Wednesday, July 29th, marked the 818th anniversary of the martyrdom of Shaykh’ul-Ishraq (the Master of Illumination) Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Amirak Abu’l-Futuh Suhrawardi-i-Shahid (the martyred). After Avicenna (Abu Ali Sina) Suhrawardi stands as one of Iran’s greatest spiritual masters and philosopher-sages who in the 12th century of the CE was the acclaimed reviver of the Wisdom of Khosravani Sages of Ancient Iran and thus the founder of the Illuminationist (ishraqi) school of theosophy (philosophical mysticism, hikmat) in the Islamic world.
The reasons for his demise had to do with the jealousy and fanaticism of the Islamic jurists of Aleppo. Suhrawardi had been befriended by the son of Saladdin and the governor of Aleppo, Malik Zahir Shah, who had also become his disciple. In disputes and arguments between these Islamic jurists and himself, Suhrawardi had boldly articulated his doctrine and bested these fanatical jurists every time. It is even asserted that Suhrawardi had posited that God could create a prophet after Muhammad at any time He wished, thus contradicting the orthodox Islamic doctrine of Muhammad as the seal of prophecy. His biographer, Shahrazuri, even asserts that Suhrawardi himself had even been acclaimed as rasul’Llah (the Messenger of God), i.e. one of Muhammad’s epithets, by a few of his disciples. Given such a situation the fanatical Islamic jurists complained to Saladdin (who was busy fighting the Frankish armies) about Suhrawardi’s heretical ideas and their influence on his son Malik Zahir Shah. Saladdin ordered Suhrawardi’s execution, but Malik Zahir at first refused his father’s demands. When Saladdin finally threatened to march his armies on to Aleppo and expel Malik Zahir Shah by force and execute the order himself, Malik Zahir Shah had no choice but to comply, so after a short imprisonment Suhrawardi was executed on July 29th 1191 CE.
The guiding motif dominating Suhrawardi’s theosophy is the restoration of the wisdom of the ancient Iranians, the reclaiming of Xvarnah (Farr-i-Kiyani), i.e. the Light of Glory. Suhrawardi’s theosophy is therefore a Solar philosophy and an attempt at bringing together Zoroastrianism, Hermeticism, Neopythagoreanism, and late Neoplatonism under the genral rubric of interpreting the Platonic theory of Forms/ideas under the rubric of an angelology. As such he saw himself as heir to a philosophia perennis (the javidan khirad, in his own words) begun with the Egyptian God-Sage Hermes Trismegistus which culminated in the Prophet Zarathushtra in Ancient Iran and Plato in Greece extending all the way to the Sufis of his time.
Suhrawardi’s works constitute a series of cycles culminating in his magnum opus, the Hikmat al-Ishraq (The Wisdom of Illumination).
The paramount leitmotiff of Suhrawardi’s thought is ishraq (Arabic for illumination). The lexical meaning of the word literally denotes the illumination of the sun when it rises at dawn in the east (the Aurora Consurgens). “Transposed to the spiritual plane, it means a type of knowledge which is the very Orient of knowledge,” (Corbin, 1978)) since it orients its subject toward the cosmic north of being (Mt. Qaf or na-koja-abad [nowheresville, viz. the placeless utopia of the illuminated soul]). Suhrwardi’s doctrine, says Corbin,
…deals with a philosophy that is Oriental because it is illuminative and illuminative because it is Oriental. Between these two terms there is reciprocity rather than opposition.
“Oriental” knowledge is essentially a direct, instantaneous and intuitive perception of things as they really are. Suhrawardi’s epistemology rests as such upon this presential (hoduri) knowing of things, for instance of oneself during the acme of introspection, as opposed to the representational (suri) kind touted by the Peripatetics.
The Oriental nature of Suhrawardi’s doctrine presupposes an ontological framework based entirely upon light. Light (nur) is the most basic and self-evident substance (actually a meta-substance) underlying existence, all reality is nothing but light in varying degrees of intensity. “In fact, all things are made evident by it and should be identified in reference to it.” God, whose first attribute is unity, is pure light. He is described as the Light-of-lights (nur al-anwar) by which all things in existence subsist:
The Essence of the First Absolute Light, God, gives constant illumination, whereby it is manifested and it brings all things into existence, giving life to them by its rays. Everything in theworld is derived from the Light of His essence and all beauty and perfection are the gift of His bounty, and to attain fully to this illumination is salvation.
All beings share in the Divine light, but their reality depends to large extent on how close in proximity they come to it: the closer they are, the more real; the further, less real. Light, therefore, is existence and darkness (zolma), non-existence. This was to prove a novel resolution to the nagging dualism in orthodox Zoroastrian doctrine that kept the poles of light and darkness as valid logical categories, but resolved the dilemma in favor of the absolute reality of Light and the absolute opacity and unreality of darkness. It has been commented that Suhrawardi’s approach to the Light/darkness dichotomy of Zoroastrian cosmology means that Ahriman (the personfication or individuation of darkness) is already-always subdued by Ohrmazd/Ahura Mazda and His Amerta Spentai (the Holy Immortals).
In the sixteenth century a group of Persian Zoroastrians from Istakhr fleeing Safavid persecution to the safety of Emperor Akbar’s Moghul India claimed Suhrawardi’s legacy as their own and founded the Sepasi school (i.e. the first non-Islamic Neo-Zoroastrian Sufi Order) under the leadership of mobad (priest) and dastur Farzaneh Azar Kayvan. This Sepasi school has left us their Hermetic and Neoplatonic Zoroastrian texts where they re-interpret motifs of ancient Iranian history and the narratives of the Shahnameh based on the categories of Suhrawardi’s Illuminationist philosophical doctrine. Such works include the famous Dabestan-i-Mazahib (the School of Sects), the Dasatir and the Sharestan-i-Chahar Chaman. Such metaphysical and esoteric readings and novel reinterpretations of the narratives of Ferdowsi can also be found in Suhrawardi himself, especially in his Partov-Nameh, Alvah-i-Imadi and Yazdan Shenakht.
On this 818th anniversay of Suhrawardi’s martydom, may the spirit of the Master of Illumination be soaring in the heights of Jabarut and his soul in luminous peace under the angelic lights of Malakut! Amen.
