Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

116 • The Making of Islamic ScienceCosmological Doctrines of the Post-Mongol PeriodThe invasion and destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols ushered ina new era in Islamic thought and science. During this post-Mongolperiod, all four major schools of Islamic philosophy—the Peripatetic(mashsha’i), the Illuminationist (Ishraqi), the Gnostic (Irfani), and thetheological (Kalam)—continued to develop in various parts of theMuslim world. Despite the generally held view in the West, whichconsiders Islamic philosophy to have died by the blow served byal-Ghazali’s Tahafut al-falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers)in all parts of the Muslim world except for Islamic Spain, where itis deemed to have survived for a short while due to Ibn Rushd andhis rebuttal of al-Ghazali, research during the last few decades hasshown the continuation of a rich discourse in many parts of theMuslim world and especially in Iran (Nasr 1997, 20). It is, therefore,not surprising that two of the most important philosophers of thepost-Mongol period—Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1640) and HajiMulla Hadi Sabsvari (d. 1873)—were born in Iran. As mentioned inthe preceding section, both Suhrawardi and Ibn al-‘Arabi broughtPeripatetic tradition closer to the Sufi doctrines. Nasir al-Din Tusion the other hand revived Ibn Sina’s school of philosophy, and in sodoing he also opened paths for further developments in Peripateticphilosophy that were followed by other philosophers such as his friendand contemporary Najm al-Din Dabiran Katibi (who wrote a majortreatise on Peripatetic philosophy entitled Hikmat al-‘ayn (Wisdom ofthe Fountainhead), and, most notably, by Qutb al-Din Shirazi, who washimself a student and colleague of al-Tusi.The period of four centuries between the death of Ibn al-‘Arabiin 1240 and the birth of Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, generally known asMulla Sadra, is thus not a barren period in Islamic thought but onerich in inner developments that paved the way for Mulla Sadra’s grandsynthesis of the four major schools of thought. The works of manyimportant philosophers and thinkers of these four centuries have yetto be studied in Western languages. A full picture of the intellectualactivity of these four centuries can only become apparent afterconsiderable attention has been paid to the works of such philosophersof these four centuries as Jalal al-Din Dawani, Sadr al-Din Dashtaki,Ghiyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki, Abd al-Razaaq Kashani, and