful and generous, 11. being more joyful than all other people when praying to God in privacy, 12. not being obstinate and strict and spreading justice.

This book has been published with the research, edition, and Introduction by Dr. Seyyed Mustafa Muhaqqiq Damad under the supervision of Professor Seyyed Mohammed Khamenei, along with the lists of Qur'anic verses, hadiths, poems, and index of people's names, index of important terms, and the list of sources used in the research by the Sadra Islamic Philosophy Institute.