Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

300 Notes to Chapter 5
their views concerning the study of ontology among the earlier Islamic
philosophers.
3. See Parviz Morewedge, The Metaphysics of Avicenna (Ibn S¥nå ) (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1973); for the ontology of Avicenna, see also
A. M. Goichon, La Distinction de l’essence et de l’existence d’après Ibn S¥nå
(Avicenne); and S. H. Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines,
chapter 12.
4. See F. Schuon’s Logic and Transcendence, trans. P. Townsend (New
York: Harper and Row, 1975), chapters 7 and 13; as well as his Islam and the
Perennial Philosophy.
5. On Suhraward¥’s view of existence see his ¡ikmat al-ishråq, H. Corbin
(ed.), in Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques 2 (Tehran: Institut d’Etudes et des
Recherches Culturelles, 2001), pp. 186ff. and in passim; vol. 1 of the same
work containing the Talw¥÷åt, pp. 26ff.; and Ibråh¥m¥ D¥nån¥, Shu‘å˘i and¥shah
wa shuh¶d, pp. 309ff.
See also Hossein Ziai, “Shihåb al-D¥n Suhraward¥: Founder of the
Illuminationist School,” in Nasr and Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy, pp.
434ff; and Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of
New York, 1989) and The Self-Disclosure of God (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1998).
6. While asserting that Ibn ‘Arab¥ provided “an inexhaustible ocean of
meditation upon the Unity of God and its relationship with the manyness of
things,” William Chittick writes, “Ibn ‘Arab¥ took over most of the vocabulary
connected to the discussion of wuj¶d from the Muslim philosophers.” The Sufi
Path of Knowledge, pp. 79, see also 80. See also pp. 77–144 of this work for a
profound exposition of Ibn ‘Arab¥’s ontology.
7. On Ibn ‘Arab¥ in general, see Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, chapter 3. As
for his doctrine of Divine Mercy, see Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, pp.
127ff.; and Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical
Concepts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 7ff. In a section
entitled “Ontological Mercy,” Izutsu quotes the famous commentator of
Ibn ‘Arab¥, ‘Abd al-Razzåq Kåshån¥, as saying, “Existence [wuj¶d] is the first
overflowing of the Mercy which is said to extend to everything” (p. 116).
8. On this basic doctrine, which has often been mistaken for philosophical
pantheism, existential monism, and the like, see Burckhardt, An Introduction
to Sufi Doctrine, trans. chapter 3; Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth
Century, chapter 5; and Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, pp. 79–80.
9. La Philosophie shi‘ite, H. Corbin and O. Yahya (eds.) (Tehran and
Paris: Andrien-Maisonneuve, 1969), pp. 620ff. of the Arabic text.
10. On the meaning of these terms, see Toshihiko Izutsu, The Concept
and Reality of Existence, pp. 99ff. The School of Isfahan will be treated later in