Mahdi Azimi Articles List

List of Articles Mahdi Azimi

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1 - The Purple Philosopher: Life, Thoughts, and Writings of Porphyry
Mehdi ‘Azimi

Porphyry or porphyries (meaning clad in purple) is the name of one of the most prominent exponents of Neo-Platonic Philosophy. Both the philosopher himself and his school exercised an undeniable influence over Islamic philosophy in the past. His doctrine of the five uni More

Porphyry or porphyries (meaning clad in purple) is the name of one of the most prominent exponents of Neo-Platonic Philosophy. Both the philosopher himself and his school exercised an undeniable influence over Islamic philosophy in the past. His doctrine of the five universals can be seen in the preface of all logical books of the Islamic period in a more analytic and extensive fashion. His theory of the union of the intellect and the intelligible was first degraded by Ibn Sina and then accepted and expanded by Mulla Sadra. Becoming God-like as the end of ethics was a doctrine which Porphyry had borrowed from his master Plotinus, and which Muslim thinkers unanimously accepted. Moreover, a taint of Porphyry’s belief in transmigration can be observed in some of the words of Farabi and Ibn Sina. However, both of them rejected the Greeks’ idea of transmigration. Porphyry placed logic at the top of the educational system of the Neo-Platonic School, which influenced Muslim Neo-Platonists’ attention to logic. He believed in the fundamental agreement between Plato, Aristotle, and perennial philosophy, both of which clearly affected Farabi’s ideas in particular. Manuscript profile
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2 - Theorem of Eternal Recurrence in Suhrawardi’s Philosophy and Poincaré’s Physics
Mehdi ‘Azimi

“Eternal recurrence” is an old theorem in the history of philosophy stating that any event in the world will recur in future in a self-similar form an infinite number of times as it has recurred an infinite number of times previously. Suhrawardi discusses this theorem i More

“Eternal recurrence” is an old theorem in the history of philosophy stating that any event in the world will recur in future in a self-similar form an infinite number of times as it has recurred an infinite number of times previously. Suhrawardi discusses this theorem in his Hikmat al-ishraq and al-Mashari‘ wa al-mutarihat and adduces some arguments in order to demonstrate it. In his T‘aliqat written on Qutb al-Din Shirazi’s commentary on Hikmat al-ishraq, Mulla Sadra evaluates Suhrawardi’s argument and deems them unfounded. However, the falsity of the argument does not indicate the falsity of the claim, particularly, because we have Poincaré’s “proposition of recurrence” before us demonstrating that, in any system, the initial states of all component parts of a whole will recur after the passage of a sufficiently long time. This idea necessitates the demonstration of the theorem of “eternal recurrence”. Nevertheless, one must ask how long this sufficiently “long time” is. Based on the calculations of Chandrasekhar, for a spherical volume of air with a radius of one centimeter at a standard point of temperature and pressure, with one percent of fluctuation in density around the mean, this time is equal to 3 trillion years! Therefore, the time of the recurrence of the whole universe is so long that the life of its components will come to an end long before that time. This will make the recurrence of the universe impossible. Therefore, this paper concludes that the theorem of “eternal recurrence”, which Suhrawardi also believes in, is essentially possible but practically impossible. Manuscript profile
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3 - Athiri’s Heritage: Life and Works
Mehdi ‘Azimi

Athir al-Din Mufaddal Ibn Umar Abhari (590-663 AH) is a well-known Iranian mutikallim, philosophers, logician, mathematician, and astronomer. So far, Recher, Qanawati, Muwahhid, and Sariogulu have provided some heterogeneous reports of his life and works. In this paper, More

Athir al-Din Mufaddal Ibn Umar Abhari (590-663 AH) is a well-known Iranian mutikallim, philosophers, logician, mathematician, and astronomer. So far, Recher, Qanawati, Muwahhid, and Sariogulu have provided some heterogeneous reports of his life and works. In this paper, through criticizing previous studies and based on first-hand historical sources, the writer has tried to give a comprehensive and well-documented report of his life and works. Some of the new findings of this report are as follows: 1) the timeline of Abhari’s life, 2) a bibliography of his works (a list of his manuscripts and printed works), 3) a complete list of his masters, students, and contemporary thinkers, 4) critiques of Recher, Qanawati, and Sariogulu claiming that Abhari’s hometown was Mosul, 5) Sariogulu’s critique stating that Abhari was said to be from Samarqand because either he or his ancestors were originally from this city, and Muwahhid’s critique stating that old sources do not contain any information in this regard, 6) Sariogulu’s critique reporting that Abhari went to primary school in Mosul, 7) ‘Asqalani’s critique and, following it, the critiques of Sarkis, Kordali, and Mudarres Razawi, all claiming that Abhari found shelter with Abu al-fada’ in Hamat, and 8) A critique declaring that Abhari passed away in Mosul. Manuscript profile

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List of Articles Mahdi Azimi