Mr Dmd in India: Islamic Philosophical

Traditions and the Problem of Creation

Sajjad H. Rizvi
University of Exeter

The history of Islamic philosophy and theology in India has yet to be properly written. The
learned culture of the high Mughal period has increasingly attracted attention, with a focus
on the role of the Dars-i Nim curriculum, devised in the eighteenth century to produce
cohorts of capable imperial administrators, and on the intellectual life of Delhi, Lucknow,
and the Doab in the middle to late Mughal period. 1 Some have identiied the signiicant role
of Mr Fatullh Shrz (d. 997/1589), a philosopher trained in the school of Shrz, a student of the philosopher and sometime adr of the afavid empire, Mr Ghiythuddn Manr
Dashtak (d. 949/1542), and emigrant to the court of Akbar (r. 15561605). 2 Numerous
works, both academic and popular, stress his role as the foremost philosopher and scientist of
his time in the Persianate world, and attribute to him a series of important technological innovations and reforms of the administration, including the adoption of Persian as the oicial
1. Jamal Malik, Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien: Entwicklungsgeschichte und Tendenzen am Beispiel
von Lucknow (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Francis Robinson, The Ulama of Farangi-Mahall and Islamic Culture in South
Asia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Farhan Nizami, Madrasahs, Scholars, and Saints: Muslim Responses to the
British Presence in Delhi and the Upper Doab, 18031857, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Oxford, 1983; Margrit Pernau, ed.,
The Delhi College: Traditional Elites, the Colonial State, and Education before 1857 (New Delhi: Oxford Univ.
Press, 2006); Mushirul Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism: Qasbas in Colonial Awadh (New Delhi: Oxford Univ.
Press, 2004); idem, A Moral Reckoning: Muslim Intellectuals in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (New Delhi: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2005). On the Dars-i Nim itself, see Malik, Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien, 52235; cf.
Francis Robinson, Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems, Journal of Islamic
Studies 8 (1997): 15256; idem, The Ulama of Farangi Mahall, 4850, 24851; Qamaruddn, Hindustn k dn
darsghn (New Delhi: Hamdard Education Society, 1996), 34552; on pedagogical disciplines, texts, and authors,
see Muft Ri Anr, Bn-yi dars-i nim ustd al-hind Mull Nimuddn Muammad Farang-Maall (Aligarh:
Aligarh Muslim Univ., 1973), 25765; Jaml Amad, arakat al-talf bi-l-lugha al-arabiyya f l-iqlm al-shiml
al-hind (Karachi: Jmiat al-Dirst al-Islmiyya, n.d.), 1722; Alf al-Ramn Qidw, Qiym-i nim-i talm
(Lucknow: Nim Press, 1924); Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 18601900 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), 1645; Muhammad Umar, Islam in Northern India in the Eighteenth Century
(Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), 259305; abburramn Mahir Khayrbd, Tadhkirat al-muannifn:
Dars-i nimiyya aur dars-i liyya aur tamm arab nibn mn shmil jumla kutub k muannifn k mukammal
tadhkira (n.p: Maktaba-yi Namiyya, n.d.); Muammad anf Gangh, afar al-muailn b-avl-i muannifn,
yan lt-i muannifn-i dars-i nim (Deoband: anf Book Depot, 1996); Akhtar Rh, Tadhkira-yi muannifn-i
dars-i nim (Lahore: Maktaba-yi Ramniyya, 1978).
2. Ramn Al, Tufat al-fual f tarjim al-kumal [Tadhkira-yi ulam-yi Hind] (Lucknow: Nawal
Kishore, 1333/1914), 160; Abd al-Bq Nihvand, Mathir-i Ram, ed. M. Hidyat usayn (Calcutta: The
Asiatic Society, 1910), 2: 550; Sayyid Ghulm Al zd Bilgrm, Mathir-i kirm, ed. M. Lyallpr (Lahore:
Maktaba-yi Iy-yi Ulm-i Sharqiyya, 1971), 226, 22829; Sayyid Abdulayy al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir wabahjat al-masmi wa-l-nawir (Rai Bareilly: Maktabat Dr Araft, 1992), 5: 53944; Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi,
A Socio-Intellectual History of the Isn Ashar Shs in India (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986), 2: 19697;
G. M. D. Sui, Al-Minhj, Being the Evolution of the Curriculum in the Muslim Educational Institutions of India
(Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1941), 5455; M. A. Alvi and A. Rahman, Fath Allah Shirazi: A Sixteenth
Century Indian Scientist (Delhi: National Institute of the Sciences of India, 1968); Sharif Husain Qasimi, Fatullh
rz, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater (New York: dist. by Eisenbrauns, 1982); Malik, Islamische
Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien, 8695; cf. Zubaid Ahmad, The Contribution of Indo-Pakistan to Arabic Literature,
from Ancient Times to 1857 (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1968), 12756.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

language of the Mughal chancellery; he is also regarded as the main conduit for the serious
study of philosophy and theology in India, laying the foundations for the Dars-i Nim
curriculum, which emphasized the study of the intellectual disciplines (ulm aqliyya). It is
common, therefore, for intellectual historians of Islamic thought in India to trace a lineage
from Shrz (and, indeed, from the ishrq Avicennan tradition that he inherited) to the
founder of the Dars-i Nim, Mull Nimuddn Sihlv Farang-Maall (d. 1161/1748). 3
It was in this early Mughal period that Islamic philosophical traditions seriously began to
penetrate Indian scholarly circles. 4
Shrz is praised in the biographical literature by friend and foe; the universal approval
relects his signiicant political status at the court of Akbar. 5 His friend Ab l-Fal wrote:
He was so learned that if all the previous books of philosophy disappeared, he could have laid a
new foundation for knowledge and would not have desired what had preceded. 6

Another contemporary and an oicial historian at court, Khwja Nim al-Dn Amad
Bakhsh (d. 1003/1594), wrote:
He was superior to all the ulema of Persia, Iraq, and India in his knowledge of the scriptural and
intellectual sciences. Among his contemporaries, he had no equal. He was an expert in the occult
sciences including the preparation of talismans and white magic. 7

Shrz did play a critical role in the dissemination of the works and teachings of the
key igures of the philosophical school of Shrz: the Dashtaks and Jalaluddn Davn (d.
908/1502); it is no accident that establishing their work in the curricula of educational institutions accounts for the numerous manuscript copies of their philosophical, logical, and theological works in Indian libraries. 8 But, arguably, his most important legacy was bequeathing
3. al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 6: 39496; Malik, Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien, 8695;
Anr (Bn-yi dars-i nim, 42) presents the following important intellectual lineage for the philosophical curriculum in India: Mull Muammad Nimuddn Sihlv (d. 1161/1748)his father, Mull Qubuddn
Sihlv (d. 1121/1710)Mull Dniyl ChawrsAbd al-Salm Dw (d. 1039/1629)Abd al-Salm Lhr
(d. 1037/1627)Mr Fatullh Shrz (d. 997/1589)Jamluddn Mamd ShrzJalluddn Davn
(d. 1502)Muyuddn KshktrKhwja asan Shh BaqqlSharf Al Jurjn (d. 816/1413)MubrakShh Bukhr (d. 740/1340)Qubuddn Rz Tatn (d. 766/1364). One could continue this lineage to Avicenna
in the following manner: Tatnthe eminent Shiite theologian Allma Ibn Muahhar al-ill (d. 725/1325)his
teacher, the Shiite theologian, philosopher, and scientist Khwja Nar al-Dn Muammad s (d. 672/1274)
Farduddn Dmd Nsbradruddn al-SarakhAfaluddn Umar al-Ghayln (d. after 523/1128)Ab
l-Abbs al-Lawkar (d. after 503/1109)Bahmanyr b. Marzubn (d. 458/1066)Avicenna (d. 428/1037). On
this latter section of the lineage, see Ahmed al-Rahim, Avicennas Immediate Disciples: Their Lives and Works,
in Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy, ed. Tzvi Langermann (Turnhout: Brepols,
2009), 125; idem, The Twelver- Reception of Avicenna in the Mongol Period, in Before and After Avicenna,
ed. David C. Reisman, with Ahmed H. al-Rahim (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 21932.
4. Shrz was one of a number of students of the school of Shrz who found fame and fortune in India. Others included Ab l-Fat Gln (d. 997/1589), Shaykh Amad Thattav (d. 996/1588), Sayyid Inyatullh Shrz
(d. 988/1580), Shaykh Muammad Yazd (d. 998/1588), Mr Murta Sharf (d. 972/1564), and Shaykh Hibatullh
Shrz; see al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 23: 1112, 2627, 22324, 293, 312, 346.
5. Abd al-Qdir b. Malikshh Badyn, Muntakhab al-tavrkh, ed. Amad Al et al. (rpt., Tehran: Anjuman-i
thr va Mafkhir-i Farhang, 1379 sh/2000), 3: 105. Cf. Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, 2: 19697; al-asan,
Nuzhat al-khawir, 23: 22627.
6. Ab l-Fal Allm, Akbarnma (Calcutta: Biblioteca Indica at the Baptist Mission Press, 187387), 3: 401;
cf. Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, 2: 197.
7. Nimuddn Badakhsh, abaqt-i Akbar, ed. Barun De (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 192729), 2: 357.
8. There are very few extant works of Shrz himself. One work that does suggest his introduction into India
of the important cycle of kalm texts around the Tajrd al-itiqd of Naruddn s is shiya al shar jadd
li-l-Tajrd, MS British Library Asian and African Studies (India Oice Delhi Arabic) 961a (forty f. of eighteenthcentury nastalq in the collected tome; as the author is not identiied, the attribution is tentative). The only other
work that I have found is Risla dar javb-i savlt-i ikmiyya va kalmiyya, MS Raza Library (Rampur) 466b

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a curriculum that combined the study of the scriptures, the traditional religious sciences,
and the intellectual sciences, laying the basis for the Dars-i Nim. The eighteenth-century
intellectual Mr Ghulm Al (zd) Bilgrm (d. 1200/1785) claimed that Shrz was the
leading teacher of the intellectual sciences in his time, and his curricular reconciliation of
the traditional and the intellectual (manqlt, maqlt) was his great achievement that he
transmitted to his student Mull Abd al-Salm Lhr (d. 1037/16278), who was also an
eminent Mughal jurist judging cases and teaching in Lahore. 9
Once the taste for philosophical speculation became critical to the Indian (Sunni) madrasa,
it was the twin schools of Mull adr, particularly disseminated through the study of his
Shar al-Hidya, and of Mr Dmd that dominated the intellectual curriculum of the late
Mughal period. This paper is a study of the latter and the debates that arose on the nature of
Gods creative agency, which were inspired by the doctrine of the perpetual incipience of
the cosmos (udth dahr). I will irst examine briely Mr Dmds teaching and give an
overview of his argument. I will then discuss the formation of a school of Yemeni philosophy in India, and, inally, analyze elements of the debate on the argument within the learned
culture of the North Indian towns loosely within the framework of the Dars-i Nim and its
Lucknow and Khayrbd variants.

mr dmd and the argument

Mr Muammad Bqir Dmd Astarbd was an eminent philosopher of the afavid
period, a companion of Shh Abbs I (r. 15871629) and later shaykh al-islm of Ifahn,
involved in the coronation of Shh af in January 1629. 10 Accompanying the shah to the
Shiite shrine cities in Iraq, he died there in 1040/1631 and was buried in the precinct of
the shrine of Al in Najaf. He trained a number of prominent thinkers, including the most
famous philosopher of the afavid period, Mull adr Shrz (d. ca. 1045/1635). However, it was his son-in-law, Sayyid Amad Alaw (d. ca. 1060/1650), and Mull Shams
Gln (d. 1098/1687) who are best known for perpetuating his school of thought, not least
his doctrines on the nature of existence and the thorny problem of the relationship between
being and time, or rather how to reconcile the Neoplatonizing Aristotelian account of the
cosmos that is an instrumental, even logical product of a Principle, an unmoved Mover, with
the Islamic and Quranic account of a personal god who creates volitionally. A proliic, if
somewhat obscure, philosopher, prone to an opaque and rather baroque style of writing, he
was best known for his metaphysical doctrines relating to time and creation, returning to the
topic repeatedly in his works. In particular, he was known for his theory that divine creative
agency is neither temporal in this world nor eternal in the world of immutability, but rather
takes place in an intermediate mode of time and existence known as perpetuity (dahr). This
is the concept of perpetual creation or udth dahr. 11 The theory is expounded in his two
major works. Al-Qabast (Blazing Brands or Qabast aqq al-yaqn f udth al-lam),
(f. 1v35v). Another important manuscript for the Avicennan tradition is MS Raza Library (Rampur) 3476 of
al-Shif of Avicenna which belonged to the Dashtak family and was brought to India by Shrz and later lodged
in the Mughal royal library from which it transferred to Rampur.
9. Bilgrm, Mathir-i kirm, 226, 22829; al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 5: 24344.
10. The best accounts are Al Awjab, Mr Dmd: Bunynguzr-i ikmat-i yamn (Tehran: at, 2004), and
Sayyid Al Msaw-Bihbahn, akm-i Astarbd, Mr Dmd (Tehran: Tehran Univ. Press, 1998).
11. For a more detailed study, see Keven A. Brown, Time, Perpetuity, and Eternity: Mr Dmds Theory of
Perpetual Creation and the Trifold Division of Existence. An Analysis of Kitb al-Qabast: The Book of Blazing
Brands, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 2006; Fazlur Rahman, Mr Dmds Concept of udth
dahr: A Contribution to the Study of the God-World Relationship in Safavid Iran, Journal of Near Eastern Studies
39 (1980): 13951; Sajjad H. Rizvi, Between Time and Eternity: Mr Dmd on Gods Creative Agency, Journal
of Islamic Studies 12 (2006): 15876.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

which remained more popular in Iran, is notoriously obscure in some of its formulations; it
was written in a six-month period at the beginning of 1625. 12 It was extensively commented
upon and glossed by his students Sayyid Amad Alaw, Mull Shams Gln, Muammad
b. Al-Ri qjn, as well as other major philosophers of the afavid and Qjr periods,
such as q usayn Khwnsr (d. 1098/1687), Mull Al Nr (d. 1831), and Mrz Ab
l-asan Jilveh (d. 1896). 13 Al-Ufuq al-mubn (The Clear Horizon) was an earlier, incomplete text, covering the totality of issues within metaphysics, which he abandoned before
1025/1615, but it became a major school text in India and was glossed by members of the
Firang-Maall family as well as the Khayrbd philosophers, as we shall see shortly. 14
Dmds theory represents a conscious middle path between the medieval philosophers
and theologians, an attempt by a thinker to articulate an Islamic philosophy, a prophetically inspired way of wisdom, as the concept of Yemeni philosophy indicated. Theologians in Islam had broadly insisted that the Quranic notion of a creator god was one who
produced the cosmos ex nihilo in time. 15 Inspired by John Philoponuss famous attack on
Proclus (d. 485) and Aristotles defense of eternalism, they have asserted that not only was
the concept of an eternal cosmos coeval with God absurd, it was also heretical; al-Ghazl
(d. 505/1111) in his Tahfut al-falsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers) anathematized
philosophers for believing precisely this. 16 Philoponus (d. ca. 570), as a Christian, was followed by other theologians in using Aristotelian principles to deconstruct the argument for
eternity. 17 His refutation relied on three premises. First, if the existence of something requires
the pre-existence of something else, then the irst thing will not come to be without the prior
existence of the second. This was a major axiom in later Islamic metaphysics and was known
as the rule of subordination (qida fariyya). Second, based on sound Aristotelian science,
an ininite number cannot exist in actuality, nor be traversed in counting, nor be increased.
The medieval rule that actual ininites do not obtain was upheld. Third, something cannot
come into being if its existence requires the pre-existence of an ininite number of other
things, one arising out of the other. From these Aristotelian premises, Philoponus deduced
that the conception of a temporally ininite universe, understood as a successive causal chain,
is impossible. The celestial spheres of Aristotelian theory have diferent periods of revolution, and in any given number of years they undergo diferent numbers of revolutions, some
larger than others. The assumption of their motion having gone on for all eternity leads to
the conclusion that ininity can be increased, even multiplied, which Aristotle, too, held to
be absurd.
12. Msaw-Bihbahn, akm-i Astarbd, 16566.
13. Sayyid Amad Alaw, Shar Kitb al-Qabast, ed. . N. Ifahn (Tehran: ISTAC, 1997), 2627.
14. Abdullh Nrn published a non-critical edition of the text in Iran in 2006. mid Nj Ifahn, who
edited Sayyid Amad Alaws Shar al-Qabast, has prepared a critical edition of al-Ufuq al-mubn, which is in
press. Despite the many manuscripts of the text in India, there is neither a lithograph nor a modern edition of the
text.
15. For a wonderfully creative study of how Islamic intellectual traditions have shifted from an initial Quranic
creator paradigm, see Ian Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1989). The standard reference for the arguments for and
against eternity in medieval Islam is Herbert Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and Existence of God in
Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).
16. Ab mid al-Ghazl, Tahfut al-falsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), ed. and tr. Michael
Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Univ. Press, 2000), 1246.
17. On Philoponuss argument, see Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (London: Duckworth,
1983), 193231; Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul,
1962), 15475.

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Mr Dmds solution is not primarily concerned with this strand of the argument. Inluenced by Avicenna, he was convinced by the argument that God does not create in time since
that leads to a petitio principii; the cause of time must transcend time. Avicenna reduces
the relationship of the cosmos to the world to one of contingency (imkn) dependent on the
Necessary Existent One (wjib al-wujd). Further, he distinguishes three levels of temporality, or rather conscious states that entities possess: zamn, dahr, and sarmad. In al-Talqt,
a late work based on discussions and questions of his close students, Avicenna wrote:
The intellect grasps three types of entities. The irst is in time (zamn) and expressed by when
and describes mutables that have a beginning and an end, although its beginning is not its end
but necessitates it. It is in permanent lux and requires states and renewal of states. The second
is being with time and is called perpetuity (dahr) and it surrounds time. It is the existence of the
heavens with time and time is in that existence because it issues from the motion of the heavens.
It is the relationship of the immutable to the mutable although ones imagination cannot grasp it
because it sees everything in time and thinks that everything is, will be, and waspast,
present, and futureand sees everything as when either in the past or the present or the future.
The third is the being of the immutable with the immutable and is called eternity (sarmad) and
it surrounds perpetuity [. . .]. Perpetuity is a container of time as it surrounds it. Time is a weak
existence as it is in lux and motion. 18

Our linguistic limitations make these notions of temporality rather diicult to grasp, especially as our language makes and represents our experience and our world, which are inexorably tensed. These three degrees of temporality also indicate three increasingly intense modes
of existence. For Avicenna, radical contingents are utterly dependent on the Necessary and
are in a sense somewhat unreal or non-existent. The higher intelligible beings are more real
and ultimately the Necessary is the Real. In simple terms, sensibilia are purely temporal,
intelligibilia are perpetual and share in eternality, and God is eternal. The eternality of the
cosmos is borrowed and a relection of an eternal God and His eternal agency as creator in
the higher world of intelligibles. In efect, Avicenna does not retain the neat tripartite division
and tends to collapse the distinction between eternal and perpetual. 19 Mr Dmd insists on
separating the levels and expresses this hierarchy and how human consciousness conceives
of it in al-Qabast in the following manner:
In existence that obtains, there are three types of containers: (1) the container (wi) of an existence that has extension and is in lux and a non-existence that is continuous and has extension
that belong to mutable entities insofar as they are mutable in time (zamn); (2) container of a
pure existence that is preceded by pure non-existence and that transcends the horizon of extension and non-existence and belongs to immutables insofar as they are immutable while embracing actuality is perpetuity (dahr); (3) container of a pure Real immutable Existence absolutely
devoid of accidentality of change and transcendent above any sense of being preceded by nonexistence, pure and sheer activity, is eternity (sarmad). Just as perpetuity transcends and is more
vast than time, so, too, is eternity higher, more majestic, more holy, and greater than perpetuity. 20

Contingency is therefore deined not by what did not exist at a prior point in time but
rather as being preceded by non-existence. These three levels of temporality lead to three
conceptions of existence (and, indeed, of non-existence). Before Mr Dmd, there was a
18. Ibn Sn, al-Talqt, ed. A. Badaw (Cairo: al-Haya al-Miriyya al-mma li-l-Kitb, 1974), 14142;
cf. Mr Dmd, Kitb al-Qabast, ed. Mehdi Mohaghegh, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Sayyid Al Msaw-Bihbahn
(Tehran: Tehran Univ. Press, 1977), 78.
19. Mr Dmd, Kitb al-Qabast, 32629.
20. Mr Dmd, Kitb al-Qabast, 7.

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basic dichotomy: either the cosmos has a beginning in time, in which case it possesses
temporal incipience (udth zamn), or it is purely preceded by non-existence, and not by
time in which it merely logically succeeds the divine essence, in which case it possesses
udth dht. God as the purely immutable existence only acts at the level of the eternal
and interacts with immutable intellects. He does not intervene in this world of sensibilia nor
does he know the particularity of things in this world; rather, His omniscience is mediated
by an Aristotelian epistemology of essences and universals through which one knows and
recognizes particulars. This absolute alterity of the divine and His inability to intervene
in the mutable and the temporal because He is neither mutable nor temporal posed a major
problem, not least for our understanding of theodicy and the relationship between Gods
knowledge and His agency.
Mr Dmds concept of the cosmos unfolding at the level of perpetuity is thus a compromise intended to save the face of divine agency and divine knowledge. He does not deny
that there are types of contingents that have a beginning in time. But the cosmos and creation
as such have a beginning in perpetuity, not in time nor in the leeting moment extensively
glossed by Avicenna. The contingency and incipience of the world lies at the level of perpetuity, a mode of temporality that is meta-temporal yet not eternal. Just as the theological
doctrine of creation in time was rejected by Mr Dmd, so, too, did he want to avoid the
Avicennan notion of contingency based on the priority of an essential non-existence (sibq
bi-l-adam al-dht). In al-Qabast, which is his most extensive discussion of the problem,
he presents six arguments for perpetual creation. The irst proof is based on three kinds of
creation (udth) and non-existence and the postulation of three modes or containers of
existence or temporality, namely, time, perpetuity, and eternity, which draw on Avicenna.
The second is founded upon an analysis of the relationship between essence and existence in
contingents and Mr Dmds position on the ontological priority of essence and three types
of priority. The third examines types of posteriority. The fourth proof is scriptural corroboration from the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet and the imams. The ifth is based on
the notion of pure, unqualiied natures. The sixth is founded upon the continuities of time,
space, and motion.
Here I will concern myself with the irst proof, based on the twin premises of three types
of creation and the diferent senses of non-existence. 21 Mr Dmds solution is to allow for
contingents in this world to be preceded not by conceptual or essential non-existence but
by a real non-existence (adam ar), which is located at the level of perpetuity (dahr)
and which constitutes a real contradictory for existence. 22 This is a level of ontological
consciousness devoid of extension or change and rather diicult for the mind to grasp, a
point repeatedly made by Mr Dmds opponents. It can only make sense if we accept Mr
Dmds position that essences are ontologically prior (alat al-mhiyya), meaning that
within the conceptual dyads that are contingents composed of existence and essence, it is the
latter that is the prior principle, and the former only obtains once the thing possesses actuality. 23 Mr Dmds student, Sayyid Amad Alaw, explains the point: the everyday notion of
non-existence considers something that is devoid of extension and matter either in this world
or in the supra-lunary world and thus it is a conceptual version that is opposed to existence
found in this world. 24 However, Mr Dmd is concerned with a real and not conceptual type
of non-existence that has neither space nor time and is beyond extension, but his solution
21.
22.
23.
24.

Cf. Brown, Time, Perpetuity, and Eternity, 66149.

Mr Dmd, Kitb al-Qabast, 22026.
Mr Dmd, Taqwm al-mn, ed. Al Awjab (Tehran: Mrth-i Maktb, 1997), 323.
Alaw, Shar al-Qabast, 47273.

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allows one to insist upon the unreality of everything other than the One posited by monism,
yet at the same time to airm true plurality of contingents. Thus, contingents possess within
themselves a temporal beginning as well as a perpetual eternality (al-udth al-zamn wa-lazaliyya al-dahriyya). In this sense, the concept of udth dahr is akin to his student Mull
adrs attempt at resolving the opposition of monism and pluralism through his dynamic
twinned conception of substances in processual motion existing within a singular but graded
hierarchy of existence (araka jawhariyya, tashkk al-wujd). At the end of the argument,
Mr Dmd demonstrates that all things that are contingent (or possible in themselves) are
preceded by a real, contradictory non-existence, and this requires their actualization at the
level of perpetuity and denies the possibility of their existence at the level of eternity which
is unique to God. 25 This is the primary achievement of his school of Yemeni philosophy.

the yemeni philosophy

The school of Mr Dmd was known as the Yemeni philosophy (al-ikma al-yamniyya).
His method involved a presentation of philosophy that existed before him primarily from the
school of Avicenna, which he labels Greek philosophy (ikma yunniyya), and then a critical exposition of the position, replacing it with his improved argument which he described
as Yemeni, based on the famous saying attributed to the Prophet: Faith is Yemeni and
wisdom is Yemeni (al-mn yamn wa-l-ikma yamniyya). 26 He considered all previous
schools of thought (Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophy, Ashar theology, and even
Twelver Shiite theology) to be incomplete and unreliable in their understanding of reality.
His Yemeni position is not a purely ratiocinative one and it extends knowledge and understanding beyond the conines of discourse (bath) and reason to the non-propositional, intuitive (dhawq), immediate, and mystically disclosed (kashf). Often he presents his argument by
stating that he will irst examine the Greek philosophical position and then move on to the
Yemeni one. As his primary concern is with the philosophy of theistic creation, his Yemeni
philosophy is deployed to solve the problems of time and creation.
In Jadhavt va mawqt (Flaming Embers and Epiphanies), a thoughtful contemplation written in Persian (his only major work in that language) of Mosess encounter with the
theophany of the burning bush on Mount Sinai, he describes diferent conceptions and level
of creation:
Causationwhich is a term for emanation, making, and bringing into existencein the
doctrine of those rooted in knowledge (rsikhn ulam) and of the metaphysicians of Greek
and of Yemeni philosophy is of four types: ibd (origination, creatio ex nihilo), ikhtir (production), un (fashioning or creation in the higher intelligible world), and takwn (generation or
creation in the sub-lunar world). 27

Later in the same text, he analyses the Yemeni philosophical understanding of numerical
order and the existence of Platonic numbers as irst-order emanations from the One, an
important element of the argument concerning levels of creation from the One. 28
In one of his most important works on philosophical theology, al-ir al-mustaqm (The
Straight Path)primarily concerned with the problem of creation and, like many others, left
uninishedMr Dmd sets out what he intends to accomplish with the work:

25.
26.
27.
28.

Brown, Time, Perpetuity, and Eternity, 504.

Awjab, Mr Dmd, 97.
Mr Dmd, Jadhavt va mavqt, ed. Al Awjab (Tehran: Mrth-i Maktb, 2001), 99.
Mr Dmd, Jadhavt, 170.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

The one most desirous among creation for his Lord the Self-Suicient, Muammad b.
Muammad known as Bqir Dmd al-usaynmay God make his afterlife goodpresents
to you, O brothers of mysticism, and expounds for you, O brothers of retreat and solitude, a
solution to the confusion caused in you by the mass of teachers attempting to reveal the diicult
relationship between the Eternal and the incipient, and [aims] to ease its diiculties with clear
thought according to the method of Greek philosophy and of Yemeni philosophy, and to investigate the discourse of those expounders and make them wither with irm writing and forthright
exposition. 29

He clearly thought that those who had written before him on the issue of creation and time,
including Avicenna, had failed to convince, and he felt that he could produce a more robust
argument and pin his Yemeni philosophy on the central doctrine of perpetual creation. Later
in the text, before he embarks on the main discussion of the doctrine, he distinguishes three
types of prior non-existence based on Yemeni philosophy:
According to what we have acquired from the mature Yemeni philosophy ripened by the faculty
of the intellect, obtained through demonstrative syllogisms and divine inspirations, it appears
that incipience has three possible meanings: The irst of them is the priority of the existence of a
thing by essential non-existence and this is called, according to the philosophers, essential creation (udth dht) [. . .]. The second of them is the priority of a thing by its non-existence in
perpetuity and eternity that is atemporal such that the thing is non-existent in a real sense through
pure non-existence which is not qualiied by continuity and its opposite. It then moves from this
pure non-existence to existence and would appear to be most appropriately termed [incipience],
that is, perpetual creation (udth dahr). The third of them is the priority of the existence of the
thing by its non-existence in time so that its existence is preceded by an element of time, and
this is called by the theologians temporal creation (udth zamn). 30

The very notion of perpetual creation is directly related to his school of Yemeni philosophy. In al-Ufuq al-mubn, the text that was so popular in India, he begins by saying that the
work on the nature of the metaphysics of theistic creation is the result of what came to him
from matured Yemeni philosophy and the pure, ecstatic philosophy of faith. 31
The irst person to take up his school systematically in India and to engage fully and critically with the theory of perpetual creation was the leading philosopher of the Mughal period,
Mull Mamd Jawnpr, to whom I now turn.

mamd jawnpr and philosophy in shrz-i hind

Following upon the legacy of Mr Fatullh Shrz, Jawnpr in the Gangetic plain in
North India became an intellectual center in the seventeenth century and was famously
described as Shrz-i Hind by the emperor Shhjahn (r. 16271658). 32 The key igure in this
process was Mamd b. Muammad Frq, who was born in Vlidpr in district Aamgarh
in Raman 1015/1603. 33 A child prodigy, by the age of seventeen he had mastered the
intellectual sciences with his maternal grandfather Shaykh Shh Muammad (d. 1032/1623)
29. Mr Dmd, al-ir al-mustaqm f rab al-dith wa-l-qadm, ed. Al Awjab (Tehran: Mrth-i Maktb,
2002), 3.
30. Mr Dmd, al-ir al-mustaqm, 195.
31. Mr Dmd, Muannaft II: al-Ufuq al-mubn, ed. Abdullh Nrn (Tehran: Anjuman-i thr va
Mafkhir-i Farhang, 2006), 5.
32. Bilgrm, Mathir-i kirm, 12; Haiz A. Ghafar Khan, India, in History of Islamic Philosophy, vol. 1,
ed. S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman (London: Routledge, 1996), 1059; Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism, 24.
33. Ghulm abb Subn, 101 Ulam-yi Pkistn o Hind (Lahore: Talqt, 2002), 62227; Sayyid Ghulm
Al zd Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn f thr Hindustn, ed. M. Fal al-Ramn Nadw (Aligarh: Institute of

Rizvi: Mr Dmd in India

17

and a renowned philosopher in Jawnpr, Shaykh Muammad Afal Radawl (d. 1062/1652),
and was already teaching philosophy by twenty. 34 Bilgrm describes him as the unique and
probably greatest of the ulema of the east (of Delhi) and as the best to combine the methods
of the Illuminationists (ishrqiyyn) and the Peripatetics (mashshiyyn). 35
Jawnpr was allegedly the student of Mr Findirisk (d. 1050/1640), the itinerant savant
who spent most of his life in India. At the latters behest, Jawnpr apparently stopped in
Ifahn on his way to the ajj to study with Mr Dmd and there imbibed the ikma
yamniyyahis main work, al-Shams al-bzigha, is inluenced by al-Ufuq al-mubn. 36
Bilgrm stresses that al-Shams is a work in the tradition of ikma yamniyya. 37 Sources particularly note the disagreement on the question of creation, udth dahr; in fact, Bilgrm,
among others, replicates the whole critique of Jawnpr, to which I will return later. 38
In order to promote the new capital of Shhjahnbd as an intellectual and imperial center, Shhjahn collected around himself a coterie of intellectual igures, including Miyn Mr
(d. 1045/1635), the famous Sui from Lahore, the philosopher and theologian Abd al-akm
Siylkt (d. 1067/1656), and Mamd Jawnpr. 39 The latter was invited to build a new
observatory in Delhi by the courtier af Khn. 40 However, as Shhjahn was soon distracted by matters of statein particular the Balkh campaign in the west against the Uzbeks
in 164548 for recovery of the Mughals ancestral homelandsJawnpr returned to his
hometown where he established a seminary, Madrasa-yi Mamdiyya, which specialized
in the study of the intellectual sciences. 41 There he designed a school text for the study and
dissemination of philosophy entitled al-ikma al-bligha, on which he wrote his own commentary al-Shams al-bzigha. 42 Although the text was intended to be a comprehensive encyclopedia much akin to al-Hidya of al-Abhar and its famous commentary by Mull adr
comprising a section on logic, physics, and metaphysics, it was only the physics section that
was ever completed. It is, in fact, one of the peculiarities of the intellectual sciences in India

Islamic Studies, Aligarh Muslim Univ., 1972), 2: 14270; al-asan (Nuzhat al-khawir, 5: 42931) mentions a
birth year of 993 a.h.; GAL, 2: 554, S II: 621.
34. See al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 5: 359; Al, Tadhkira-yi ulam-yi Hind, 417; Malik, Islamische
Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien, 9899.
35. Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn, 2: 142.
36. Al Awjab (ikmat-i yamn dar Hind, yna-yi mrth 32 [2006]: 84), Robinson (Ottomans-SafavidsMughals, 159), and Khan (India, 1065) cite this but do not provide any source.
37. Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn, 2: 145.
38. Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn, 2: 14562.
39. Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn, 1: 17072. Siylkt is famed for his commentary on three major works of
philosophical theology: the glosses of Amad al-Khayl (d. 870/1465) and Jalluddn al-Dawn (d. 907/1501) on
the creed of Najmuddn Umar al-Nasaf (d. 537/1142); Shar al-Mawqif of al-Jurjn (d. 816/1413); and awli
al-anwr min mali al-anr of al-Bayw (d. 685/1286). He also wrote a gloss on the philosophical commentary
of Mr usayn Maybud on al-Hidya of al-Abhar. See al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 5: 22931; GAL, 2: 550.
40. As noted in the famous account of Jawnprs student Muammad diq Ifahn ub-i diq, f. 521, and
reported in al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, and Bilgrm, Subat al-marjn, 2: 144.
41. For discussions on the Balkh campaign and its failures, see Jos Gommans, Mughal Warfare (London: Routledge, 2002), 17987; M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2006), 32733; and John F. Richards, The New Cambridge History of India, vol. 1.5: The Mughal
Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 13233.
42. Apart from the many manuscripts, the text was printed in lithograph in 1280/1863 in Lucknow by Nim
Press along with the glosses of amdullh on the margins. There is no modern critical edition of the text, although
Sayyid Aql Riv Gharav in Delhi has begun one based on an autograph manuscript in the Khud Bakhsh Library
in Patna.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

that physics remained the focus of the philosophical curriculum well into the late nineteenth
century. 43
Later, Jawnpr became the tutor of Shuj, the son and would-be heir of Shhjahn, and
accompanied him to the governorate of Bengal. There he is reported to have met the Sui
shaykh Nimatullh Frzbd and to have taken over the arqa from him in 1052/1641.
Prominent students of his included Ab lib Shista Khn, Shaykh Nruddn Jawnpr, and
Shaykh Abd al-Bq iddq, author of a popular commentary on the rhetoric and polemics
of Shams al-Dn Samarqand (d. 1310) entitled al-db al-bqiya. 44
Bilgrm notes that Jawnpr had a humble style of teaching and was renowned for his
relective and thoughtful approach to learning. Contemporary biographers would note that
there are two famous Frqs in Indian history: Sirhind known for his Sui teachings and
Jawnpr known for his teaching of philosophy and literature. He died on 21 Rab I 1062/
March 2, 1652. The popularity of his text is attested by the many manuscripts of the work
available in Indian and Indian-sourced libraries (like the British Library). 45 It has also repeatedly been published in lithograph from the nineteenth century on and then ofset by printers
such as Nim in Lucknow.
Al-Shams al-bzigha and the rehearsal of philosophical dogma were later considered to be
symptomatic of intellectual stagnation. The famed reformer Jamluddn al-Afghn (d. 1897)
condemned the study of the text as irrelevant to the new intellectual and scientiic challenges
of the modern world that Muslims faced. 46 Indeed, the advent of the new learning and the
new science which came with the colonial encounter, especially after the 1857 revolt, did
seem to make the Ptolemaic cosmology on which much of the metaphysics and physics were
predicated seem increasingly obsolete.
Jawnprs critique covers various elements. 47 He begins by presenting Mr Dmds
argument, agreeing that creation cannot be temporal as the idea of priority based on temporal
43. Al-Shams al-bzigha is one of four important original Islamic philosophical texts produced in India. The
others are al-Urw al-wuthq, a short epitome of philosophy written by Kamluddn Sihlw (d. 1760); al-Ujla
al-nia, a most detailed excursus on metaphysics by the famous philosopher of Farang-Maall, Abd Al Bar
al-Ulm (d. 1810); and al-Hadiya al-sadiyya by the nineteenth-century philosopher of Delhi, Fal-i aqq
Khayrbd (d. 1861). Another short text from the late nineteenth century, which is somewhat like a students
primer, is Taswlt al-falsifa by the Patna philosopher Ab Sad uhr al-aqq Ambd, of which an autograph
copy is MS Khud Bakhsh 2742. These texts are all commonly found in Indian library collections. For a discussion
of these texts in the Dars-i Nim, see my forthcoming article, Calibrating Empires of the Mind: Natural Philosophy in the Dars-i nim.
44. Cf. MS Delhi Arabic (British Library) 1550, f. 76v169v.
45. There are far too many copies of al-Shams al-bzigha to provide a full inventory (and in the absence of a
critical edition it is worth referring to the manuscript traditions), but here are some of the manuscripts that I have
consulted or am aware of:
British Library: India Oice Islamic 201 (129 f., nastalq-shikaste, 1129/1717), Delhi Arabic 1618 (175 f.,
nastalq, 1263/1847), Delhi Arabic 1624 (nineteenth century?), Delhi Arabic 1672 (nineteenth century?).
Khud Bakhsh [Bankipore] 2393 (81 f., nastalq, eighteenth century), 2394 (251 f., nastalq of Najaf Al
Riw, 1246 a.h., gold borders, inscription of lisn al-suln Mamd al-Dawla Munsh afdar Al Khn-Bahdur),
2395 (134 f., nastalq, nineteenth century), 2399 (gloss of Mull Nimuddn Sihlw, 107 f., nastalq, nineteenth
century), 2400 (gloss of Mull asan Lakhnaw, d. 1189/1783, 198 f., nastalq, nineteenth century).
Asiatic Society (Kolkata) Calcutta Madrasa Collection Arabic 58 (170 f., nastalq, eighteenth century).
Rampur Raza Library 3616 (67 f., nastalq, 1251/1835), 3617 (135 f., nastalq, nineteenth century), 3549
(232 f., nastalq, nineteenth century).
Princeton (New Series) 379 (131 f., nastalq, nineteenth century), 547 (incomplete, nastalq of Mrz Abbs,
1249/1834), 1845 (incomplete, nineteenth century).
Slr Jung (Hyderabad) 80, 81.
46. Charles Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, 18401940 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), 1067.
47. Mamd Jawnpr, al-Shams al-bzigha f shar al-ikma al-bligha, MS British Library Asian and
African Studies (Delhi Arabic) 1618, f. 127v135v.

Rizvi: Mr Dmd in India

19

units or temporal continuity is absurd because it requires there to be a time before time. Temporal non-existence that precedes existence is not a true contradictory of it. His presentation
is based on aspects of Mr Dmds irst, third, and sixth proofs. 48
First, he examines the notions of priority. Real and opposing notions of priority and
posteriority require the conception of some continuity, whether it is real or imagined
(muaqqaq aw mawhm). It is diicult for the mind to imagine continuity outside of temporal units and it thus tends to make an absolute distinction between non-existence and existence. But then the question arises: whence creation, because Aristotelian philosophy does
not permit something out of nothing? 49
Second, if perpetuity is a container beyond temporal existence and beyond both continuity
and lack of continuity, then how can existence obtain in it after it was not? The absurdity of
the situation relates to the example of a point in time and whether two bodies can obtain the
same place in the small point in time within the paradoxical need to ininitely divide units of
time. Besides, non-existence cannot exist at the same point or priority as existence by deinition. It is even more problematic to associate that priority in which the non-existence of the
cosmos is, with the priority in which the existence of God obtains. For Jawnpr, perpetuity
is not a container in which God can at times be manifest and at others not be devoid of
notions of continuity. 50 The law of non-contradiction applies to this point. Non-existence
qua non-existence and existence qua existence do not possess the properties of priority and
posteriority. So what arises in perpetuity? If it is the notion of a prior non-existence associated with the posterior existence, then one is left with the coincidence of contradictories. But
in this objection, Jawnpr is not taking into consideration Mr Dmds position on essence,
which allows for a real non-existence in perpetuity to obtain.
Third, he moves onto the Godworld relationship. One of the theological problems with
perpetual creation is that it seems to posit a class of contingents (such as the higher intellects)
that are eternal and perpetual with God such that there is no relation of them being preceded
by a prior state. This seems to pose a problem for the monotheist. There cannot be a diference in number for a temporal thing between its temporal existence and its occurrence in
perpetuity. It makes no sense for a thing to have existence in perpetuity before its existence
after its creation. 51 Once again, an assumption that essences are ontologically prior would
obviate the objection. Further, he argues that if we say that God can only precede contingents
either by perpetuity or eternity, not by time, then we face a problem in their deinitions. The
state in which God is together with those contingents in perpetuity negates the possibility
of notions of priority and posteriority. Togetherness (maiyya) cannot contain within it the
idea of some being prior and posterior in the relation. We would therefore be left with a position in which we cannot airm that God is prior to the world. 52 Here Jawnpr thinks that Mr
Dmd is too harsh on the Peripatetic position. One possible objection to Jawnpr is that the
notion of maiyya to some need not be monological. His contemporary, Mull adr, after
all, allows for the togetherness of God and the world as well as graded stages of priority and
posteriority pertaining to the same pyramid of being.
Finally, Jawnpr makes a comment that has since been reiterated by an Iranian philosopher, Jalluddn shtiyn (d. 2005), relating to the nature of causation. 53 If an efect is
48. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 127v129v.
49. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 129v130r.
50. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 130v.
51. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 132v.
52. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 133v134r.
53. Sayyid Jalluddn shtiyn, ed., Muntakhabt az thr-i ukam-yi rn (Tehran: Institut Franco-Iranien,
1971), 1: 1719.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

dependent upon its cause, thenfollowing the rules of Aristotelian scienceit must exist in
a more perfect state at the stage of the existence of its cause. Therefore, the creation cannot
be totally non-existent or possess pure non-existence at the level of eternity. This amounts to
a defense of the traditional Avicennan doctrine of essential creation (udth dht). Jawnpr
praises the efort of the intellectually dextrous and able Mr Dmd to solve the problem,
but for him it is rather simpler: the real question for believing philosophers (al-muminn
min al-falsifa) is to reconcile the Quranic account and sayings of the prophets and those
who have arrived at the unseen, that is, reconciling temporal creatio ex nihilo with udth
dht. But in that they should follow al-Frb (d. 339/950), who shows Platos reconciliation
of creation and emanation in his al-Jam bayna rayay al-akmayn. 54 For Jawnpr, there
are two senses of essential creation, one invalid because it instrumentalizes God and makes
creation eternal as such and in itself with a continuity from the divine, and the other valid
since it insists upon the radical contingency of creation because only God is everlasting and
self-suicient (al-bq) and all else is perishing (hlik). The only reason that prophets spoke
the language of temporal creation was because of the need to communicate their utter dependence on God in simple, communicative language. It is always open for intelligent interpreters to make sense of the scripture as they will, even to defend udth dahr (as, indeed, Mr
Dmd did in his fourth proof, which Jawnpr does not discuss). 55
Jawnprs critique is representative of a school gloss and shows how traditions can be
intellectually dynamic. 56 He praises the master, is fair in his evaluation, and even agrees with
the sentiment but begs to difer on speciic points. The real test of an argument in philosophy
is whether it is logically sound; after all, the mastery of logic that was central to the intellectual sciences in India precluded the easy reliance upon rhetorical argumentation. Thus,
despite his remaining unconvinced by Mr Dmds solution to the problem of time and
creation, Jawnpr remained very much a follower of his school tradition. In the later debate,
he had his own followers: Muammad Barkat Ilhbd (d. 1780) wrote a short treatise,
Risla f udth al-dht, which defended Jawnprs only interpretation of the Avicennan
doctrine. 57

the indian school of mr dmd

The school of Mr Dmd in India is primarily associated with the Khayrbd philosophers of the nineteenth century who had settled in Delhi. But this famous family was not the
irst to comment on these works. Around a century after Mr Dmd, an Iranian philosopher
living in India, Anwar al-Dn al-usayn, wrote a commentary entitled al-Tanwrt f shar
al-mt, copies of which survive in the Raza Library in Rampur, and the former aiyya
collection (MS Arabic 67) and the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad (MS Arabic 11). 58
Another Iranian philosopher, Abd al-amd Tabrz, the author of a wonderful mystical
54. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 134v; cf. Ab Nar al-Frb, al-Jam bayna rayay al-akmayn (Lharmonie entre
les opinions de Platon et dAristote), ed. and tr. Fawz Najjr and Dominique Mallet (Damascus: Institut Franais, 1999), 12650: the reconciliation is made easier because he was comparing Plato to the Neoplatonic pseudoAristotle of the Theologia.
55. Jawnpr, al-Shams, f. 135rv.
56. He wrote a separate treatise on the topic related to this discussion in al-Shams: Risla f l-udth al-dahr
(MS Raza Library, Rampur 1775, f. 1v5r).
57. For example, MS Raza Library 3620, f. 225v231r.
58. Imtiyz Al Arsh, Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Raza Library, Rampur (Rampur: Raza
Library Trust, 196377), 4: 49495; M. Nimuddn, A Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Salar Jung
Collection (Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Government, 1957), 1: 8; cf. Al Awjab, ikmat-i yamn, 79.

Rizvi: Mr Dmd in India

21

work on the nature of being, al-Bawriq al-nriyya, was a student who settled in India in the
middle of the seventeenth century, as attested in his own work; no mention is made of him
in the biographical dictionaries. 59 The stories of Jawnpr travelling to Ifahn to sit at the
feet of the philosopher are probably apocryphal; the irst Indian to transmit the school and to
have studied with him was Mull abbgh of Kashmr. 60
There are three lines of inluence discernable in the transmission of Mr Dmds school.
First, there is the inluence of al-Ufuq al-mubn in India, numerous manuscripts of which
survive in libraries. This was mediated through citations of the work in metaphysical commentaries on the adr, the famous commentary on al-Hidya by Mull adr Shrz.
Examples include the renowned intellectual Muibbullh Bihr (d. 1119/1707) in his
Musallam al-ulm, Muammad Amjad iddq Qannawj (d. 1140/1727), Q Mubrak
Gopmw (d. 1162/1749), Muammad Alam Sandlv (d. 1198/1784), Muammad Irti
Khn Gopmw (d. 1251/1835), Barkat Amad (d. 1922), and members of the famed Lucknow Farang-Maall family, such as the founder Mull Nimuddn Sihlv (d. 1161/1748),
his son Abd Al Bar al-Ulm (d. 1225/1810), Mull Muammad asan (d. 1198/1784),
Walullh Anr (d. 1854), Muammad Ysuf Anr (d. 1186/1772), Abd al-alm (d.
1868), and Ab l-asant Abd al-ayy (d. 1886). 61 Others who engaged critically with Mr
Dmd were two controversial and independent Shiite philosophers from Ghzpr in Eastern U.P., Sayyid usayn usayn Nawnehrav (d. 1855) and his son Sayyid Murta, who
wrote a fascinating work Mirj al-uql f shar Du al-mashll. 62
Second, those who wrote on al-Ufuq al-mubn were the major philosophers of the
Khayrbd school such as Fal-i Imm (d. 1824), his son Fal-i aqq (d. 1861), and his
grandson Abd al-aqq (d. 1900). 63 The most eminent of these was Fal-i aqq, who wrote
a number of important works in philosophy: al-Jins al-ghl f shar al-Jawhar al-l;
al-Hadiya al-sadiyya on physics, which was written for the Nawab Muammad Sad Khn
(r. 18401855) of Rampur and became a major textbook, due to its pithy nature, in Rampur
and other madrasas devoted to the study of the intellectual sciences; al-Raw al-mujawwad
f aqqat al-wujd, a short analysis of ontology; shiya al Talkh al-Shif, a gloss on
his fathers commentary on Avicennas compendium; and shiya al l-Ufuq al-mubn,
59. According to Brockelmann, GAL, S II: 585, this is Abd al-amd b. Mun al-Dn b. Muammad Hshim
al-Nayrz. Sayyid Ijz usayn Kintr (Kashf al-ujub wa-l-astr an asm al-kutub wa-l-asfr [Calcutta: Baptist
Mission Press, 1911], 89, 402) gives Abd al-amd b. Mun al-Dn b. Muammad Hshim al-Qattl al-Rif
al-Tabrz. I am preparing a critical edition of this text based on four manuscripts: Delhi Arabic (British Library)
1778, Khud Bakhsh 1287, Lucknow Niriyya 356 (from the microilm in the Noor Library in New Delhi, as the
Niriyya is inaccessible), Asiatic Society (Kolkata) Arabic 1161.
60. Muammad Aam, Trkh-i Kashmr (Lahore, 1886), 148; Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, 2: 215.
61. al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 6: 255, 25759, 281, 28485, 3045; 7: 31318; GAL, S II: 61824. On
the Farang-Maall, see Robinson, The Ulam of Farang-Maall; Ashfq Al, Mull Jwan k muir ulam
(Lucknow: Maba-yi Nim, 1982); Malik, Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien.
62. This work in Arabic is a wonderfully independent-minded study of philosophy and theology engaging with
Mull adr and Mr Dmd as well as the great mutakallimn; it includes a thorough critique of the views of the
Ashar school as well as the famous theological compendium of the famed mujtahid of Lucknow Sayyid Dildr
Al Naqv Narbd (d. 1235/1820) entitled Imd al-Islm. The text was published by the author in 1915 and has
been re-typeset by Mahd Khje-pr with an introduction by Akbar Subt and will be shortly published by the Iran
Culture House in New Delhi. Imd al-Islm was published in ive volumes, corresponding to the ive divisions of
theological discussion in Shiite Islam, lithographed in Lucknow by Newal Kishore in 1902, edited by his maternal
grandson q Sayyid asan (d. 1348/1929), a leading theologian of his time.
63. Muft Intimullh Shahb, Mawlna Fal-i aqq aur Abd al-aqq ib Khayrbd (Badyun:
Maba-yi Nim, 1920); Afal aqq Qarsh, ed., Fal-i aqq Khayrbd: k taqq mulaa (Lahore: al-Faial,
1992); al-asan, Nuzhat al-khawir, 7: 41215.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.1 (2011)

which is most salient to us here. 64 These leading public intellectuals represented the learned
culture of the North Indian towns (qasbahs), nurtured by the Mughal empire and its successor
states and principalities, and later reined in opposition and service to the East India Company and the British Raj. 65 These towns produced many a learned Sunni scholar. The salons
of Delhi reverberated with the study of Mr Dmd led by the Khayrbds and their friends
among the intellectual elites, such as adr al-Dn Khn zurda (d. 1868), Imm Bakhsh
Sehb (d. 1857), Muaf Khn Shfta (d. 1869), and the great Persian and Urdu poet
Asadullh Khn Ghlib (d. 1869), all of whom in their own way straddled the old learning
and the new, not least through their association with Delhi College, the former Ghziuddn
Khn madrasa. 66 The College taught traditional philosophy alongside the idealism, romanticism, and rationalism of European schools of philosophy. The friends shared and corrected
one anothers poetry, discussed matters of theological dispute, and debated metaphysics.
Most of them had a prior training in the metaphysics of the school of Mr Dmd from Fal-i
Imm Khayrbd. 67 Collectively, in the post-1857 accounts of the lost glories of Delhi,
they were described as the luminaries of the Delhi renaissance, both cultural and intellectual. 68 Before the rivalry with the new European learning, the Khayrbd stress upon the
rational clashed with the puritanical neo-Wahhbs and the adth-based Ramiyya madrasa
founded and controlled by the family of Shh Walullh (d. 1762). Al-Ufuq al-mubn was
the main philosophical text in the Khayrbd curriculum, replacing the adr and al-Shams
al-bzigha, which were the main texts of the Dars-i Nim. Even during his exiled detention on the Andaman Islands, Fal-i aqq is said to have continued to teach and discuss the
work of Mr Dmd. Apart from the Khayrbd family, a set of glosses (talqt) on al-Ufuq
al-mubn was also composed by the famous philosopher of the Farang-Maall, Abd Al
Bar al-Ulm. 69 He also referred to the text in his own important summary of philosophy,
al-Ujla al-nia (The Beneicial Illumination).
Finally, there were those who expressed their adherence to the school of Mr Dmd
through their commentaries on al-Shams al-bzigha. amdullh b. Shukrullh (d. 1160/1747),
a well-known Shiite scholar from one of the major qasbahs, Sandla, cites Bqir al-ulm
from al-Qabast and Taqwm al-mn extensively. Amadullh Raaw Khayrbd
(d. 1167/1753) was a well-known teacher of the adr who also wrote glosses on al-Shams.
Mull Muammad asan Lakhnav (d. 1198/1784), a major philosopher of the FarangMaall family, defended Mr Dmd against the criticisms of Jawnpr on the issue of the
creation of the world. 70 On the whole, philosophers upheld the Avicennan doctrine, but most
of the school of Mr Dmd clung to the possibility of perpetual creation as a solution to the
problem of creation.
64. Al-Hadiya al-sadiyya is commonly found in major Indian libraries (e.g., MS Khud Bakhsh Arabic 1924),
not least the autograph copy in the Raza Library in Rampur (MS Arabic 3627). It was continually printed in lithograph in Lucknow, the irst time in 1866 by Newal Kishore Press with the gloss of his son (Raza Library Arabic
Printed Books 62) and the last time in 1912 by Amad Press, which is the copy in the British Library (14540.e.19).
It was also printed in Rampur in 1902 along with the glosses of his son Abd al-aqq. There is a copy of al-Raw
al-mujawwad in Raza Library in Rampur (MS 3459, f. 1v23r).
65. See Hasan, From Pluralism to Separatism; Malik, Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien, 10562;
Rizvi, A Socio-Intellectual History, 2: 5253.
66. Pernau, ed., The Delhi College, especially chs. 4 and 5; Abd al-aqq, Marm Dill klij (Delhi: Anjuman-i
Taraqq-yi Urd Hind, 1989); Muft Intimullh Shahb, Ghadar k cand ulam (Delhi: Dn Book Depot, 1979).
67. Hasan, A Moral Reckoning, 5355.
68. Hasan, A Moral Reckoning, 66.
69. For example, MS Raza Library (Rampur) Arabic 3639.
70. Mamd Jawnpr, al-Shams al-bzigha (Lucknow: Lodiana, 1863), 19, 185, 189 on the margins.

Rizvi: Mr Dmd in India

23

The signiicance of the debate in India is all the more, because in Iran the concept of
udth dahr was on the whole ignored. Even Mr Dmds famous student Mull adr
failed to discuss it in his own defense of a paradoxical udth that was both temporal in its
constant renewal and eternal in the activity of its renewal, a position on time and creation
that relects his doctrine of substantial motion (araka jawhariyya). The other main students,
Alaw and Gln, defended the position. Later, two philosophers engaged in the debate: q
Jamluddn Khwnsr (d. 1125/1713) attacked the doctrine in his set of glosses on the ontology of al-Tajrd of Khwja Naruddn al-s, and Mull Isml Mzandarn Khwj
(d. 1173/1759) defended him by responding in his Risla ibl al-zamn al-mawhm. 71
Khwnsrs position was similar to some Indian criticisms: Mr Dmds position makes
little sense and fails to solve the problem of creation. Khwjs response is consistent with
his understanding of existence: time is a measure of existence and not of motion; in fact,
he argues that Mr Dmds position on time draws upon Ab l-Barakt al-Baghdd. 72 So
we come full circle from the views of Avicenna and al-Baghdd through the afavid and
Mughal periods into the aftermath on the question of creation, which still remains elusive.

some concluding comments

The school of Mr Dmd is somewhat of a historical relic across the Persianate world,
including in Iran. The dominance of Mull adr in contemporary Iranian intellectual circles
and the perception of the notorious diiculty of Mr Dmd make the teacher neglected. In
India, the old traditions of the intellectual sciences nurtured by the Dars-i Nim are dead;
the philosophy departments of the major universities, including Aligarh Muslim University
and Jamia Millia Islamia, show no interest in Mull adr, Mr Dmd, or even Jawnpr.
The reformed and revised Dars-i Nim in most Indian madrasas has little space for the
study of philosophy and even if the texts, mainly the adr and al-Shams, are present, it
is a mere genulection to tradition with little critical or analytical engagement. There is no
attempt to rethink the issues of existence, cosmology, and psychology. The impact of the
new learning from the British period has been such that the prejudices of late nineteenthand twentieth-century British philosophy, rather hostile to any metaphysics and seeking to
extend the domain of science while whittling down the command of metaphysics, have been
internalized. But a good deal of the nineteenth century was more creative: the Delhi renaissance was much enamored and engaged with the old ikma traditions at the heart of which
lay Mr Dmds teaching. The new science, permeating through the translations into Urdu
produced and disseminated at Fort William College and at Delhi College, posed direct challenges to the old physics found in al-Shams and other texts. 73 This context makes the study
of the debates on udth dahr all the more salient and the rise in interest indicates ways in
which traditional education and learning made attempts to revive and make tradition relevant
in a changing world.

71. Jalluddn Davn, Sab rasil, ed. A. Tysirkn (Tehran: Mrth-i Maktb, 2002), 22937, 24183;
cf. Awjab, ikmat-i yamn, 118.
72. Davn, Sab rasil, 243.
73. Consider, for example, two works written in Urdu on philosophy: Gobind Prashd ftb, ftb-i ikmat
(Lucknow: Newal Kishore, 1971), and Sayyid Imdd Imm, Mirt al-ukam marf bih Guldasta-yi farhang
(Patna: ub-i diq Press, 1906).