Sabzawārī

Persian philosopher of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā whose versified Manẓūma with his own Arabic commentary remains a basic textbook of philosophy, and of logic in verse, in the Iranian seminaries.

Life

Hādī Sabzawārī was born in Sabzawār in Khurasan in 1212/1797–98. From the age of ten he studied logic, mathematics, law and philosophy in Mashhad, then spent eight years in Isfahan, where he studied with Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, the leading authority on Mullā Ṣadrā’s works. After teaching in Mashhad for about five years and a pilgrimage to Mecca, followed by a year in Kirman, he settled in Sabzawār, where he taught philosophy (ḥikma) for some forty years. Britannica says that his madrasa drew students from as far as Arabia and India and produced more than a thousand graduates; the Qajar shah Nāṣir al-Dīn visited him and commissioned his Persian Asrār al-ḥikam. He wrote poetry under the pen name Asrār. He died in Sabzawār, in 1289/1872 according to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Britannica gives 1878).

His best-known work is the Manẓūma, a didactic Arabic poem with his own commentary (Sharḥ al-Manẓūma). The TDV describes its philosophical part, Ghurar al-farāʾid, as a versified summary of philosophy in seven sections, from existence in general to the afterlife, read in Iranian madrasas before Mullā Ṣadrā’s al-Asfār al-arbaʿa and al-Ṭūsī’s commentary on the Ishārāt; it also lists, among his shorter works edited by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī, al-Laʾālī al-muntaẓama fī l-manṭiq, a work on logic. Britannica calls the Sharḥ-i Manẓūma ‘a treatise on logic in verse’ that still serves as a basic text for the study of ḥikma in Iran.

Works

• Sharḥ al-Manẓūma (Ghurar al-farāʾid, with his own commentary) شَرْحُ المَنْظُومَةِDidactic Arabic poem on philosophy with the author’s commentary; one of the main philosophy textbooks of the Iranian seminaries.eser
• al-Laʾālī al-muntaẓama fī l-manṭiq اللَّآلِي المُنْتَظَمَةُ فِي المَنْطِقِOn logic; listed by the TDV among his treatises edited by Āshtiyānī.eser
• Asrār al-ḥikam أَسْرَارُ الحِكَمِPersian, in two volumes (philosophy and theology; ritual law), written at the request of Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh.eser

Reception

In the present-day course of the Shīʿī ḥawza, students of philosophy read Sabzawārī’s Sharḥ al-Manẓūma after al-Muẓaffar’s al-Manṭiq and Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s commentary on the Shamsiyya (see ‘Kurdish madrasas and the Shīʿī ḥawza’). The TDV counts his works among the most consulted philosophy books in twentieth-century Iran.