Sajjad H Rizvi
Biographic Data
| ID | 494798 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sajjad H Rizvi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sajjad H |
| FAMILY NAME | Rizvi |
| SIGNATURE | RIZVI S H |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1 University of Exeter UK Exeter |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
An Avicennian Engagement with and Appropriation of Mullā Ṣadrā Šīrāzī (d. 1045/1636)
Recent scholarship on Avicenna and Avicennism has tended to focus on the spread and dissemination of his ideas in the early centuries. However, the later readings and contestations of Avicennism especially from the Safavid period onwards have been broadly neglected. In this paper on the most important philosopher of eighteenth-century Iran, Mahdī Narāqī, I provide a case study of the enduring significance of Avicennism, but one which has been tra…
Only the Imam Knows Best” The Maktab-e Tafkīk's Attack on the Legitimacy of Philosophy in Iran
Philosophy, as an intellectual discipline emerging from Hellenism, had an ambiguous and disputed role in the theology and apologetics of Islam and continues to be contentious. In this article, I examine the arguments over the legitimacy of philosophy between the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c . 1635), dominant in the present Shiʿi seminary in Iran, and its detractors in the maktab-i tafkīk who insist that knowledge of reality and the f…
Philosophy as a way of life in the world of Islam
The work of the late Pierre Hadot has transformed our understanding of the practice of philosophy, especially in the pre-modern world. This article interrogates how we approach the study of later Islamic philosophy, especially the thought of the Safavid sage Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635), and considers whether the method proposed by Hadot is applicable to this intellectual tradition. While there is much to be gained from the application of a cogn…
Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran
The Qajar period witnessed a revival of traditional Islamic philosophy based on the philosophical method of the Safavid sage Mulla Sadra Shirazi. This was philosophy as a way of life, an ethical commitment born of a method that combined both rational discourse and mystical intuition, deployed to defend the intellectual and cultural norms of the old learning against the new European inspired centers in Qajar Iran. A prominent figure in this proces…
Classical Arabic Philosophy
Rahim Acar, Talking about God and Talking about Creation
Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis
The Existential Breath of al-rahmān and the Munificent Grace of al-rahīm
It has become commonplace to observe that every exegete brings to his commentary his own skills, preunderstandings and preconceptions about the text. Thus, when one reads a commentary from a particular perspective one expects to find the discipline and method of the exegete explicit in his work. This is especially true of philosophical and mystical commentaries on the Qur'an. The current paper considers the case of the tafsīr of the famous Persia…
‘Ali Quli Qara’i, The Qur'an With a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation
Mulla Sadra and Causation
A central assumption in this essay, in terms of both historical development and methodological approach, is that later Islamic philosophy is characterized by a shift from a substance-based metaphysics to a processoriented metaphysics. Defenders of substance metaphysics often focus on the nature of causation to attack process metaphysics. If there is no substance or substratum for process, then how can events have any causal nature? If neither cau…
Etan Kohlberg, Shī c ism
Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam
A Primordial e pluribus unum ? Exegeses on Q. 2
Students of natural theology have for centuries debated the religious progress of humankind. In the idyll of the Garden of Eden and in our earliest generations, they ask, did we believe in God? Or even gods? Has humankind evolved from pagan precursors to rational monotheism? Or did primordial monotheism lapse into paganism thus requiring the divine light of revelation to guide humanity back to the one true God? This paper focuses on three contemp…
Reconsidering the Life of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1641)
An Islamic Subversion of the existence‐essence distinction? Suhrawardi's visionary hierarchy of lights 1
The distinction between existence and essence in contingent beings is one of the foundational doctrines of medieval philosophy. Building upon Neoplatonic precursors, thinkers such as Avicenna and Aquinas debated its nature. However, one Islamic philosopher, who had an enormous influence on the development of philosophical discourse in Iran, subverted the traditional Peripatetic vision of reality and disputed the ontological nature of existence. T…
Only the Imam Knows Best” The Maktab-e Tafkīk's Attack on the Legitimacy of Philosophy in Iran
Philosophy, as an intellectual discipline emerging from Hellenism, had an ambiguous and disputed role in the theology and apologetics of Islam and continues to be contentious. In this article, I examine the arguments over the legitimacy of philosophy between the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c . 1635), dominant in the present Shiʿi seminary in Iran, and its detractors in the maktab-i tafkīk who insist that knowledge of reality and the f…
Philosophy as a way of life in the world of Islam
The work of the late Pierre Hadot has transformed our understanding of the practice of philosophy, especially in the pre-modern world. This article interrogates how we approach the study of later Islamic philosophy, especially the thought of the Safavid sage Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635), and considers whether the method proposed by Hadot is applicable to this intellectual tradition. While there is much to be gained from the application of a cogn…
An Islamic Subversion of the existence‐essence distinction? Suhrawardi's visionary hierarchy of lights 1
The distinction between existence and essence in contingent beings is one of the foundational doctrines of medieval philosophy. Building upon Neoplatonic precursors, thinkers such as Avicenna and Aquinas debated its nature. However, one Islamic philosopher, who had an enormous influence on the development of philosophical discourse in Iran, subverted the traditional Peripatetic vision of reality and disputed the ontological nature of existence. T…
Reconsidering the Life of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1641)
A Primordial e pluribus unum ? Exegeses on Q. 2
Students of natural theology have for centuries debated the religious progress of humankind. In the idyll of the Garden of Eden and in our earliest generations, they ask, did we believe in God? Or even gods? Has humankind evolved from pagan precursors to rational monotheism? Or did primordial monotheism lapse into paganism thus requiring the divine light of revelation to guide humanity back to the one true God? This paper focuses on three contemp…
Mulla Sadra and Causation
A central assumption in this essay, in terms of both historical development and methodological approach, is that later Islamic philosophy is characterized by a shift from a substance-based metaphysics to a processoriented metaphysics. Defenders of substance metaphysics often focus on the nature of causation to attack process metaphysics. If there is no substance or substratum for process, then how can events have any causal nature? If neither cau…
Etan Kohlberg, Shī c ism
Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam
Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis
The Existential Breath of al-rahmān and the Munificent Grace of al-rahīm
It has become commonplace to observe that every exegete brings to his commentary his own skills, preunderstandings and preconceptions about the text. Thus, when one reads a commentary from a particular perspective one expects to find the discipline and method of the exegete explicit in his work. This is especially true of philosophical and mystical commentaries on the Qur'an. The current paper considers the case of the tafsīr of the famous Persia…
‘Ali Quli Qara’i, The Qur'an With a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation
Rahim Acar, Talking about God and Talking about Creation
Classical Arabic Philosophy
Hikma muta‘aliya in Qajar Iran
The Qajar period witnessed a revival of traditional Islamic philosophy based on the philosophical method of the Safavid sage Mulla Sadra Shirazi. This was philosophy as a way of life, an ethical commitment born of a method that combined both rational discourse and mystical intuition, deployed to defend the intellectual and cultural norms of the old learning against the new European inspired centers in Qajar Iran. A prominent figure in this proces…
Only the Imam Knows Best” The Maktab-e Tafkīk's Attack on the Legitimacy of Philosophy in Iran
Philosophy, as an intellectual discipline emerging from Hellenism, had an ambiguous and disputed role in the theology and apologetics of Islam and continues to be contentious. In this article, I examine the arguments over the legitimacy of philosophy between the philosophical school of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. c . 1635), dominant in the present Shiʿi seminary in Iran, and its detractors in the maktab-i tafkīk who insist that knowledge of reality and the f…
Philosophy as a way of life in the world of Islam
The work of the late Pierre Hadot has transformed our understanding of the practice of philosophy, especially in the pre-modern world. This article interrogates how we approach the study of later Islamic philosophy, especially the thought of the Safavid sage Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1635), and considers whether the method proposed by Hadot is applicable to this intellectual tradition. While there is much to be gained from the application of a cogn…
An Avicennian Engagement with and Appropriation of Mullā Ṣadrā Šīrāzī (d. 1045/1636)
Recent scholarship on Avicenna and Avicennism has tended to focus on the spread and dissemination of his ideas in the early centuries. However, the later readings and contestations of Avicennism especially from the Safavid period onwards have been broadly neglected. In this paper on the most important philosopher of eighteenth-century Iran, Mahdī Narāqī, I provide a case study of the enduring significance of Avicennism, but one which has been tra…
Philosophy (12 works) · Islamic Studies and History (10 works) · Theology (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Medieval and Classical Philosophy (9 works) · Islam (7 works) · Islamic Thought and Society Studies (7 works) · Education and Islamic Studies (6 works) · Art (5 works) · History (5 works)