Islamic Philosophy-3
Mulla Sadra
There are certain Hadith which point to God having offered prophecy and philosophy or hikmab, and Luqman chose hikmah which must not be confused simply with medicine or other branches of traditional hikmah but refers to pure philosophy itself dealing with God and the ultimate causes of things.
These traditional authorities also point to such Qur’anic verses as “And He will teach him the Book [al-kitab] and Wisdom [al-hikmah]” (3 : 48) and “Behold that which I have given you of the Book and Wisdom” (3 : 81) : there are several where kitab and hikmah are mentioned together.
They believe that this conjunction confirms the fact that what God has revealed through revelation He had also made available through hikmah, which is reached through aql, itself a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic reality which is the instrument of revelation.
On the basis of this doctrine later Islamic philosophers such as Mulla Sadra developed an elaborate doctrine of the intellect in its relation to the prophetic intellect and the descent of the Divine Word, or the Qur’an, basing themselves to some extent on earlier theories going back to Ibn Sina and other Muslim Peripatetics.
All of this indicates how closely traditional Islamic philosophy identified itself with revelation in general and the Qur’an in particular.
Islamic philosophers meditated upon the content of the Qur’an as a whole as well as on particular verses. It was the verses of a polysemic nature or those with “unclear outward meaning” (mutashabihdt) to which they paid special attention. Also certain well-known verses were cited or commented upon more often than others, such as the “Light Verse” (ayat al-nur) (24 : 35) commented upon already by Ibn Sina in his Ishardt and also by many later figures.
Mulla Sadra was in fact to devote one of the most important philosophical commentaries ever written upon the Qur’an, entitled Tafrir ayat al-nur, to this verse.10
Western studies of Islamic philosophy, which have usually regarded it as simply an extension of Greek philosophy,” have for this very reason neglected for the most part the commentaries cc Islamic philosophers upon the Quran, whereas philosophical commentaries occupy an important category along with the juridical, philological, theological (kalam) and Sufi commentaries.
The first major Islamic philosopher to have written Qur’anic commentaries is Ibn S-ma, many of whose commentaries have survived.” Later Suhrawardi was to comment upon diverse passages of the Sacred Text, as were a number of later philosophers such as Ibn Turkah al-Isfahani.
The most important philosophical commentaries upon the Qur’an were, however, written by Mulla Sadra, whose Asrdr al-ayat and Mafatib alghayb13 are among the most imposing edifices of the Islamic intellectual tradition, although hardly studied in the West until now. Mulla Sadra also devoted one of his major works to commenting upon the Usu1 al-kafi of Kulayni, one of the major Shiite texts of Hadith containing the sayings of the Prophet as well as the Imams.
These works taken together constitute the most imposing philosophical commentaries upon the Qur’an and Hadith in Islamic history, but such works are far from having terminated with him.
The most extensive Qur’anic commentary written during the past decades, al Mizdn, was from the pen of Allamah Tabatabai, who was the reviver of the teaching of Islamic philosophy in Qom in Persia after the Second World War and a leading Islamic philosopher of this century whose philosophical works are now gradually becoming known to the outside world.
