Avicenna's Šifā͗ from Safavid Iran to the Mughal Empire: On Ms. Rampur Raza Library 3476

Abstract

The paper aims at providing a comprehensive description of the manuscript Rampur, Rampur Raza Library 3476 (hikma 112), which contains three of the four main parts of Avicenna's philosophical magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Šifā (the Book of the Cure or: of the Healing). This manuscript documents important developments in the history of Arabic-Islamic philosophy. First, it attests a precise intellectual genealogy within the influential Daštakī family from Shiraz, several exponents of which can be identified as successive owners of this manuscript at the turn of the ninth/fifteenth and tenth/sixteenth centuries, among whom one should mention Sadr al-Dīn Mohammad Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 903/1498), the founder of the so-called “Šīrāzī school” of philosophy; Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Mansūr Daštakī Šīrāzī (d. 948/1542), son of the preceding and author of the first extant commentary on the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things, or Metaphysics) of the Šifā in Arabic presently known; and Fathollāh Šīrāzī (d. 997/1589), a student and possibly also a relative of Ġeyās̱ al-Dīn Mansūr Daštakī Šīrāzī, one of the main advocates and promoters of rationalism in India. Second, copied in 718/1318, the manuscript at hand highlights a crucial phase of the transmission of Avicenna's Šifā, at the pivotal juncture between the most ancient phase of dissemination of the work (fifth to seventh/eleventh to thirteenth centuries) and the later period of its manuscript production (ninth to fourteenth/fifteenth to twentieth centuries). Third, it offers a concrete and insightful specimen of the intellectual exchanges between the Safavid (1502-1736) and the Mughal (1530-1707) empires in the seminal and formative phase of cultural life in Iran and India in the tenth/sixteenth century, in an itinerary that from Shiraz, the place of origin of the Daštakī family, goes eastward in the direction of the Mughal court of Akbar I (r. 963-1014/1556-1605) until it reaches the Raza Library of Rampur at some point.