Ḥamīd al-Dīn Kirmānī on the Human Soul and Knowledge

Abstract

After reviewing the historical, intellectual, and ideological fabric of the age of the Fatimid imam/caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, the chapter explains the highlights of Kirmānī’s cosmology against both the Greek and Islamic backgrounds. In discussing Kirmānī’s theory of the soul, the chapter highlights his use of an evolutionary narrative of the soul. For Kirmānī the rational soul is the perfection of the lower stages of one and the same spiritual substance. The analysis of Kirmānī’s theory of the soul and knowledge formation shows that while it is strongly influenced by Aristotelian and Neoplatonic discourses, his adoption of Neoplatonic narratives in his cognitive psychology is best understood in light of the Shīʿī discourse of the epistemic authority of the imam and the ranks below him within the Fatimid institution.