Suhrawardi
From Freepedia
شهاب الدين يحيى سهروردى or Shihabuddin Yahya as-Suhrawardi (born 1153 in North-West-Iran; died 1191 in Aleppo) was the founder of School of Illumination, one of the most important islamic dotrine in Philosophy. He should be distinguished from Abu 'l-Najib al-Suhrawardi and his paternal nephew Abu Hafs Umar al-Suhrawardi (d. 1234), who were also important Sufis.
His life spanned a period of less than forty years in the middle of twelfth century AD, produced a series of highly assured works that established him as the founder of new school of philosophy, the school of Illumination (hikmat-al-Ishraq).
Also arising out of the peripatetic philosophy developed by Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi illuminationism philosophy is critical of several of the positions taken by Ibn Sina, and radically departs from the latter through the creation of a symbolic language (which is manly derived from ancient Iranian culture or Farhang-e-Khosravani) to give expression to his hikma.
The fundamental constituent of Suhrawardi’s philosophy is pure immaterial light, than which is nothing is more manifest, and which unfold from the light of lights in emanationist through the descending order of the light of ever diminishing intensity; through complex interaction, then in turn give rise to horizontal arrays of lights, similar in concept to Platonic Forms, which govern the species of mundane reality.
Suhrawardi also elaborated the idea of an independent intermediary world, the imaginal world (alam-e-mithal). His views have exerted a powerful influence down to this day, particularly through Mulla Sadra’s adoption of his concept of intensity and gradation to existence, wherein he (Mulla Sadra) combined peripatetic and illuminationist description of reality.
References
- Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination
by Mehdi Amin Razavi
- Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
