Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

Qutb al-Din Shirazi’s Role in the Conception and Transformation of the Ishraqi Philosophy This study is composed of an introduction and four sections. The introduction will investigate the reasons that underlie the composition of commentaries on texts of different fields, talking in general terms of the tradition of writing commentaries in Islamic philosophy. The first section will focus on Qutb al-Din Shirazi’s (d. 710/1311) explanations and commentaries as regards the Ishraqi philosophy that rose in the post-Ibn Sinian period with a claim of being an overall philosophical system that is new and alternative to the Mashshai philosophy, i.e., Muslim Neo-Platonist Aristotelianism. It will also discuss Shirazi’s approach to Suhrawardi (d. 587/1191), the founder of the Ishraqi philosophy and the writer of its main text, the Ḥikmat al-Ishraq. The second section will examine Shirazi’s analysis and exposition of some important Ihsraqi terms. The third section will focus on Shirazi’s explanations of main Ishraqi principles and teachings. The fourth section unpacks Shirazi’s interpretation of the significance of the concept “light” for the general Ishraqi system. The conclusion part will provide a general assessment of the defining role Shirazi played in giving a direction and character to the Ishraqi tradition through his interpretation and commentary