A note on al-Ḥasan al-Ḥillī [fl. 15th century] and his Mukhtaṣar [or Muntakhab] Baṣāʾir al-darajāt

ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. Sulāymān al-Ḥillī was born in around 742/1341 in al-Ḥilla but probably moved later to Jabal ʿĀmil, which might explain his ijāza from Ibn Makkī al-Jizzīnī (al-Shahīd I) for transmission of ʿIlal al-sharāʾiʿ of al-Ṣadūq on 12 Shaʿbān 757/10 August 1356.[1] He apparently also studied with al-Miqdād al-Siyūrī [d. 826/1422].[2] He studied with a number of other figures and appears in the chain of narrators for al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādīya in the recension of Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī through his grandfather Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Jubʿī [d. 886/1481].[3] His other teachers in ḥadīth were Sayyid Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ghiyāth al-Dīn Ḥusaynī Nīlī Najafī [d. after 803/1400], and Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Maṭārābādī.[4] He was still alive on 23 Muḥarram 802/25 September 1399, the date of the ijāza that he gave to Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ḥusayn al-Jūyānī for the transmission of al-Khiṣāl of al-Ṣadūq.[5] Another student of his, Zayn al-Dīn ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan Astarābādī [d. 837/1433], described him as a major scholar of the second half of the eighth century hijri. Perhaps his most famous student seems to have been the major Ḥillī scholar Jamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibn Fahd al-Ḥillī.

He does not seem to have written much – and the corpus is mainly ḥadīth compilation, the most famous of which is the so-called Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt usually including his Risālat al-Rajʿa wa-l-radd ʿalā ahl al-bidʿa.[6] It is called Mukhtaṣar because it claims to be based on the non-extant Baṣāʾir al-darajāt of Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh al-Ashʿarī [d. 301/913].[7] In the Safavid period, it was better known as Muntakhab Baṣāʾir al-darajāt as attested by Majlisī and Afandī; the editor mentions 24 manuscripts many of which date from the later Safavid period especially the 1070s and 1080s.[8] The text clearly draws upon a number of earlier ḥadīth compilations from Baṣāʾir al-darajāt of al-Ṣaffār, Kitāb Sulaym, various Kitāb al-ghayba versions, al-Kāfī and ʿIlal al-sharāʾiʿ as well as a number of prayer manuals such as Kitāb al-ziyārāt of Ibn Qūlawayh and al-Miṣbāḥ of al-Ṭūsī.

The text is broadly divided into two overlapping parts. Part one includes various chapters on the doctrine of walāya and theology of the imamate – however, two important parts stand out as independent treatises incorporate: one is the aforementioned Risālat al-rajʿa wa-l-radd ʿalā ahl al-bidʿa that comprises material not in the work of Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh but on the authority of Shahīd I based on both a long sermon of ʿAlī as well as excerpts in the famous ziyāra jāmiʿa narrated from Imam ʿAlī al-Hādī,[9] and the other is a series of narrations from Imam al-Ṣādiq rebuking the esotericism of Abū-l-Khaṭṭāb and instructing Mufaḍḍal b. ʿUmar.[10] In this part is also a long series of narrations on the need to guard the esoteric doctrine – kitmān al-ḥadīth.[11]

Contents

1)          Various reports on the knowledge/disciplines of the Imams – contains 54 reports mainly from Baṣāʾir of al-Ṣaffār and al-Kāfī; report 33 is a long letter from Imam al-Riḍā to Aḥmad b. ʿUmar al-Ḥallāl on how to know the next Imam

2)         On the cycles and their states (al-karrāt wa-ḥālātiha) – 46 narrations that include this report from al-Ṣādiq that there are three battles of God (ayyām Allāh): the battle when the Qāʾim (the Avenger) rises, when the return (al-karra) takes place, and day of judgement.[12]

3)         The independent Kitāb al-rajʿa that he says is based on narrations not from Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh. The chain of narration begins with various Ḥillī figures from Shahīd I, and moves through al-Ṭusī to Ibn Bābawayh through to the sermon of ʿAlī.[13] It starts with him saying three times the famous phrase ‘ask me before you miss me’, after which Ṣaʿṣaʿa b. Ṣawḥān asks him about the rising of the Dajjāl, the dābba and the rising of the Mahdī. This is immediately followed by a long ḥadīth of Imām Ṣādiq from Abū Ḥamza al-Thumālī again citing a sermon of ʿAlī that includes not only the notion that the primordial pact was to help the Prophet and his waṣī, but also a list of identifications of who he is (anā ṣāḥib al-nār wa-l-janna) reminiscent of Mashāriq anwār that includes the phrase ‘I am a cycle after cycles, and have return after return’.[14] In all there are 49 narrations including from kitāb al-ghayba.

4)         Reverts to Saʿd’s text with a chapter on the people on the Aʿrāf that includes 13 narrations

5)         The next chapter is on the excellences of the Imams reported in the Qurʾān and includes 48 narrations.

6)        Two chapters deal with submitting to what the Imams teach and refuting those who reject those teachings. 36 narrations on the former and 24 on the latter.

7)         These chapters are divided by an exchange between Imam Ṣādiq and Mufaḍḍal made up of 5 long reports designed to demonstrate a rejection of the divinity of the Prophet and the Imams.

8)         A short chapter of 4 reports follows on the attributes of the Imams.

9)        The last chapter of this section is on the key notion of the kitmān al-sirr. 34 reports

The second part resumes the selection for Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh on a variety on issues including the narrations that he transmitted on rajʿa.[15] Contained in this section is also an independent treatise on the origins of the creation of humans – on the pre-eternal world of the atom (ʿālam al-dharr).[16] Overall what seems to be clear is the overlap that much of this material has with the so-called Mufaḍḍalīyāt material associated with the ghulāt, or alternatively one could – with Amir-Moezzi – see these themes as central to the esoteric core of Shiʿi Islam in the classical period with its focus on the supernatural nature of the Imams, their pre-existence (and role in creation in ʿālam al-dharr), their cosmic authority (walāya takwīnīya), and their role in the eschaton (rajʿa).[17]

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[1] Āqā Buzurg, al-Ḥaqāʾiq al-rāhina, p. 41; Āqā Buzurg, al-ḍiyāʾ al-lāmiʿ, IV, p. 34; Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ, III, 374; al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Amal al-āmil, vol. II, p. 66; Introduction to al-Ḥasan al-Ḥillī, al-Majmūʿa al-ḥadīthīya al-maʿrūf bi-Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, Qum: Maktabat al-ʿAllāma al-Majlisī, 1388 Sh/2009, pp. 11–14; cf. Jaʿfar al-Muhājir, Jabal ʿĀmil bayn al-shahīdayn, Damascus: IFEAD, 2005, pp. 154, 158, 166; cf. al-Shammarī, al-Ḥayāt al-fikrīya, pp. 161–63, 314, 324–25.

[2] Al-Ṣadr, Takmilat Amal al-āmil, p. 336.

[3] Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, CIV, p. 213; cf. Āqā Buzurg, al-Ḍiyāʾ al-lāmiʿ, p. 34.

[4] According to Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn, Maṭārābād is in the vicinity of Basra – see Aʿyān al-shīʿa, V, p. 220, VI, p. 390. My thanks to Mushegh Asatryan for this information.

[5] Muḥammad al-Samāmī al-Ḥāʾirī, ‘Ijāzat al-Ḥasan al-Ḥillī li-l-Jūyānī’, Turāthunā, pp. 107–14.

[6] This particular risāla has been published separately before attributed to Sayyid Muḥammad Muʾmin b. Dūst Muḥammad Ḥusaynī Astarābādī [exe. 1088/1677], son-in-law of the famous Astarābādī and ḥadīth teacher of Majlisī. Cf. Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, CX, pp. 127–28; al-Dharīʿa, I, p. 94, 456.

[7] Recently Hasan Ansari has argued that the text that we know as Baṣāʾir al-darajāt of al-Ṣaffār al-Qummī is not his work as he was a juridically inclined tradent not known for transmitting theological doctrine, but rather a later recension of Saʿd b. ʿAbdullāh’s lost work. This would perhaps explain why there is a large element of overlap in the concerns of the Baṣāʾir and this Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt with practically identical chapter headings. However, Amir-Moezzi is not so sure – see Le Coran silencieux et le Coran parlant, Paris: CNRS, 2011, p. 134.

[8] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 19–22.

[9] Al-Ḥillī, Muhktaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 155–204.

[10] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 279–99.

[11] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 327–50.

[12] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, p. 117.

[13] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, p. 155.

[14] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 161–62.

[15] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 511–86.

[16] Al-Ḥillī, Mukhtaṣar Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, pp. 457–510.

[17] Mushegh Asatryan, Heresy and Rationalism in Early Islam: The Origins and Evolution of the Mufaḍḍal-Tradition, unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2012; Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Le guide divin dans le shīʿisme original, Paris: Verdier, 1992; on pre-existence, see idem, La religion discrète, Paris: Vrin, 2006, pp. 109–33.

Some notes on Rajab al-Bursī [d. 1411]

Corbin famously identified Rajab Bursī as one of the proponents of an esoteric doctrine of walāya influenced by the integration of the school of Ibn ʿArabī into Shiʿi metaphysics.[1]  Raḍī al-Dīn Rajab b. Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ al-Bursī al-Ḥillī seems to have been born in Burs, a small town between Kufa and al-Ḥilla on the banks of the Euphrates around 743/1342,[2] and after training in al-Ḥilla – and opposition to his ideas that he indicates he faced there – he seems to have moved to Khurasan into the orbit of the quasi-messianic Shiʿi-Sufi Sarbadārid dynasty, where he died perhaps in Ṭūs around 813/1411.[3] On the title Ḥāfiẓ, opinions differ: it either refers to his mastery of ḥadīth or was part of an adopted pen-name as a poet.[4] While being a contemporary of the Ḥurūfī leader Faḍlallāh Astarābādī with whom he shared an interest in lettrism and of al-Ḥasan al-Ḥillī, as well as Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī with whom he shared a taste and influence of Ibn ʿArabī, there is no evidence that he was either aware of them or that he ever cited them.

The first person to have noticed him seems to be the tradent and prayer-manual compiler Taqī al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. ʿAlī al-Kafʿamī [d. 905/1499-1500] in his al-Miṣbāḥ.[5] Of course that would be no accident since he was a figure who promoted the same conceptualisation of walāya in his compilation that included not only texts like the ziyāra jāmiʿa and similar salutations that stressed the supernatural status of the Imams and their return to this world, but also occult materials on astrology and even clear cased of rafḍ such as the Duʿāʾ ṣanamay Quraysh.[6] Like al-Ḥillī, al-Kaʿfamī was associated with Jabal ʿĀmil and al-Ḥilla.[7] Later in the Safavid period, Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī [d. 1091/1680] cited him in his Kalimāt-i maknūna.[8] Majlisī in his Biḥār al-anwār seems to be the first to condemn his exaggeration, and his student Afandī is the first to provide a biographical notice on him.[9] Afandī describes him as a Sufi and a specialist in many fields, especially lettrism (asrār al-ḥurūf).[10] He mentions that al-Kafʿamī is the first to cite him, and that his works were well known and appreciated in the Safavid period. He does, however, mention that his teacher Majlisī (al-ustād) and al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (al-Shaykh) accused him of exaggeration (al-ghulūw wa-l-irtifāʿ) which is clear from his writings but that Bursī never deified the Imams. Afandī gives the following list of his works:

1)           Mashāriq al-anwār

2)         Mashāriq al-amān fī lubāb ḥaqāʾiq al-īmān, claiming that he has a manuscript that states it was completed in 811/1408

3)         Risāla fī dhikr al-ṣalawāt ʿalā l-rasūl wa-l-aʾimma

4)         Ziyārat Amīr al-muʾminīn, about which Afandī says he had a manuscript

5)         Risāla lumʿa kāshifa on the meaning of the divine names and on lettrism

6)        Lawāmiʿ anwār al-tamjīd wa jawāmiʿ asrār al-tawḥīd

7)         Faḍāʾil Amīr al-muʾminīn

8)         Kitāb al-mawālīd

9)        Al-Durr al-thamīn on five hundred Qurʾanic verses about Amīr al-muʾminīn

Another student of Majlisī, Sayyid Niʿmatullāh al-Jazāʾirī [d. 1112/1700] was the first to list his works in his anthology al-Anwār al-nuʿmānīya. Another work of Bursī’s is a commentary on sūrat al-ikhlāṣ a rather straightforward theological work that refutes at the end the corporealism of the divine.[11]

Bursī wrote a number of works, the best known of which is Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn fī ḥaqāʾiq asrār Amīr al-muʾminīn. It was – as attested in one possibly autograph manuscript – completed 518 years after the birth of the Mahdī in 768/1367.[12] Afandī also mentions another manuscript that gives the date of 813/410. It seems to have been identified already in the Safavid period as a serious work with a Persian commentary entitled Maṭāliʿ al-asrār written by a Shiʿi scholar in Mashhad al-Ḥasan al-Qāriʾ Sabzavārī for Shah Sulaymān dated 1090/1680.[13] This was part of a significant Safavid process led by the court to translate, vernacularise and appropriate the Arabic Shiʿi corpus for the empire.[14] Just in Iran, according to the survey conducted by Dirāyatī, there are 117 codices of the text, many of which date from the Safavid period, and even two recensions in Persian (attested in four manuscripts further).[15] The work is prefaced – in the standard Beirut edition – with a short praise for God and the Imams that is probably identical to his work Lawāmiʿ anwār al-tamjīḍ wa-jawāmiʿ asrār al-tawḥīd.[16] In the introduction, he states that despite collating the very best narrations from the Imams (zubdat al-akhbār) concerning the arcanum and the esoteric doctrine of the Imams (al-amr al-khafī, al-sirr al-khafī), he faced much opposition from those who were jealous of him – jealous of his understanding, learning and perhaps poetic prowess? – who found the work and opposed him, ostracised him, condemned him.[17] His only fault was to narrate the very cream of narrations and the very manifesto of the righteous (zubd al-akhbār wa-zand al-akhyār). He described his opponents as those who know nothing of religion (laysa lahum ḥaẓẓ fī-l-dīn) and who reflected a corrupt and vulgar Shiʿism because they fail to understand true doctrine. They took the material to some jurists (described as ignorant apes – juhala qawmun min al-qirada) who understood neither the intellectual nor the scriptural disciplines and they further condemned him because, alluding to the famous saying of Amīr al-muʾminīn, ‘people are enemies of what they are ignorant’ and so they were incapable of separating out what was exaggerated doctrine (qawl al-ghulāt) from the arcana of the Imams (asrār al-hudāt).[18] He places himself in the category of those whose heart God has tested for faith by adhering to the difficult and arduous doctrine of walāya (ṣaʿb mustaṣʿab).[19]

The text then comprises a number of narrations on the pre-existence of the Imams, their cosmic role, the arcana of each of the twelve Imams, the importance of a esoteric hermeneutics to reveal the true import of the revelation, the need to preserve and protect the arcana from those unworthy, a number of key sermons of Amīr al-muʾminīn such as the Boast (iftikhār), the Gulf (taṭanjīya), and a number of Bursī’s own verses in praise of the Imams. Underlying all this is a clear lettrist approach to the occult knowledge of the arcana.

1.            Lettrism p. 18ff, ʿAlī as the secret of the ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt of the Qurʾān p. 124, ʿAlī is the greatest divine name p. 155, p. 147 ʿAlī in the Qurʾān

2.           Privileges of the Shīʿa – entering heaven p. 67 without any judgement, seeing Amīr al-muʾminīn at death p. 142.

3.           The disavowal of exaggeration (ghulūw) p. 69

4.           The pre-existence of the Imams p. 122

5.           The cosmic authority of the Imams p. 124

6.          Those famous khuṭbas p. 162ff and containing the doctrine of rajʿa.[20] Lawson suggested that Bursī was not concerned with the eschatology of rajʿa – however, the text suggests otherwise. The khuṭbas themselves indicate this. But also the chapter on the arcana of the Mahdī clarify this as well: he is messianic remnant of God, the face of God, the redeemer, the seal of saints and the succour of the believers of the last days.[21] The absence of the term rajʿa does not denote the absence of the concept.

7.           The presence of special knowledge and rafḍ criticism of ʿUmar – p. 103 foretelling his death cf. Jaʿfarīyān I, p. 268.

Bursī’s doctrine of walāya wherein the agency of the Imam as having control over the cosmos is due to his role as deus revelatus, as part of a negative theology in which God is beyond being.[22] He cites a long ḥadīth from Imam al-Bāqir that includes the following:

We are the first and we are the last. We are the foremost (al-sābiqūn). We are the intercessors. We are the logos of God (kalimat Allāh) and we are the elect of God. We are the beloveds of God. We are the face of God (wajh Allāh). We are the trusted ones (umanāʾ) of God. We are the repositories of the revelation of God (khazanat waḥy Allāh). We are the gatekeepers of the mystery of God (sudanat ghayb Allāh). We are the mines of revelation. We possess the meaning of the taʾwīl [or we are the meaning of the taʾwīl]. Gabriel descends in our signs. The Command of God devolves to us. We are the culmination of the mystery of God (muntahā ghayb Allāh). We are the loci of the sanctity of God (maḥāl quds Allāh). We are the lamps of wisdom (maṣābīḥ al-ḥikma), and the keys to mercy and the springs of bounty and the nobility of the community, and the lords the Imams. We are the wulāt and the guides, those who call and quench, the protectors (ḥumāt). Our love is the path of salvation, the very essence of life – we are that path to water in this life and the hereafter, the strict way, the Straight Path (al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm). Whoever believes in us believes in God. Whoever rejects us rejects God. Whoever doubts us doubts God. Whoever truly knows us knows God (man ʿarafanā ʿaraf Allāh). Whoever turns away from us turns away from God. Whoever follows us obeys God. We are the means to God, the link to the pleasure of God. Ours is the vicegerency, the guidance and the impeccability.[23]

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[1] Henry Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie islamique, Paris: Gallimard, 1986, pp. 456–57; other studies on him include: Muṣṭafā Kāmil al-Shaybī, al-Ṣila bayn al-taṣawwuf wa-l-tashayyuʿ, Baghdad: Dār al-Andalus, 1966, II, pp. 224–56; Pierre Lory, ‘Souffrir pour le vérité selon l’ésotérisme chiite de Rajab Borsī’, in Mohammad Ali Amir Moezzi et al (eds), Le Shīʿisme imamate quarante ans après: Hommage à Etan Kohlberg, Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp. 315–23; Todd Lawson, ‘The dawning places of the lights of certainty in the divine secrets of the commander of the faithful by Rajab Bursī (d. 1411)’, in L. Lewisohn (ed), The Heritage of Sufism volume II: The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (1150-1500), Oxford: Oneworld, 1999, pp. 261–76.

[2] On this town and his association, see Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-buldān, I, 384; al-Ṭurayḥī, Majmaʿ al-baḥrayn, X, p. 309; al-Burūjirdī, Ṭarāʾif al-maqāl, II, p. 161.

[3] Mīrzā ʿAbdullāh Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ wa-ḥiyāḍ al-fuḍalāʾ, ed. Sayyid Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī, Qum: Maktabat Āyatullāh al-Marʿashī, 1981, II, pp. 304–10; al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Amal al-āmil, II, p. 304; Mudarris Tabrīzī, Rayḥānat al-adab, II, p. 11; Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-shīʿa, Beirut, 1983, VI, p. 465. Afandī rules out the nisba relating to the Anatolian town of Bursa, although he does cite Mīrzā Rafīʿ al-Dīn Muḥammad [Nāʾinī?] who claims it was in his refutation of Mīr Dāmād’s Shirʿat tasmīyat al-Mahdī. Al-Shammarī, al-Ḥayāt al-fikrīya, pp. 163–76, 302, 315–16, 350–51.

[4] Al-Shammarī, al-Ḥayāt al-fikrīya, pp. 165–67. He spends much time denying al-Shaybī’s position that Bursī was from Khurāsān and hence a Persian.

[5] Ibrāhīm al-Kafʿamī, al-Miṣbāḥ, Beirut: [Qum 1984] pp. 176, 183, 316, 363–64; Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 1994, pp. 243, 315, 416, 425, 523.

[6] On al-Kafʿamī, see al-Muhājir, Jabal ʿĀmil, pp. 166, 21–212, 238.

[7] Al-Shammarī, al-Ḥayāt al-fikrīya, pp. 155–57.

[8] Muḥsin Fayḍ Kāshānī, Kalimāt-i maknūna, ed. ʿAlī-Riżā Aṣgharī, Tehran: Madrasa-yi ʿĀlī-yi Shahīd-i Muṭahharī, 1387 Sh/2008, p. 48 citing Mashāriq, p. 14, p. 155 citing Mashāriq, p. 39, p. 212 citing Mashāriq, p. 264.

[9] Muḥammad Bāqir Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, VIII, p. 202 ???? I, p. 10??? Majlisī cites him copiously including XXVII, p. 136, p. 226, XXV, p. 23, XXXII, p. 32, p. 385, XLVII, p. 382 inter alia.  

[10] The significance of his influence on this point in the Safavid period is indicated by Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat va farhang, pp. 204, 208–9.

[11] Muḥammad ʿAlī Dirāyatī, ‘Tafsīr sūrat al-ikhlāṣ-i Rajab Bursī’, Āfāq-i nūr II, pp. 29–34.

[12] Afandī, Riyāḍ al-ʿulamāʾ, II, p. 306; al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Amal al-āmil, II, p. 118; Lawson, ‘The dawning places’, p. 264

[13] Corbin, En islam iranien, IV, p. 212. Afandī says that the work was in two volumes but not great as Sabzavārī was a Sufi and not a major scholar. There are around 8 manuscripts of the text just in Iran according to Dirāyatī, Dinā, IX, p. 714.

[14] Jaʿfarīyān, Siyāsat va farhang, II, pp. 1347–88.

[15] Dirāyatī, Dinā, IX, pp. 569–73.

[16] Rajab Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn fī ḥaqāʾiq asrār Amīr al-muʾminīn, Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 1992, pp. 5–13.

[17] Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn, p. 14. Cf. Lawson, ‘The dawning places’, pp. 265–66.

[18] Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn, p. 15.

[19] Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn, p. 16.

[20] Khuṭbat al-iftikhār and taṭunjīya – Corbin, En Islam iranien, III, pp. 184-5; Lawson pp. 269-70; Lory p. 320; cf. Amir-Moezzi, ‘Remarques sur la divinité de l’Imam’, Studia Iranica, 25 (1996), pp. 193–216.

[21] Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn, pp. 102–3.

[22] Corbin, En islam iranien, IV, p. 140.

[23] Bursī, Mashāriq anwār al-yaqīn, pp. 39–40; Corbin, En islam iranien, IV, p. 144.

Philosophy in Shiraz III: Mīrzā-Jān Shīrāzī and his recently publishedgloss on Ḥikmat al-ʿayn

Reza Pourjavady has done much in recent years to develop our understanding of philosophy in Shiraz in the late Timurid and early Safavid periods - see Philosophy in Shiraz II. His Encyclopaedia of Islam entry on the Shirazi Sunni thinker under 'Bāghnawī' is a good starting point for this figure. Firūze Sāʿatchīān has also made serious contributions to our understanding of Shams al-Dīn Khafrī (d. 1535) - see Philosophy in Shiraz I. Most recently Ahab Bdaiwi's Exeter PhD on the Dashtakīs further enriches our understanding of philosophy in the early Safavid period and in particular explains the singular focus on Avicenna in the Safavid period and the polemical attack on what I might term "Ashʿarising philosophy" a process that began at the very least with Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210). 

So before I say something about this new edition of his gloss on the Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ʿayn of Mīrak Bukhārī (fl. 733/1332) on the focus text of Kātibī (d. 675/1277), what do we know generally about him? I shall draw out the headlines following Pourjavady. Born in around 930/1524, he studied in Shiraz with Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd Shīrāzī (d. 962/1555), himself a student of Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī (d. 908/1502). [Shīrāzī and other figures of that generation require further research] He was very much within the Davānī tradition and after teaching in Shiraz, he later fled Iran as he came out as a Sunni Ashʿarī under Ismāʿīl II in the late 1570s. He moved to India briefly before settling in Bukhara where he died in 995/1587. He became one of the key conduits for the spread of the Davānī tradition to India and was recognised as such by Badāyunī and similar sources at the court of Akbar. Interesting Sayyid Nūrullāh Shūshtarī who was then in India heavily criticised him for plagiarising the work of Sayyid Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1542) - and since he represented a strong teaching lineage that goes back to him, it suggests the rivalry of the adherents of Davānī and Dashtakī at the Mughal court. This episode requires some analysis - and especially the role of Shūshtarī which I hope to address perhaps in some future article. [Incidentally, Shūshtarī discusses this in his work Majālis al-muʾminīn which has recently been the subject of a new critical edition in six volumes published by the Majmaʿ-yi buḥūs-i islāmī at the shrine in Mashhad]

Bāghnawī wrote extensively on the Ashʿarī kalām tradition and on the Avicennan: on the latter, he wrote a gloss on the adjudication (muḥākama) of Quṭb al-Dīn Taḥtānī on the two famous commentaries of Rāzī and Ṭūsī on al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt of Avicenna (published with the glosses of Ḥusayn Khwānsārī in 1999 in Tehran), and this current gloss on the commentary of Kātibī's Avicennan summa Ḥikmat al-ʿayn. The totality of the Sharḥ was published in St. Petersburg/ Kazan in 1903. There were a few commentaries on the Ḥikma especially by Kātibī himself - Baḥr al-fawāʾid - and by his younger contemporary the Shiʿi Avicennan scholar Ibn Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī (d. 725/1325) known as Īḍāḥ al-maqāṣid (edited and published in Tehran in the 1950s), and Mīrak Bukhārī which was probably the most popular. The text only covers the metaphysics and the physics - a separate work was written on the logic. Various glossators worked on the commentary of Bukhārī including Dashtakī (hence the accusation of plagiarism), Khafrī, Mullā Rafīʿā Nāʾinī in the later Safavid period, Mullā Shamsā Gīlānī (on whom I wrote a note recently), and from the late Safavid period the Khwānsārīs Ḥusayn, Jamāl and Raḍī (elements of which are included in the edition discussed below).

The present edition by ʿAlī Ḥaydar Yasāvulī published by the Majmaʿ-yi zakhāʾir-i islāmī in Qum in 2013 focuses on the first section of the ontology. The standard order of these texts with respect to their metaphysics (as Heidrun Eichner has shown in her habilitation) is: metaphysica generalis (umūr ʿāmma) including discussions of a) existence and non-existence b) essence (al-māhīya) c) modalities especially necessary and unity, and contingency d) categories of substance and accidents e) intellection f) metaphysica specialis or 'philosophical theology' on the nature of God and his attributes. This edition covers some of the elements only of a. And it appears that Bāghnawī's commentary only covered the section of the umūr ʿāmma - for a discussion which is probably identical to the introduction, see ʿAlī Ḥaydar Yasāvulī, "Ḥāshiya-yi Sharḥ-i Ḥikmat al-ʿayn", Mīrās-i Shahāb, 12.1-2 (1385 Sh/2007), 48-71. Throughout the work, he refers to key Avicennan works including the originals of the master from al-Shifāʾ and al-Taʿlīqāt as well as works that reflect the doctrine such as al-Mabāḥith al-mashriqīya of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. 

The topics covered are (and used by the editor as headings):
i) defining philosophy (taʿrīf al-ḥikma) - the perfection of the human soul by the acquisition of knowledge of things as they are - glossed as they are in nafs al-amr and not in actuality
ii) the homonymy of existence (ishtirāk al-wujūd) - the first actual chapter on how existence is shared across beings comprising matter and devoid of matter; on the apriority of existence (bidāhat al-wujūd); on the scope of the necessary and the contingent; Bāghnawī rejects the pure homonymy of existence but also holds back from affirming any pros hen homonymy because he denies any graded and hierarchical nature to the totality of existence
iii) on the accidentality of existence to essence (ziyādat al-wujud ʿalā l-māhīya) - drawing upon Avicenna's distinction of existence and essence in contingents, the issue is whether existence is a real predicate or merely a 'being of reason' posited in the mind with no referent in actuality
iv) on the existence of the Necessary - on the Avicennan rule that the existence and the essence of God are identical but here he tries to defend the Ashʿarī real distinction of the attributes as a means for  establishing God's volitional creative agency
v) mental existence (al-wujūd al-dhihnī) - whether there is such a mode and whether the different modes are related in a modulated manner (bi-l-tashkīk) following Ṭūsī, he broadly rejects it - and even the related issue of Platonic forms citing the Mulakhkhaṣ of Rāzī and examining a number of the theological texts influenced by Avicenna; this is a critical chapter in the history of the emergence of this concept as central to Mullā Ṣadrā's philosophy 
vi) on the goodness of existence and the privation of non-existence (khayrīyat al-wujūd wa-sharrīyat al-ʿadam) - the classic Neoplatonic discussion which links to an Ashʿarī explanation of the next issue:
vii) the non-existent is not a thing (al-maʿdūm laysa bi-shayʾ) - he starts with an important text the Sharḥ al-mulakhkhaṣ of Kātibī [there is little doubt that some serious research is required on this text of Rāzī and its commentary tradition], and the related issue of
viii) the non-existent cannot return to existence (al-maʿdūm lā yuʿād) - one of the key reasons why the philosophers felt that an Aristotelian demonstration for corporeal resurrection was impossible; and finally
ix) on whether there is any distinction between non-existents (wuqūʿ al-imtiyāz fī-l-maʿdūmāt) - the later tradition denies this but it is related to the question of how one predicates a non-existent subject of a proposition 

I hope that this brief survey suggests ways in which the reading of Bāghnawī is useful not only for those trying to make sense of the history of the interaction between Avicennan philosophy and kalām but also those, like myself, trying to piece together the making of the Safavid-Mughal traditions in ḥikma.