Islamic Philosophy-6
Islamic Philosopher
In no branch of Islamic philosophy, however, is the influence of the Qur’an and Hadith more evident than in eschatology, the very understanding of which in the Abrahamic universe was alien to the philosophical world of antiquity.
Such concepts as divine intervention to mark the end of history, bodily resurrection, the various eschatological events, the Final Judgment, and the posthumous states as understood by Islam or for that matter Christianity were alien to ancient philosophy whereas they are described explicitly in the Qur’an and Hadith as well as of course in the Bible and other Jewish and Christian religious sources.
The Islamic philosophers were fully aware of these crucial ideas in their philosophizing, but the earlier ones were unable to provide philosophical proofs for Islamic doctrines which many confessed to accept on the basis of faith but could not demonstrate within the context of Peripatetic philosophy.
We see such a situation in the case of Ibn Sina who in several works, including the Shifa, confesses that he cannot prove bodily resurrection but accepts it on faith. This question was in fact one of the three main points, along with the acceptance of qidam and the inability of the philosophers to demonstrate God’s knowledge of particulars, for which al-Ghazzali took Ibn Sina to task and accused him of kuft or infidelity.
It remained for Mulla Sadra several centuries later to demonstrate the reality of bodily resurrection through the principles of the “transcendent theosophy” (al-hikmat al-muta dliyah) and to take both Ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali to task for the inadequacy of their treatment of the subject. The most extensive philosophical treatment of eschatology (al-ma ad) in all its dimensions is in fact to be found in the Asfdr of Mulla Sadra.
It is sufficient to examine this work or his other treatises on the subject such as his al-Mabda’ wa l ma ad or al-Hikmat al arshiyyah to realize the complete reliance of the author upon the Qur’an and Hadith. His development of the philosophical meaning of ma dd is in reality basically a hermeneutics of Islamic religious sources, primary among them the Qur’an and Hadith. Nor is this fact true only of Mulla Sadra.
One can see the same relation between philosophy and the Islamic revelation in the writings of Mulla Muhsin Fayd Kashini, Shah Waliullah of Delhi, Mulla Abd Allah Zunuzi, Hajji Mulla Hath Sabziwari and many later Islamic philosophers writing on various aspects of al-ma ad.
Again, although as far as the question of eschatology is concerned, the reliance on the Qur’an and Hadith is greater during the later period, as is to be seen already in Ibn Sina who dealt with it in both his encyclopedic works and in individual treatises dealing directly with the subject, such as his own al-Mabda’ wa’l-maid. It is noteworthy in this context that he entitled one of his most famous treatises on eschatology al-Risalat al-adhawiyyah, drawing from the Islamic religious term for the Day of Judgment.
In meditating upon the history of Islamic philosophy in its relation to the Islamic revelation, one detects a movement toward ever closer association of philosophy with the Qur’an and Hadith as falsafah became transformed into al-hikmatal-ilahiyyah. Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, although drawing so many themes from Qur’anic sources, hardly ever quoted the Qur’an directly in their philosophical works.
By the time we come to Suhrawardi in the sixth/twelfth century, there are present within his purely philosophical works citations of the Qur’an and Hadith. Four centuries later the Safavid philosophers wrote philosophical works in the form of commentaries on the text of the Qur’an or on certain of the Hadith. This trend continued in later centuries not only in Persia but also in India and the Ottoman world including Iraq.
