| Shahab-ud-Din Suhrawardi and Illuminationist School |
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| An excerpt from 'History Of Muslim Philosophy' |
| Shahab ud Din Yahya ibn Habash ibn Amrak Abu'l Futhuh Suhrawardi is well known in the history of Islamic Philosophy as the Master of Illumination (Shaykh al-Ishraq), an evolution in Peripatetic School. Though controversial regarding his political philosophy and executed for "heresy", "corrupting religion" and "corrupting the young prince, al-Malik al-Zahir", it has been an established fact that he had left a major impact on subsequent philosophical thought. |
| Suhrawardi has told us that in one of his visions Aristotle informed him that Muslim Peripatetics have failed to achieve the kind of wisdom achieved by mystics such as Abu Yazid al-Bastami and al-Hallaj. The mystics achieved Divine Wisdom by going beyond discursive Philosophy and relying on their personal experience. Thus true knowledge can only be based on self-knowledge and obtained through a special mode designated as �knowledge by illumination and presence�. |
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| The platonic approach to �definition� seeks the unity of the thing defined in its form, which is fully defined only as a person realizes what is to be denied in his her own self consciousness. But in Suhrawardi�s terms things are known by their essence, and not by visible attributes, especially in case of human beings where the possibilities are countless, we cannot enumerate our judgment. We cannot just count the observable and totally miss the unobservable. Man is not just a �rational animal�. The whole truth about �Man� can only be recoverable in subject, and can only be achieved through its original source or essence. Since soul is the closest (aqrab) to human beings, it is therefore through soul that one may first realize the essence of the human beings and ultimately of all things. Subsequently, based on the subject�s self-knowledge, the real sciences are constructed by employing the method of demonstration. |
| Self-Knowledge |
| Self-knowledge is a fundamental component of the Illuminationist theory of knowledge. Knowledge as perception (idrak) of soul is essential and self constituted, because an individual is cognizant of his essence by means of essence itself. Self-consciousness and the concept of �I� � the self-as-self, or its ipseity, its selfhood � are grounds of knowledge. What is ultimately gained through the initial cns of one�s essence is a way to knowledge, called the �science based on presence and vision�. |
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| The Vision |
| The �Illuminationists� talk of vision, which has been regarded as the final stage of acquisition of knowledge. According to them, each individual is blessed with a portion of light of God (Nur), and his job is to kindle it to expand. The first stage is to prepare oneself to �abandon the world� meaning what is established in here and now to accept the �(inner) experience�. The 1st stage therefore consists of: |
| � An activity � starting of mystical and ascetic experience
� A condition � learning to read one�s experiences such as intuitions � Personal �revelation� � learning to know oneself |
| The 2nd stage is that of illumination, getting the vision of the �divine light� (al nur � e � ilahi). One learns to interpret knowledge and lays foundation of ulum-haqqiqiyah.
The third stage is that of �Construction�, marked by acquisition of unlimited knowledge. Constructing of the �Truth� or the true science (ilm sahih). The experience is put to test through discursive analysis, and the system of proof used in Aristotelian demonstration (burhan) of the posterior analytics. |
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| The fourth stage is that of documentation or written account of visionary experience mostly in poetry following Persian style. The greatest achievement in such type of exercise is the Massanavi Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, which is still one of the most widely read books all over the world. Through such poetic wisdom mysteries of nature are unravelled, not by examining crude principles of physics, as Aristotelians do, but by looking into the metaphysical world and the realms of myth, archetypes, dream, fantasy, and sentiment. |
| This excerpt has been taken from Chapter no. 28 by Hossein Ziai in History of Islamic Philosophy pages (434- 456) S.H. Nasr & Leaman.O. (Eds). (2001). History of Islamic Philosophy. NY: Routledge |
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