Mull sadra's Life,Works,and Philosophy

Prof.S.M.Khamenei

With regard to propaganda, although we do not have access to enough evidence at the time being, we should say that it has always been a common tradition among great religious leaders to talk to people, teach them the religious principles and laws, advise them about what is necessary and what is unlawful, and give them lessons of morality and piety. Fayd was among the few jurisprudents of his time who believed in the objective necessity of Friday prayer and gave decrees in this regard. Such a belief, itself, requires preaching people and transmitting the message of religion to them. Delivering a speech after each congregational prayer was one of the other common habits of the jurisprudents of that time.

Due to his jurisprudential and theoretical belief in Friday prayer, Fayd performed it in each town or village he stepped in, and since the news about his activities had spread everywhere (either to his advantage or disadvantage), at last Shah Safi heard about them, too. As performing Friday prayer was basically among the political wishes of Safavid rulers, Fayd was invited to perform it in Isfahan, the capital of the time.

Safavid kings were in a serious competition with their rival government and enemy, the Ottomans, concerning their political diplomacy. They had even imitated them in calling their royal palace as Ali Qapu' or the Sublime Door' (this edifice is still standing in Imam Square in Isfahan). The Shahsavan army was also formed in imitation of Ottomans' Yeni Cheri army, and the development of seminaries and granting official recognition to the institutions of theologians and jurisprudents were also copied from Ottoman's institution of Hanafi jurisprudence.

In order to defame the Shi'ite and Islamic Safavid government, in their propagandas, Ottomans accused Safavid rulers of having anti-Islam tendencies, claimed that they denied the necessary religious duties, and charged them with several similar slanders. One of the weak points of Shi'ism that was criticized by other religions was neglecting to perform Friday prayer, which the Holy Qur'an has explicitly advised to its necessity (Al-Juma'h Surah). Although a great number of jurisprudents had decreed its necessity and written several books on this issue, this necessary duty had actually stopped, and the jurisprudents of the time of the Safavid Shah did not accept to have it performed.

It was due to such external reasons that the Safavid Shah decided to take advantage of this well-known scholar (Fayd) and start performing Friday prayer first in the capital and then in other places. Therefore, he officially invited Fayd, who was widely famous as a knowledgeable and pious scholar at that time, to his presence (apparently at the end of the 4th decade of the llth century).

Fayd's words explicitly indicate that all the jurisprudents of that time denied the necessity of Friday prayer. Perhaps they did not even consider it as an optional or recommended necessity and believed in its unlawfulness (during the occupation of the 12th Imam). The unanimity of all or most of the jurisprudents of a time concerning an issue that all Islamic proofs oppose is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it is among the analyzable problems of the sociology of jurisprudence and ijtihad, which should be discussed in its own right.

However, Fayd refused to accept this responsibility in order to keep away from position, being involved in courtly affairs, and getting close to Shah, or aviod having any conflict or argument with jurisprudents who he had heard or seen to have opposed his masters, Mulla Sadra and Mir Damad. He was also aware of their sensualism and impiety. Fayd writes:

"...until Shah Safi invited me to Isfahan and insisted on my remaining in his service. I refused taking the state responsibilities. He accepted my refusal, and from then onwards I lived a long and peaceful life and got involved in teaching, writing, and worship. I was contented with what I earned, and because of my lawful allotted

portion, the doors of knowledge opened to me more than before, and the secrets of the words of the Prophet (s) and Imams were revealed to me. This continued until   the second Shah Abbas's letter arrived... ."    It is not quite clear whether Shah Safi invited Fayd by sending a letter, as Shah Abbas II did, summoned him to his presence, or went after him to Kashan. Two dates have been cited for Shah Safi's journey to Kashan. The first is 1036 A.H, which seems highly unlikely, because at that time Fayd was a young seminary student in Qum, studying under Mulla Sadra, and the second is 1052 A.H, which is the year  of his death.

Therefore, he was most probably invited by a messenger carrying a letter, rather than by attending Shah's presence in Isfahan, which is not also in conformity with i| Fayd's character. However, the sentence, "He tried his best in endearing and respecting me ...", apparently indicates that he traveled to Isfahan and was Shah's dear and respectable  uest for some time. This probability, in spite of Fayd's self-sufficiency, exalted character, and piety, does not seem irrational, since Safavid Shahs, despite their involvement in cruelty, murder, debauchery, libertinism, and unlawful acts, had a deceivingly nice and religious appearance, and everybody believed that they were the guardians of true Islam and the defenders of Shi'ite blood from the plunder and depredation of Uzbeks and Ottomans. Therefore, they believed that helping Safavids through cultural, scientific, and propagatory contributions, and reviving the mosques and religious schools were among obligatory religious and rational necessities.
 By the way, Fayd refused to undertake the state service, i.e., to beccome the * Friday prayer leader and the religious chief of Muslims, and because of his status and eloquence of speech and writing, he was excused from the service and returned I to his secure corner. The reign of Shah Safi lasted from 1037 or 1038 to 1052 A.H (about 14 years).
Although the date of inviting Fayd to the service is not quite certain, we know that in about 1041 A.H he was in Shiraz with Mulla Sadra, and after that he returned to Kashan and Qamsar. Therefore, some time was needed for him to become well-known and for his fame to conquer Isfahan and its court.

Consequently, we can consider the years about 1050 A.H in the 4th decade of the llth century as the time of the invitation, which was followed by Fayd's return to his previous life, that is, getting involved in teaching, preaching, performing the congregational prayer, self-purification, and prayer. Howerver, this comfortable and sweet period did not last for a long time.

With Shah Safi's death and the second Shah Abbas succeeding him (1052 A.H), the invitation for the leadership of Friday prayer was repeated by the Safavid Shah, and this time Fayd accepted it. Following this, he went to Isfahan and became the leader of Friday prayer there. In this regard, he writes:

"... until the letter of Shah Abbas II arrived, and I was invited to teach in Isfahan and perform Friday prayer in Jame Atiq Mosque, which had been repaired by him." His reason tor accepting the invitation might have been the changes in the social conditions of the time, the removal of some obstacles, or the imposed pressures.

Since the reign of Shah Abbas II lasted from 1052 to 1077, and since Jame (Old or Atiq) Mosque had been under repair for some time during this period, we can consider the time of this event to be several years after 1052 A.H.

Accepting this position was very important and difficult for Fayd. Besides, doing this job was accompanied by some hardships caused by rivals who considered themselves as jurisprudents and, therefore, deserving Shah's favor. They were reckless and showed their opposition to Fayd publicly through their acts and words at all times.Some of them were against the necessity or admissibility of Friday prayer and   repeated the statements of some early jurisprudents nad traditionists (scholars of hadith}, and in every place, mosque, or pulpit called Fayd the servant of the court. And some of them who even believed in the necessity of this duty, in order to cause disunion and decrease the credence of the central official Friday prayer, performed it in villages or in far off places. Fayd referred to what they did as the "disintegration of Muslim people". As it was clearly known to Fayd, the pious gnositc and the teacher of ethics, the main source of this act of his rivals was the love of leadership, ambition, and position. Fayd has written an instructive ballad addressing this group of people, who probably held high scientific positions and were associated with great scholars.

Fayd believes that some of the advantages of Friday prayer are the combination of hearts, bringing people's feelings, ideas and ways of life close to each other, and encouraging them to cooperate in social affairs. This long standing Islamic constitution has truly played a significant and historical role in Muslim societies and given rise to a lot of revolutions, constructive acts, and the development of other benevolent social constitutions. Mosques and congregational prayer might be the only successful self-acting constitutions that have managed to have social, religious, training, political, and even educational and economic goals realized, bring people together around the light of Islam, prayer, and Qur'an, and create affinity among them in the best way possible through persuading them to act cooperatively and share their thoughts and feelings with each other. Fayd has some very beautiful poems on the above effects of mosques and Friday and congregational prayers.

Fayd's poems address specific people who without sincerity or a moral and religious goal envied his leadership. These people believed that Fayd had usurped their place and position, and instead of persuading others to participate in Friday and congregational prayers, they made them abhor such duties and caused disunion and disintegration among people. Sincerity, which is the basic condition for servitude to God and prayer, specifically, Friday and congregational prayers, did not exist in them at all. They pretended to pitey and theism; in spite of being selfish and self-centered, they boasted about their highly precious achievements, while all they had to present was worth nothing more than soil; their showy knowledge was only a  trap for deceiving people, having a better material life, and sitting on the throne of  leadership and mastership; and with the help of devil, they had certain deceptions and frauds up their sleeves which caused people to deviate from a healthy way of life and keep away from a true gnostic and pious man like Fayd.

However, the simple but alert Fayd revealed the deceptions of such impious and pretentious jurisprudents and wrong preachers who did not accept any advice, and through demonstration per-impossible made their lack of jurisdiction, insincerity, and injustice public.

In such a chaotic atmosphere of insincerity and dishonesty, Fayd, a free man and a recluse, in order to establish the tradition of Friday prayer and prevent the disunion being formed as a result of the whimsical desires and grudges of those who claimed jurisprudence and leadership in Isfahan, stayed there for some time. As Fayd himself says, Shah had invited him for teaching and performing Friday prayer to Isfahan and, therefore, the conditions for teaching there should have been more satisfactory than those in Kashan and Qamsar.

Although Fayd was a master of the sciences of his time, he showed more interest in hadith and interpretation, on the one hand, and gnosis, on the other. Thus it is also possible that he taught the interpretation of the Qur'an and the science of hadith in public, but gnosis and pure sciences in his private or secret classes.

 

Existence and Presence in Mulla Sadra's al-Mashair

Dr.Karim Mojtahedi

In the study of the kind of existence the field of philosophy seeks, it seems that the concept of presence, as something that brings existence and knowledge together, unites each level of existence with one level of knowledge and matches their degrees and levels with each other. Accordingly, presence is the very gradation of the levels of existence, which not only presents us with a spectrum of the gradual appearance of events and affairs, but also reveals to us the stages of mental journey on the basis of knowledge acquisition over time, with a mind that is already aware of the gradation of its elevated presence. And in this way, it places us in the route of the degrees of entelechy from the origin to the end.

Therefore, as Mulla Sadra interprets the issue, it seems that the barrier to the unity of being will be removed when the concept of existence is specified as presence. He explicitly maintains that such a concept of existence is the same as presence.

The degree of gradation determining the locus of the existential act of each existent depends on its presence with respect to itself, as well as the affairs that are present to it. At each level of the mental ascending journey, a degree of existence, due to its absence in relation to itself, declines and, in this way, the macrocosm and microcosm reflect the degrees of the perfection of each other at a specific level.

Qadi Said Qumi: One of the Sages of the Philosophical Center of Isfahan

Dr.Ghulam Hossin Ebrahimi Dinani

In the Past a number of different schools of philosophy emerged in Isfahan. On the one hand, there was the one having Mulla Sadra as its pioneer and leading figure, introducing a collection of unprecedented issues and ideas at that time; on the other hand, there was another school of philosophy which was against Mulla Sadra's ideas and had Shaykh Rajab Ali Tabrizi at its top. This philosopher and his students did everything in their power to oppose Mulla Sadra's theories and ideas.

Qadi Said Qumi, who was among the well-known thinkers of the philosophical center of Isfahan, was completely familiar with these two schools of philosophy and, at the same time, did not consider himself as an advocate of any of them. In the light of his belief in the principiality of quiddity, as well as his emphasis on the difference between the existence of God and that of other existents, he rejected any commensurability between God and human beings. At the same time, however, he viewed all existents of the world of possibility as being connected to each other and having the same origin.

Qadi Said Qumi, through relying on the negation of attributes, refered all God's positive attributes back to negation; nevertheless, instead of using the language of negation, he employed the language of affirmation. Qumi's strategy plays an effective role in solving the complex problem of the relation between the reality and history.

The Secret of the Superiority of Mulla Sadra's Philosophy

Dr.Sayyed Mustafa Muhaqqiq Damad

Sadr al-Mutaallihin Shirazi, known as Mulla Sadra, the reputable philosopher of Isfahan, living in the llth century A.H (17th century A.D), is the founder of a school of philosophy that he, himself, calls the Transcendent Philosophy in his two well-known works, al-Asfar and al-Shawahid al-mbubiyya.The purpose of the writer in this paper is to answer the following questions:What is meant by the Transcendent Philosophy, and why has its founder called it so? The answers to the above questions could be obtained from the words of the
prominent author of al-Asfar in the introduction to the book, as well as those in his other works. Mulla Sadra believes that intellectual wayfarings cannot be separated           from mystic ones, and that both of them together could aid the seekers of the truth I to reach their goal. Mulla Sadra has introduced the witnessed coordination between gnosis and philosophy in all the stages and levels of existence in al-Asfar as the distinguishing feature of this book comparing to other books written on Islamic philosophy. In fact, his major aim is to establish a kind of coordination between philosophy and gnosis or synthesize them with each other. He has called the result of this coordination or synthesis the Superior or Transcendent Philosophy.

Macrocosm and Microcosm in Mulla Sadra's Thought

Dr. Tuba Kermani

In the discussion of macrocosm and microcosm in Sadrian philosophy, man, as the microcosm, is compared to the outside world as the macrocosm.

In order to be able to explore this issue thoroughly in Mulla Sadra's works, it is first necessary to know how he approaches man.

As we know, arthropology has different meanings, and nowadays different sciences, including psychology, sociology, physiology, and the like, deal with the t different aspects of this amazing being (man) depending on their own subject.

Obviously, the topic of discussion here is neither of these areas, nor anthropology itself, which is a newly developed science, studying man from phyiscal, archaeological, linguistic, and cultural angels.

Since we know Mulla Sadra as a prominent philosopher who has introduced his own school of thought, we will first go through the history of philosophy to see whether there asically exist certain things called marocosm and microcosm. Moreover, since we view Mulla Sadra as not only a rationalist, but also a theosopher, we will also take a brief look at the Scripture and Sunna (traditions).Ultimately, since a review of Mulla Sadra's works obviously indicates that he is greatly influenced by Ibn Arabi's gnosis, we will also study gnostics' trend of thoughts. Gnosis plays a fundamental role in recognizing Mulla Sadra's view of man, and we might even be able to claim that without exploring the gnostic features of the Transcendent Philosophy, one cannot study man from a Sadrian perspective.

Mulla Sadra's View of Equating Uncertain (la-batiyyali)

Propositions with Conditional Propositions

Sayyed Ali Alam al Huda

According to the principle of presupposition, in affirmative propositions, whose subject is the impossible being by essence, it is necessary for the subject to be reali^r/ed, which is impossible. It seems that a good solution to this problem is considering uncertain categorical propositions as conditional ones. However, Muslim philosophers, particularly Mulla Sadra, believe that although uncertain (la-batiyyah) propositions are coextensive with conditional ones, their logical structure is a categorial one.

It seems that their most important reason for opposing equating conditional and uncertain propositions with each other is their believing in mental existence, and that one of the most important proofs for demonstrating this existence is based on the idea that subjectless propositions are categorial.

Mulla Sadra's Account of the Conformity between the Degrees of the Qur'an and Man's Ascensions

Fatemeh Mohammedi Arani

Mulla Sadra's approach to the interpretation of the Holy Qur'an is a mystic one. In his view, God's language should not be declined to the level of man's language, since His speech is not a unidirectional one, so that man hears it and starts discovering its meaning. Rather, He addresses the essence of man's existence, and it is only in this communion that the sending and receiving of meaning is realized.Now, the higher the perfections of man's existence at the stage of ascent, the deeper this meaning. This is because human beings possess certain epistemological levels, and every single man penetrates into the mystic stations of the Qur'an and unites with it according to his own existential level.

Trans-substantial Motion and its Consequences

Hasan Rezazadeh

In this paper, the writer firstly presents a short history of the discussion of motion and deals with the different views in this regard. Next, the meaning of motion is discussed, and its relation with generation and corruption is explored. It is emphasized there that early philosophers were interested in motion in categories and accidents. The discussion is later followed by an account of trans-substantial motion, motion in substance, and its related proofs. In the next part, it is tried to provide some answers to the objection raised against motion in substance. Then, after a short discussion of motion from gnostics' view, the consequences of trans-substantial motion, the temporal origination of the world, corporeal resurrection, the corporeal nature of origination, and the spiritual nature of subsistence are explained.

Commentary on the Hadith of "Kuntu Kanzan Makhfiyyan.."

Ali Asghar gafari

From among the collection of scattered commentaries on hadiths to Mulla Sadra, the one written on "Kunta kanzan makhfiyyan ..." is quite noteworthy. This commentary has most probably been written by Mulla Sadra himself. In this work, he refers to one of the objections advanced against this sacred hadith by some scholars. He also claims that before him, no one has ever given a convincing answer to this objection, and then proceeds to explain the problem and introduces his own four-fold responses, which he claims to have been revealed to him by God.

Since at the beginning of this tratise he refers to Muhyaddin Ibn Arabi, in some of its versions, it has wrongly been attributed to him.

The writer of this paper, from among the existing versions of this treatise, has tried to edit two versions of collection number 1822 of the library of Majlis-i Shoray-i Islami by means of 'maj V (collection 1) and 'maj 2' (collection 2) codes, following a critical approach.