Exiled in the West: The Mystical Narration of Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi's Recital of the Occidental Exile - Softcover

Laleh Bakhtiar; Gholamreza Aavani

9781567446715: Exiled in the West: The Mystical Narration of Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi's Recital of the Occidental Exile

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156744671X ISBN 13: 9781567446715

Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc, 2019

Suhrawardi, born in Sunni Iran (Iran up to the 16th century was Sunni), was a follower of the Shafi i law, died a martyr at the age of thirty-eight in Aleppo in (1191), a victim of the intolerance of the doctors of the Law and of Saladin. Though his life was cut off too soon, he succeeded in carrying out a great design. The result was the theosophy of light (hikmat al-ishraq). In accomplishing this great design, Suhrawardi was conscious of establishing Oriental wisdom or wisdom of the East. One of its essential features is that it makes philosophy and mystical experience inseparable. A philosophy that does not culminate in a metaphysic of ecstasy is vain speculation. A mystical experience that is not grounded on a sound philosophical education is in danger of degenerating and going astray. This element in itself would suffice to place Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi in the same spiritual family. It situates this theosophy on a spiritual plane higher than the rational plane on which the relations between theology and philosophy, belief and knowledge, are ordinarily discussed. The controversy concerning these relations, so characteristic of post medieval Western philosophy, has its sources in the situation briefly analyzed above. Actually, Suhrawardi deals not with a problem but with an imperative of the soul the fusion of philosophy and spirituality.... -Henry Corbin in the Preface. Here, the reader first encounters the text in full as written by Suhrawardi. The words in italics are the Quranic verses, the words of which he uses to express his recital. No break in the flow occurs by this means and if they were not in italics, the reader would think the words were Suhrawardi s alone. The second part contains the translation and commentary followed by a recapitulation.

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