The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia By Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited by Mehdi Amin Razavi. Surrey: Curzon Press, I 996, 375 pp.

Abstract

The Islamic fnlellectual Tradition in Persia is an edited collection of essays by Seyyed
Hossein Nasr, the Iranian metaphysician and ontolgist, on Muslim philosophers and the
intimate relationship between Persian culture and its philosophical schools. The 24 essays
were written over a period of four decades and scattered among numerous journals and collections.
The book is divided into six parts: Islamic thought and Persian culture; early
Islamic philosophy; the works of al Suhrawardj; philosophers, poets, and scientists; later
Islamic philosophy; and Islamic thought in modem Iran. The essays highlight Nasr's prolific
and learned scholarship on the development of Islamic philosophy and illuminate
many aspects of the rich philosophical traditions in Islamic Persia and its history.
Throughout this unique collection of articles, Nasr covers the lives and works of
more than fifteen prominent thinkers and scientists who made significant contributions to
the evolution of the Islamic intellectual traditions in the Muslim world in general and in
Islamic Persia in particular. Among those covered are al Farabi, lbn Sina, al BirOni, N????ir
Khusraw, Fakhr al Din al Razi, al Suhrawardi, Quib al Din Shirazi, $adr al Din Shiriizi,
and Mullii HadT Sabzawari. Nasr presents their ideas through their actual works and
informs readers of their conditions and life stories in an easy and enjoyable sty le, which
allows the reader to learn about their ideas and conditions through the lives of these great
philosophers. Their lives and works cover a wide spectrum of the Muslim mind and bear
a noticeable interplay of ideas from different fields, ideas that can neither be separated
from their conditions nor confined to one field.
The book touches on many subjects of pure academic interest and provides an insight
into Persian culture. Although the essays are useful in researching the intellectual history
of Muslim philosophers in the largest sense, no one essay researches the development of
specific ideas or aspects of the Persian philosophers. Nasr 's essays describe al Fara bi as
the "second teacher" in philosophy and elaborates on lbn Sina's contributions to logic and
language, metaphysics and cosmology, medicine pharmacology, and psychology. Some
of their works cover classical debates on being and existence, what is learned and what is
realized, discursive knowledge and the insights of illumination, and concepts of unity and ...