Paul E. Walker looks at this seminally important Ismaili missionary from the tenth century (Islamic fourth century) from a fresh perspective. Al-Sijistani and his thought are presented in this book much as he might have done himself if he had written for a more modern audience. Though long neglected by historians of Islamic philosophy, al-Sijistani’s recently recovered writings prove that he deserves careful consideration both as a philosopher and as an exponent of the intellectual understanding of Islam.
The old problem of the meaning of science and religion and their interactions as reflected in the thought of an Ismaili author from a remote period is now interpreted within a framework that provides broad coherence to disparate ideas and obscure doctrines which survive only piecemeal from medieval Arabic books and treatises. Here, al-Sijistani’s contributions appear all the more cogent and impressive, despite the distance of the thousand years that separate him from us.
Preface
1. The Shiite Renaissance: Religion and Science in the Early Ismaili Mission
The Renaissance Century
The Intellectual Dimension
The Intellectual Mission and its Missionaries
The Confrontation with Philosophy
The Personnel of the Renaissance
The School of KhurasanThe northeastern region of early Islamic Persia, immediately south of Transoxania and west of Badakhshan. More; Two Renaissance Men
The Literature of Ideas
2. The Sources of Truth
The Quest for Certainty
The Wellsprings of Truth
Intellect and the taʾyīd
The soul and its tarkīb
The Speaking-prophet and his taʾlif
The Sacred Interpretation and its Founder
3. The Ladder of Salvation
The Excellence of Humans
History and Hierarchy
The Messiah
Paradise
4. The Ultimate Recourse in God and the tawḥīdThe Oneness of God or belief in Divine Unity, one of the fundamental tenets of Islam.
The Problem of tawḥīd
Intellectual Anthropomorphism
Creation
A Language for Theology
Al-Sijistānī’s Contribution
Appendix: The Study of al-Sijistānī and His Works. A Brief History and Guide
Select Bibliography
Index
Paul E. Walker is an historian of ideas, currently affiliated with the University of Chicago. He has published numerous books on Fatimid history and Ismaili thought in its formative period, including Early Philosophical Shiism, An Ismaili Heresiography with Wilferd Madelung, The Wellsprings of Wisdom and Abū Yaʿqub al-Sijistānī: Intellectual Missionary (I.B. Tauris).