Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

104 • The Making of Islamic Sciencehe sees all the diversities of Nature reflected in the mirror of his ownbeing” (Nasr 1993, 263).This spiritual cosmology was later developed by other schoolsof thought, especially the School of Illumination (Ishraqi), whoseillustrious founder, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi (d. 1187), was initiallycontent with Ibn Sina’s philosophy, which he had studied in his youthbut which he abandoned after a dream in which Aristotle appeared tohim “revealing the doctrine later known as ‘knowledge by presence’and asserting the superiority of the Ancients and certain of the Sufisover the Peripatetics” (Suhrawardi tr. 1999, xvi).The Illuminationist philosophy is based on “unveiling.” It givesan important epistemological role to intuition. In logic, “Suhrawardirejected Peripatetic essential definition, arguing that essences couldonly be known through direct acquaintance” (Suhrawardi tr. 1999,xx). Suhrawardi believed there were a great many more intellects thanthe ten of Ibn Sina. His work consists of two parts, the first dealingwith logic (in three discourses) and the second with the “science oflights” (in five discourses). Instead of the self-evident substance ofAristotle, here we have light as the foundational entity upon whichthe entire system of Illuminationist philosophy is built. Thus, thebasic metaphysical concepts in this system are light, darkness,independence, and dependence. Light is self-evident and it makesother things evident. Suhrawardi identifies four classes of beings:self-subsistent light, which is self-conscious and is the cause of allother classes of beings; accidental light, which includes both physicallight and some accidents in immaterial light; dusky substances (whichare material bodies), and dark accidents, which include both physicalaccidents and some accidents of immaterial light. His cosmogonyexplains how all other beings came into existence from the Light ofLights (God).Another outstanding scientist-philosopher who has left us acosmological scheme different from the Peripatetic cosmologyis al-Biruni, who was born eight years before Ibn Sina and diedfourteen years after him. Born outside (birun) present-day Khiva in973, al-Biruni had a very independent mind that would not acceptanything merely on authority. This is evident from his attitudetoward Abu Zakaria al-Razi, often touted as the most “free-thinking”