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  • Opposition to Philosophy in Safavid Iran: Mulla Muḥammad-Ṭāhir Qummī's Ḥikmat al-ʿĀrifīn ed. by Ata Anzali & S. M. Hadi Gerami
  • Brian Welter
Opposition to Philosophy in Safavid Iran: Mulla Muḥammad-Ṭāhir Qummī's Ḥikmat al-ʿĀrifīn, (English and Arabic Edition), ed. Ata Anzali & S. M. Hadi Gerami, 2018. Leiden / Boston: Brille, 458 pp., £184.38. ISBN: 9-789-00434-564-5 (hbk).

Modern accounts of the religious history of the Safavid era are rife with misunderstandings, at least according to two writers. Anzali and Gerami's persuasive and informative Introduction to Qummī's Ḥikmat al-ʿĀrifīn (which appears in Farsi) provides a nuanced background to the Safavid era. They challenge widespread assumptions that this era was anti-philosophical and that 'religious fanaticism rose and eventually triumphed over the rational sciences and / or Sufism' (1). They do not deny that many thinkers strove to pull Shi'a Islam in what was considered a purer direction based on the Imams and the Shi'a hadiths. However, they affirm philosophy's stature at this time. Even many religious scholars taught philosophy. In fact, the authors portray philosophers as being a driving force in the madrasas.

Sufism's treatment in Safavid Iran is also misunderstood. Did the drive (by some) for purity challenge the Sufi orders' teachings? In fact, not so much according to the authors. 'Instead, important aspects of the social functions and intellectual components of Sufism were adopted by Twelver religious scholars' (2). Sufism's worldview became a part of the Safavid Shi'a religious experience, even while social changes marginalized Sufism institutionally.

Readers also get a solid sense of Qummī, who was born in the late sixteenth century and was 'an avowed Akhbārī scholar' (16). Unfortunately, the authors fail to define Akhbārism's origins, tenets, and main champions. Qummī is nevertheless presented within the Safavid social and religious landscape, with readers getting a sense of how aspects of his personality and scholarly style impacted his project. He suffered from retaliation for his 'confrontational style of criticizing his opponents' and for criticizing the Shah for drinking (18). He took on the philosophers, Sufis, and mystics as well, including Mullā Sadrā, whose teachings he considered faulty owing to the influence of Ibn ʿArabī. Readers without [End Page 521] a strong background in the history of Islamic spirituality and thinking will find this discussion quite challenging at times because of all the references to thinkers and intellectual topics.

The authors, in their nuanced style, point out that Qummī's opposition to philosophers and Sufis did not mean his own religious teaching offered only 'a dry, rigid, literal understanding of sacred texts' (26). This is where the Introduction whets readers' appetites for the Farsi reading to follow, for Qummī 'appears to have been genuinely and deeply interested in a framework for spiritual life based wholly on the Qur'an and the teaching of the imams' (26).

The authors describe Qummī's demanding spiritual life. Yet the issues went beyond the spiritual. Anzali and Gerami highlight the significance of 'Qummī's semantic choices' (29), which form part of the wider semantic shifts in Safavid society that arose due to the elevation of Shi'a Islam to a state religion. Qummī, in other words, played a significant role in the remaking of Persian society at this time. Long-held truths were re-evaluated. The authors in this part provide a glimpse of Akhbarism, though insufficiently: 'Perhaps the most distinctive and radical expression of the central place the infallible imams and their sayings found in the newly-established Safavid sacred nomos during the seventeenth-century' (31). The Akhbaris condemned the Aristotelian philosophers as being unIslamic and sought '"the superior knowledge of the Imams"' (31).

Overall, Anzali and Gerami succeed in preparing the audience for Qummī's Ḥikmat al-ʿĀrifīn by showing what kind of person penned it, and given the social and religious background, the work's purpose. Their aim and tone are corrective, as they prove that much further scholarly work needs to be done on this era, which also underscores why Qummī should be read today. [End Page 522]

Brian Welter
Hsinchu, Taiwan

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