Philosopher, astronomer and physician of the Ilkhanid period, a pupil of al-Kātibī and al-Ṭūsī and one of the teachers of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.
Life
Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī was born in Shiraz in 634/1236, the son of the eye physician Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Masʿūd al-Kāzarūnī, from whom he received his first lessons in religion, medicine and Sufism; at fourteen he took over his father’s post at the Muẓaffarī hospital of Shiraz. Around 1260 he went to Maragha, where he studied astronomy and philosophy with Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī and worked at the observatory. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he studied logic and philosophy with Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī in Khurasan; Tony Street adds that shortly before al-Kātibī’s death the two left Maragha together to found a school at Juwayn, near Nishapur.
He then travelled widely: Isfahan, Baghdad and Konya (around 1270), where he met Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī and attended the lessons of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī. The vizier Sulaymān Parwāna made him judge of Sivas, where he taught at the Gök Medrese, and then of Malatya. In 1282 he went to Egypt as envoy of the Ilkhan Aḥmad Tegüder to the Mamluk sultan Qalāwūn. He spent time in Damascus, settled in Tabriz and died there in 710/1311; at his request he was buried in the Charandāb cemetery next to al-Bayḍāwī.
His works span philosophy, medicine and the mathematical sciences: the Persian encyclopaedia Durrat al-tāj (705/1305), covering logic, philosophy, natural sciences, mathematics and theology; a commentary on al-Suhrawardī’s Ḥikmat al-ishrāq; the astronomical works Nihāyat al-idrāk (680/1281) and al-Tuḥfa al-shāhiyya; and commentaries on Ibn al-Ḥājib’s handbook of legal theory and on al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ. He did not write on the Shamsiyya.
For the Shamsiyya he matters as a link. He was one of al-Kātibī’s best-known students, with al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, and, according to Street and to the TDV article on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī, both he and al-Ḥillī a hand in training al-Rāzī, who wrote the classic commentary on his teacher’s teacher’s book. The TDV’s own article on al-Shīrāzī names other students (among them Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī) but not al-Rāzī. It was also al-Shīrāzī, according to the TDV, who advised al-Rāzī to turn his planned gloss on the commentaries of the Ishārāt into the independent ‘adjudication’ al-Muḥākamāt.
Uncertain or disputed
- Where he studied with al-Kātibī: in Khurasan (TDV) or at Maragha and then Juwayn (Street).
- That he taught Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī is stated by Street and by the TDV article on al-Rāzī, but not in the TDV article on al-Shīrāzī. The Shīʿī author al-Khwānsārī, as reported by the TDV, distinguishes the Sunni Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī from the (in his view Imāmī) Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī.
Works
- Durrat al-tāj li-ghurrat al-Dubbāj دُرَّةُ التَّاجِPersian encyclopaedia of philosophy and the sciences, including logic (705/1305).eser
- Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ishrāq شَرْحُ حِكْمَةِ الإِشْرَاقِCommentary on al-Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination.şerh
- Nihāyat al-idrāk fī dirāyat al-aflāk نِهَايَةُ الإِدْرَاكِ فِي دِرَايَةِ الأَفْلَاكِAstronomy; completed in Sivas in 680/1281.eser
Reception
The Ottoman curriculum list of the Kevâkib-i sebʿa (1741) names ‘Quṭb al-Dīn-i Shīrāzī’ for the commentary on the Shamsiyya, but the glosses it pairs with it are those on Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary; the two Quṭb al-Dīns were easily confused (see ‘The Ottoman medrese’).
Sources (3)