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

326 Notes to Chapter 11
14. See John Philoponus, On the Eternity of the Cosmos against Proclus
(Leibzig: Teubner’s, 1899); and his On the Creation of the World (Leibzig:
Teubner’s, 1897).
15. One of our great teachers of Islamic philosophy, Sayyid Ab¨˘l-¡asan
Raf¥‘¥ Qazw¥n¥, used to say that this is the one problem that has never been
satisfactorily solved philosophically in the annals of Islamic philosophy, not
even by M¥r Dåmåd or Mullå |adrå, who provided a solution very different
from that of his master.
16. See Izutsu, op. cit., pp. 8–10. See also Dabashi, op. cit., pp. 609ff.
17. On M¥r Findirisk¥, see Corbin, La Philosophie iranienne islamique, pp.
37ff; and Nasr, The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, pp. 254–58.
18. For the translation of this Persian qaĴdah, see our Islamic Intellectual
Tradition, pp. 255–56.
19. See Fathullah Mojtabai, Hindu Muslim Cultural Relations (Delhi:
National Book Bureau, 1978), pp. 41ff. He also mentions that M¥r Findirisk¥
assembled a glossary of Sanskrit technical philosophical terms in Arabic and
Persian (p. 102).
20. See Corbin, op. cit., p. 37.
21. Ibid., p. 48.
22. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 4, pp. 9ff.
23. For the original text of this work, see Sayyid Jalål al-D¥n ≈shtiyån¥
and Corbin (eds.), Anthologie des philosophes iraniens depuis le XVII e siècle jusqu’à
nos jours, vol. 1 (Tehran and Paris: Department d’Iranologie de l’Institut Francoiranien
de Recherche and Andrien-Maisonneuve, 1972), pp. 63ff. The Risåla-yi
ƒ¥nå‘iyyah was also edited and published by ‘Al¥ Akbar Shihåb¥ (Tehran: Sa‘ådat,
1317 [A.H. solar]). For an analysis of this text see Corbin, La Philosophie iranienne
islamique, pp. 37ff.
24. Anthologie, p. 73 of the Arabic and Persian texts.
25. M¥r Findirisk¥ concludes this section of his book with a most interesting
passage about the relation between true philosophy and prophecy. He
first asserts that some have accepted only the inward (bå†in) of religion and
rejected the outward (z.åhir), and some the other way around. Both have deviated
from the straight path. Then he adds concerning the true philosophers:
“And a group have preserved the just mean and marched between the z.åhir
and the bå†in, this being the straight path (ƒirå†-i mustaq¥m). They made the
word of the prophets concerning intellectual matters to conform to the intellect
and brought out the truth of what the prophets had intended. And in
transmitted and practical matters they made their intellects to obey the intellect
of the prophets. God—praised and exalted is He—was referring to this