Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1571–1640), commonly known as Molla Sadra, was a Persian Islamic philosopher, theologian, and mystic who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century. The foremost exemplar of the Illuminationist, or Eshraqi, school of philosopher-mystics, Molla Sadra is commonly regarded by Iranians as the greatest philosopher that Iran has produced and is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world of the last four centuries. His school of philosophy is called Transcendent Theosophy. Molla Sadra's philosophy and ontology are considered to be as important to Islamic philosophy as the writing of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger became to 20th century Western philosophy. Molla Sadra's original philosophy blended and transformed different sources—Avicennism, Suhrawardī's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn al-Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and Shiite theology—in a more ambitious and resourceful way than previous Islamic philosophers had done. The present manuscript, in Molla Sadra’s own hand, is an assortment of miscellaneous literary and philosophical writings, including some of his own, that he collected over time. It includes a brief item by Mīr Dāmād, Molla Sadra’s renowned teacher, in Mīr Dāmād’s own hand. The work is preserved in the manuscript collections of the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī (1571–1640), commonly known as Molla Sadra, was a Persian Islamic philosopher, theologian, and mystic who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century. The foremost exemplar of the Illuminationist, or Eshraqi, school of philosopher-mystics, Molla Sadra is commonly regarded by Iranians as the greatest philosopher that Iran has produced and is arguably the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world of the last four centuries. His school of philosophy is called Transcendent Theosophy. Molla Sadra's philosophy and ontology are considered to be as important to Islamic philosophy as the writing of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger became to 20th century Western philosophy. Molla Sadra's original philosophy blended and transformed different sources—Avicennism, Suhrawardī's Illuminationist philosophy, Ibn al-Arabi's Sufi metaphysics, and Shiite theology—in a more ambitious and resourceful way than previous Islamic philosophers had done. The present manuscript, in Molla Sadra’s own hand, is an assortment of miscellaneous literary and philosophical writings, including some of his own, that he collected over time. It includes a brief item by Mīr Dāmād, Molla Sadra’s renowned teacher, in Mīr Dāmād’s own hand. The work is preserved in the manuscript collections of the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran.