Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī (Mullā Ṣadrā) | |
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![]() Sculpture of Mulla Sadra | |
Personal | |
Born | c. 1571/2 CE / 980 AH |
Died | c. 1635/40 / 1050 AH |
Religion | Islam |
Era | Post-Classical Islamic philosophy |
Region | Safavid Persia |
Denomination | Shia |
Creed | Twelver |
Main interest(s) | Islamic Philosophy, Illuminationism, Transcendent theosophy, Irfan, Tafsir |
Muslim leader | |
Influenced by | |
Part of a series on Islam Sufism |
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Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, more commonly known as Mullā Ṣadrā[1] (Persian: ملا صدرا; Arabic: صدر المتألهین; c. 1571/2 – c. 1635/40 CE / 980 – 1050 AH), was a Persian[2][3][4][5] Twelver Shi'i Islamic mystic, philosopher, theologian, and ‘Ālim who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century. According to Oliver Leaman, Mulla Sadra is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years.[6][7]
Though not its founder, he is considered the master of the Illuminationist (or, Ishraghi or Ishraqi) school of Philosophy, a seminal figure who synthesized the many tracts of the Islamic Golden Age philosophies into what he called the Transcendent Theosophy or al-hikmah al-muta’āliyah.
Mulla Sadra brought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with the nature of reality" and created "a major transition from essentialism to existentialism" in Islamic philosophy,[8] although his existentialism should not be too readily compared to Western existentialism. His was a question of existentialist cosmology as it pertained to God, and thus differs considerably from the individual, moral, and/or social, questions at the heart of Russian, French, German, or American Existentialism.
Mulla Sadra's philosophy ambitiously synthesized Avicennism, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and the theology of the Sunni Ash'ari school of Kalam into the framework of Twelver Shi'ism.
His main work is The Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Journeys of the Intellect, or simply Four Journeys, In which he attempted to reach Sufism and prove the idea of Unity of Existence by offering a new intake and perspective on Peripatetic philosophy that was offered by Alpharabius and Avicenna in the Islamic world.
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A reference to the work of Mulla Sadra, or Sadr ad-Din Muhammad Shirazi (ca. 1571-1640), a Persian philosopher and theologian.