Zanjan, with its ancient cultural and historical background, is the birthplace of many great men and thinkers in Iranian history. Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, known as Sheikh Ishraq, a philosopher and founder of the Ishraq school, is one of the philosophers and thinkers of this land, and in his honor, the 30th July (in Persian: 8th of Mordad) is named Zanjan Day in the Iranian calendar.
Shihāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi (1154–1191) was a Persian philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy. The "light" in his "Philosophy of Illumination" is the source of knowledge. He is referred to by the honorific title Shaikh al-ʿIshraq "Master of Illumination" and Shaikh al-Maqtul "the Murdered Master", in reference to his execution for heresy. Mulla Sadra, the Persian sage of the Safavid era described Suhrawardi as the "Reviver of the Traces of the Pahlavi (Iranian) Sages",and Suhrawardi, in his magnum opus "The Philosophy of Illumination", thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient tradition of Persian wisdom. Suhrawardi provided a new Platonic critique of the peripatetic school of Avicenna that was dominant at his times, and that critique involved the fields of Logic, Physics, Epistemology, Psychology, and Metaphysics. Of Persian stock, Suhrawardi was born in 1154 in Suhraward, a village located between the towns of Zanjan and Bijar Garrus in Iran. He learned wisdom and jurisprudence in the city of Maragheh. His teacher was Majd al-Din Jili who was also Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s teacher. He then went to Iraq and Syria for several years and developed his knowledge while he was there. His life spanned a period of less than forty years during which he produced a series of works that established him as the founder of a new school of philosophy, called "Illuminism" (hikmat al-Ishraq). According to Henry Corbin, Suhrawardi "came later to be called the Master of Illumination (Shaikh-i-Ishraq) because his great aim was the renaissance of ancient Iranian wisdom". which Corbin specifies in various ways as the "project of reviving the philosophy of ancient Persia".In 1186, at the age of thirty-two, he completed his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Illumination. There are several contradictory reports of his death. The most commonly held view is that he was executed sometime between 1191 and 1208 in Aleppo on charges of cultivating Batini teachings and philosophy, by the order of al-Malik al-Zahir, son of Saladin. Other traditions hold that he starved himself to death, others tell that he was suffocated or thrown from the wall of the fortress, then burned by some people.Suhrawardi was a strong defender of Peripatetic philosophy, until he was influenced by those whom he described as those who "have traveled the path of God", like - as noted by Suhrawardi - Plato from the Greek tradition, Hermes (Thoth) from Egypt, and Pythagoras the Phoenician, and also figures in the Persian tradition. His philosophical project aims to revive the lost hikma of east and west. It is also apparent that Suhrawardi was strongly influenced by the Sufi tradition, bearing in mind his mystical spiritual journeys that he considered a necessary prerequisite for understanding his Illuminationist philosophy. Zoroastrianism also appears to have influenced Suhrawardi, as its symbols appear in some of his works.Arising out of peripatetic philosophy as developed by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Suhrawardi's illuminationist philosophy is critical of several of Ibn Sina's positions and radically departs from him in creating a symbolic language (mainly derived from ancient Iranian culture or Farhang-e Khosravani) to give expression to his wisdom (hikma). Suhrawardi taught a complex and profound emanationist cosmology, in which all creation is a successive outflow from the original Supreme Light of Lights (Nur al-Anwar). The fundamental of his philosophy is pure immaterial light, where nothing is manifest, and which unfolds from the Light of Lights in a descending order of ever-diminishing intensity and, through complex interaction, gives rise to a "horizontal" array of lights, similar in conception to Platonic forms, that governs mundane reality. In other words, the universe and all levels of existence are but varying degrees of Light—light and darkness. In his division of bodies, he categorises objects in terms of their reception or non-reception of light.Suhrawardi uses pre-Islamic Iranian gnosis, synthesising it with Greek and Islamic wisdom. The main influence from pre-Islamic Iranian thought on Suhrawardi is in the realm of angelology and cosmology. He believed that the ancient Persians' wisdom was shared by Greek philosophers such as Plato as well as by the Egyptian Hermes and considered his philosophy of illumination a rediscovery of this ancient wisdom. According to Nasr, Suhrawardi provides an important link between the thought of pre-Islamic and post-Islamic Iran and a harmonious synthesis between the two. And Henry Corbin states: "In northwestern Iran, Sohravardi (d. 1191) carried out the great project of reviving the wisdom or theosophy of ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran."Among pre-Islamic Iranian symbols and concepts used by Suhrawardi are: minu (incorporeal world), giti (corporeal world), Surush (messenger, Gabriel), Farvardin (the lower world), gawhar (pure essence), Bahram, Hurakhsh (the Sun), shahriyar (archetype of species), isfahbad (light in the body), Amordad (Zoroastrian angel), Shahrivar (Zoroastrian angel), and the Kiyani Khvarenah. With regards to the pre-Islamic Iranian concept of Khvarenah (glory), Suhrawardi mentions: "Whoever knows philosophy (hikmat) and perseveres in thanking and sanctifying the Light of the Lights, will be endowed with royal glory (kharreh) and with luminous splendor (farreh), and—as we have said elsewhere—divine light will further bestow upon him the cloak of royal power and value. Such a person shall then become the natural ruler of the universe. He shall be given aid from the high heavens, and whatever he commands shall be obeyed; and his dreams and inspirations will reach their uppermost, perfect pinnacle."
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This article was contributed by Mr. Akbar Karimi the international reporter for Arirang Culture Connect and the Founder and Managing Director of the Samte Ganjineye Ghoghnoos Cultural Artistic Institute in Iran. His leadership in preserving and promoting Iranian intangible cultural heritage along with his extensive experience in cultural artistic research and his active participation in international forums such as UNESCO and ICCN enriches his contributions to the global cultural dialogue.