Thanks to my student Amir Emami, I obtained a copy of a very recently published set of glosses by the Qajar period thinker Ḥājj Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī (d. 1873) on the Shawāriq al-ilhām of ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī (d. 1662), the Avicennian student and son-in-law of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1636), a text which in itself is a partial commentary on the Tajrīd of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 1274), that is to say it covers most of the first two sections of the text on the general properties (umūr ʿāmma) of existence and on substance and accident or category theory (jawhar wa-ʿaraḍ).
The Shawāriq was lithographed in the Qajar period and became a popular work - just as we discussed previously the Tajrīd's popularity in the same period signalled by the excellent commentary al-Barāhīn al-qāṭiʿa of Shaykh Jaʿfar Sharīʿatmadār Astarābādī.
Some years ago a critical edition of the text was also published.
Sabzawārī's text has been known for some time and has been edited (the publication was just some months ago) based on two manuscripts:
1) Kitābkhāna-yi ḥawza-yi ʿilmīya-yi Valī-ʿaṣr (Kirman) kept in the National Library (Kitābkhāna-yi Millī, Tehran) MS 25931/5
2) Madrasa-yi Sipahsālār 6488 (now called the Muṭahharī) - the famous seminary established in Qajar Tehran
The edition comprises 253 glosses mainly on the first sections of the general properties of existence (that correspond to the first volume of the modern edition of Shawāriq). There are a number of features of the text that demonstrate his own positions.
On metaphysics:
In gloss 4, he criticises the Ashʿarī denial of secondary causality and soon after in gloss 6, defends the complementarity of reason and revelation on matters theological.
In gloss 48 (which is the longest in the text), Sabzawārī defends his position on the modulated univocity of existence (ishtirāk maʿnawī) that he ascribes to the ancient Persians (as he does in the Sharḥ-i manẓūma) and which involves a critique of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826) and his objections in his Sharḥ al-fawāʾid to Mullā Ṣadrā. In gloss 75, he concurs with Lāhījī's objection to modulation in essence (tashkīk al-māhīya) but asserts that it does not follow that modulation in existence is invalid.
On the metaphysics of God:
In gloss 15, commenting on Lāhījī's defence of the idea that necessary existence is actually a very particular sort of property of God (akhaṣṣ ṣifātihi taʿālā) that is not applicable to contingents, perhaps akin to some modern discussions of the single divine attribute associated with the articulation of the 'doctrine of divine simplicity' for which see here, Sabzawārī responds that such a reading that makes necessity 'contingent' on such activity of the divine essence (by saying that God is wājib al-wujūd li-dhātihi) is problematic. It might also beg the question of how to understand the necessity and essentiality of the divine properties of knowledge and power (which are critical to the discussion of the nature of the divine and its affirmation in section 3 of the Tajrīd which is not glossed here).
In gloss 34, he defends the Avicennian position on the argument from contingency and in his distinction between the copula and other modes of 'annexational' existence identifies the Necessary being [=God] as that existence to which the existence of all contingents is annexed and correlative.
In gloss 114, he distinguishes between the two modes of existence associated with God in the metaphysics of philosophers and Sufis, the former insist that God is existence with the condition of being unconditioned (bi-sharṭ lā) while for the latter God's existence is negatively or unlimitedly conditioned (lā bi-sharṭ). This comes down to the different readings from already the time of Ṭūsī and Kāshānī as well as others in the 13th century on what is meant by wujūd muṭlaq or absolute or unconditioned existence which is God for the Sufis and being qua being for the philosophers. The lā of the modality here for Sabzawārī refers to 'determination' (taʿayyun).
On the metaphysics of the afterlife:
At the end of gloss 18, he cites positions on the resurrection of the body in the afterlife, and contrary to both the Avicennian position (broadly on a spiritual resurrection) and Sadrian position (that posits a ethereal body of the afterlife whose matter is unlike the matter of this sub-lunary world and which is produced by the immortal soul through its recollection of its attachment to this material body), and affirms his commitment to the theological position that it is indeed the same material body that is resurrected by God at the resurrection of bodies. The gloss also posits his response to the famous kalām objection to resurrection known as al-ākil waʾl-maʾkūl, or which body exactly is being resurrected for example if one takes the possibility of cannibalism in which the body ingested becomes part of the body of the one who ate, how can we distinguish between the bodies? What happens to the soul associated with that body? Sabzawārī considers it to be a good objection.
On intellectual history:
Sabzawārī often cites the positions of others. For example, in gloss 10 on the question of what constitutes an 'essential accident' (in defining the subject of a science), he cites the positions of Ibn Sīnā in the Shifāʾ and Ishārāt as well as his commentators and adjudicators, of Mullā Ṣadrā in the Asfār and Shawāhid as well as the positions of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1498) and Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 1504). This gloss is in fact the longest one in the edited text, covering twelve pages.
In gloss 19, he cites Mullā Ṣadrā's objection to the definition of general properties of existence that are provided by Ījī and his commentators in al-Mawāqif.
Because Lāhījī's text does a good job of indexing kalām positions through the commentarial traditions on the Tajrīd as well as Ījī's al-Mawāqif and Taftazānī's al-Maqāṣid, Sabzawārī's responses tell us much about his reading of those traditions as well. Throughout the glosses, one finds Sabzawārī defending the metaphysical positions of Mullā Ṣadrā often against the implicit and explicit criticisms of Lāhījī.
The editor Mahdī Rabbānī and the publishers Dānishgāh-i Ḥakīm-i Sabzawārī based in Sabzawār ought to be congratulated for providing us with another text from the Qajar period that is invaluable for intellectual historians. But one last request for people who produce these texts. It would be a massive contribution if they could find the citations and indexical comments that are being discussed intertextually so that we can see the full paratextual study (for example, where does Dawānī claim so and so?) and also a simple index of names and texts as well as key technical terms would be super useful.
