Reviews of Books 517

Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran Najm al-Dn Mammh

.
ud al-Nayrz and his Writings. By
Reza Pourjavady. pp. xi, 224, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2011.
doi:10.1017/S1356186311000563
Academic research into Muslim intellectual history owes a signicant debt to Henri Corbin (d.
1978) and his circle of students, prominent among them Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), who proved
that the widely-held notion that creative Islamic philosophy had ultimately come to an end with
Averro es (d. 595/1198), and been replaced by only reproductive scholasticism, was incorrect. Ever since
their identication of hitherto uncharted philosophical developments at the Safavid court of Isfahan,
academic researchers have aimed to map all intellectual changes between the twelfth and seventeenth
centuries ce. Given the comparative youth of this subject, it is reasonable that much groundwork
remains to be to be done before scholars can engage in a deeper analysis of the philosophical
and theological contents which dominated the debate during those ve centuries. Although not
necessarily extraordinarily exciting reading, inventories of individual thinkers who have signicantly
contributed to what the late John (Yahya) Cooper has called processes of amalgamation of various
intellectual currents are indispensable. So, studies like those on Ibn al-Mut
.
ahar al-All ama al-H
.
ill
(d. 726/1325) and Ibn Ab Jumh ur al-Ah
.
s a (d. around 906/1501) by Sabine Schmidtke, from 1991
and 2000 respectively, have helped a great deal to obtain a better understanding of the key-thinkers
who contributed to the process but had, thus far, been rather marginalised in academic research.
Comprehensive inventories of their works, along with meticulously compiled lists of available printed
and manuscript copies, have proven to be of great assistance to anyone keen to delve deeper into these
individuals thoughts.
It is in this context that we have to consider the book under review, which emanates from a very
recent PhD dissertation at the Freie Universit at Berlin under the supervision of Sabine Schmidtke.
The author, currently a research assistant at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in
Montreal, has shed some light on the period immediately between the above mentioned al-Ah
.
s a and
the later philosophers in Safavid Iran, commonly subsumed under the rather problematic label School
of Isfahan. Pourjavady positions the Shiraz-based philosopher Najm al-Dn Mah
.
m ud al-Nayrz as
having died, most probably not of natural causes, after 943/1536, and it is especially in his introduction
(pp. 1-44) that he provides a valuable map of the philosophical landscape of Shiraz at the turn of the
Safavid era. This is vital, not least, for a better understanding of al-Nayrzs philosophical stance, as
displayed in Chapters Two (pp. 74105) and Four (pp. 137152). Chapters One and Three appearat
least at rst sightto be more conventional and even technical: while Chapter One (pp. 4573)
sheds light on the biography of the al-Nayrz, Chapter Three (pp. 106136) provides a discussion
of his works, which is complemented by a comprehensive inventory of his works in Appendix One
(pp. 153192) and of works copied by him in Appendix Two (pp. 193195). The remaining two
appendices (pp. 196202) contain the transcript of a teaching permission (ij aza) by the renowned
Shirazi philosopher Ghiy ath al-Dn Dashtak (d. 949/1542) froma Tehran manuscript, and transcripts of
fourteen passages from unpublished Arabic sources that have been quoted throughout the entire book.
Given the so far relative neglect of al-Nayrz in academic reasearch and, coming to that, even of his
named more renowned contemporaries, the author had to work entirely from unpublished manuscript
sources, kept in collections scattered across the globe. This, of course, is praiseworthy as well as a
serious challenge, especially given the usually rather tight timeframe for a PhD. It may therefore be
excusable that the author did not, as he readily acknowledged in his Preface (p. x), consult those
manuscripts held in the Iraqi and Indian collections. However as the latter, as opposed to those in
Iraq, are currently easily accessible, the next step should certainly be to match the Iranian and Turkish
518 Reviews of Books
MSS with the Indian copies. However, because of the highly commendable scrutiny of these original
materials, Chapters Two and Four appear to be the most relevant chapters, as well as, of course, the
inventory of texts that constitutes a useful tool for further research on al-Nayrz and the philosophical
traditions around him.
This unfolding of the philosophical landscape in southern Iran at the turn to the sixteenth century ce,
of which al-Nayrz had only been onealbeit importantpart, is precisely what makes Pourjavadys
study so valuable and indispensable for any further research on the matter. Thus, in Chapter Three
he follows current Iranian scholars in their challenge of Corbins widely perpetuated notion of a
School of Shiraz, by pointing to the existence of (at least) two rivalling circles of philosophers,
one around Jal al al-Dn al-Daw an (d. 908/1502) and the other, to which al-Nayrz also belonged,
around S
.
adr al-Dn Dashtak (killed 903/1498). Pourjavadys meticulous outline of the ve logical
and metaphysical core issues of dispute between these two circles, results in the reader being able to
identify future directions for research. For example, one may pursue the ways in which textual as
well as personal authority is established in learned Muslim circles of early modernity. Herein, the role
and importance of commentaries, which is often used as a core argument in support of the thesis of
the decline of Muslim philosophy after Averro es, will certainly have to play a major role. Also the
highly complex sociological problem of what constitutes a tradition and/or a school of thought
may also be worth addressing by future research. Since the study under review clearly belongs to
the foundational stage of compiling inventories, these questions are well beyond its scope and have
therefore not been addressed by the author. Instead, great care has been taken to position al-Nayrzs
philosophical thought, besides his contribution to the Daw an-Dashtak-dispute, as a thinker very
much engaged in reconciling the strong peripatetic tradition of Avicennism with the popular and
mystically charged illuminationist philosophy of Shih ab al-Dn al-Suhraward (executed 587/1191).
This he does by substantially challenging Suhrawardis, and his epigones, critique of elements of Ibn
Sn as (d. 428/1037) systematic thought.
Overall, this work can, as has been stressed repeatedly, be regarded as a substantial contribution to the
necessary groundwork still to be done on the too long neglected intellectual developments especially
in the Persianate world. It provides a useful, although rather cursory, overview of the philosophical
state-of-affairs around the advent of the Safavids in Persia, as well as a highly benecial inventory of
the writings of one of its major proponents. As such, the book may be regarded rather as a handbook
than a work of deep and stimulating analyses. To consider Pourjavadys work in this way would also
explain, although not justify, why the author has abstained from writing a conclusion in which he
brings together all his thoughts in a systematic manner. A conclusion which points out directions that
future research may take would nonetheless have been highly commendable and its lack is therefore
considered a serious aw in an otherwise solid work.
Jan-Peter Hartung
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. By Stephen Frederick Dale. (New
Approaches to Asian History Series). pp. xiv, 347. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
doi:10.1017/S1356186311000538
West and South Asia, from the Balkans to Bengal, experienced a period of strong political control
and cultural owering that lasted for several centuries under the rule and patronage of three Muslim
dynasties. Each empire, Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal, reached its peak within the sixteenth to
seventeenth centuries. The rulers and central institutions of each have always attracted scholarly