Suhrawardi - Three Treatises on Mysticism.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

CHAPTER L
INTRODUCTION.
Shihabuddin Suhrawerdl Maqtul
is one of the outstanding
mystic philosophers of the 6th century A.BL He was imprisoned
by the order of Salahuddln on a charge of heresy
and put to death either by starvation or strangulation by
Malik uz-Zahir, the son of Salahuddln, at Halab in the year
587 A.H. People therefore called him "Shaykh Maqtul".
as his life
It seems to us superfluous to give his biography here,
1
and works have already been studied by several scholars.
I have, moreover, given in my
edition of Suhrawerdfs
Mu'nis ul^Ushshaif an account of his life and works on the
basis of such well-known biographical works of the Arabs as
have been so far printed. Maulana Syed Sulayman Nadvi and
Professor Muhd. Shafi (Lahore), the former in his review of
c
the book in Ma arif, Vol. 34, number 2, p. 155, Azamgarh
1934, and the latter in a private letter, have drawn my attfcn*
tiori to Shahrazurl's Nuzhat id-arwdh war-raudat, ul-afrah?. This
biographical work contains a long and exhaustive biography
of <strong>Suhrawardi</strong> with a detailed list of his works and poetry
and is all the more important as Shahrazurl himself was an
"Ishraql". The information given by him is more comprehensive
than that of Yaqut, Ibn Khallikari and Ibn abl
Usaibi'a. Since this book is not yet published we consider it
worth while to publish here in Chapter IX the Arabic text
of
the
u Murdered ShaykhV biography. For the edition
I have made use of the following MSS. :
1. Of. Brockelmarm, Gesch. d. Arab. Lit., Vol. I, 437; Muhammad
Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, London 1908, pp,
121-50; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s. v. <strong>Suhrawardi</strong>; L. Massignon, Becaeii de
textes in^difcs, Paris 1929, p. Ill; M. Horten, Philosophic des Islam,
Mtinchen 1924, pp. 120-26,
2. O. Spies, The Lovers' Friend, Delhi 1934 (Bonnet Orientalistische
Studien, Nr. 7)
3. Cf. Brockelmann, Vol. I, 468,