Mulla Sadra, The Elixir of the Gnostics A Parallel English-Arabic Text by William Chittick, trans. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2003. 192 pages.)

Abstract

Professor Chittick undertook the translation from Arabic of the Iksir al-
`Arifin (Elixir of the Gnostics) at the bequest of the Sadra Islamic
Philosophy Research Institute. No doubt, one of the institute’s reasons for
making this request is because Chittick is currently one of North
America’s most formidable scholars of the Islamic “sapiental” tradition,
the stream of thought that combined both falsafah (philosophy) and
tasawwuf (Sufism). He has to his credit some of the best English translations
of medieval Arabic and Persian texts. Chittick’s wealth of knowledge
comes out in the extensive endnotes, running 28 pages, which not
only help explain obscure passages and terms, but also trace many of the
ideas to their sources.
The Elixir is a unique work of Sadra’s in that it is, as Chittick notes in
the introduction, something of a translation of Kashani’s (d. 1213-14)
Persian Jawidan-nama (Book of the Everlasting). One could argue that the
Everlasting serves simply as a template for Sadra’s work, since he removes 40 percent of the text and increases it by half the length of the
original. In that regard, most of the Elixir is original. However, the basic
structure of the Everlasting, four parts divided into 35 chapters, remains.
The four parts deal with the classification of the various sciences, the
nature of the soul, and cosmic beginnings and ends. Within the rubric of
these four broad categories, a range of subjects are covered: from time,
space, Adam, and Satan, to birth, death, and the resurrection. The
Everlasting, it is worth noting, was also translated into English by Chittick
just 2 years before the publishing of this work, in the Heart of Islamic
Philosophy (pp. 194-233), another factor rendering him a most suitable
translator for this text ...