Discovering the Light of Lights.
On July 30, Iran celebrates the day dedicated to Sheikh Shahab al-Din Sohrevardi, one of the greatest thinkers of the 12th century. A mystic and philosopher capable of combining rational rigor with inner enlightenment, he remained long and regrettably unknown in the West.
This 30th July Iran remembers the famous Persian philosopher Shaykh Shahab al-Din Sohrevardi, Also known as Shaykh al-Ishraq (the Master of Illumination). Born in 1154 in Sohrevard, in northwestern Iran, he is one of the most original and fascinating figures of 12th-century Persia.
He spent his youth studying Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence at the great universities of the time, studying between Maragheh and Isfahan, and then traveling throughout Anatolia and Syria. His brilliant mind and penchant for unconventional mysticism attracted the admiration of the governor of Aleppo, the son of the famous sultan Saladin.
Yet, the boldness of his theses, combined with the accusation of heresy leveled by local Orthodox jurists who feared his political and intellectual influence, sealed his tragic fate. Sohrevardi was in fact imprisoned and executed in Aleppo in 1191, at just thirty-seven years old, earning the posthumous title of al-Maqtul (the Killed).
The Foundation of Illuminative Philosophy (Hikmat al-Ishraq)
The greatness of this thinker lies in the foundation of the school of enlightenment philosophy (Hikmat al-Ishraq). It is a grandiose conceptual synthesis that sought to unite the rational rigor of Aristotelian philosophy, mediated by Avicenna, with the mystical intuition of Sufism.
To this, Sohrevardi added a remarkable element: the recovery of the ancient wisdom of pre-Islamic Persia, linked to Zoroastrian symbolism. He conceived the entire universe as a metaphysical hierarchy of pure Light and Darkness, where God is the “Light of Lights” (Nur al-Anwar), the original source from which infinite degrees of angelic and intellectual lights emanate.
For the Master of Enlightenment, true knowledge is not achieved through logical syllogism or academic study alone, but requires an inner purification that allows the soul to receive direct illumination from the spirit. This path of asceticism is beautifully recounted in his treatises and visionary stories (As The Purple Archangel o The rustle of Gabriel's wings), works in which profound philosophical doctrine becomes pure poetry and high literature.
The Bridge Between East and West: The Work of Henry Corbin
Despite his enormous influence on later Iranian philosophy, Suhrevardi remained for a long time a virtually unknown or misunderstood author in the West. The turning point came in the twentieth century, when the French philosopher and orientalist Henry Corbin he rediscovered his work, becoming the main architect of its global diffusion and even contributing to a reevaluation of the thinker within Iran itself.
Corbin devoted decades of his life to translating, critically editing, and commenting on the Master's fundamental texts. Through masterpieces such as Spiritual body and celestial Earth, Corbin not only demonstrated Sohrevardi's theoretical depth, but coined the famous concept of “Imaginal World” (Mundus Imaginalis o Alam al-Mithal) to explain the intermediate dimension postulated by the Persian philosopher. It is an objective and real realm, suspended between the purely intellectual world and the material world of the senses, accessible only through active imagination.
Today, thanks to Corbin's extraordinary work of cultural mediation, the figure of Sohrevardi has transcended the confines of the Islamic world, being rightly recognized internationally as one of the absolute pinnacles of mysticism and spiritual phenomenology.