ABSTRACT
Proceeding in accordance with a wholly exterior chronology, determined by the date of the death of the philosophers with whom we are concerned, the first to benamedisAthir al-DinMufac.lc.lalal-Abhan, who died around 663/1264, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. Very little is known about his life, which he seems to have spent partly in Mosul and partly in Asia Minor. His books are few in number, but they have considerable importance in that they were used as text books and were frequently commentated. He wrote aKitiib al-lsiigiighl, an adaptation of the Isagogue by Porphyry, which was commentated by Shams al-Din al-Fanarr (834/1470). His Guide to Philosophy (Hidiiyat al-i)ikmah) was in three parts (logic, physics and metaphysics), and, among others,I:Iusayn al-Maybudi wrote a commentary on it in 880/1475. But the most important of all the commentaries on it, and much the most widely read in Iran, is the very personal commentary written by Mulla ·Sadri al-ShirazL Another work by al-Abhan, the Al-Kashf al-l)aqii'iq (The Discovery of Metaphysical Realities) reveals the philosopher's ishriiqi affinities. The work is constructed according to a plan which is the inverse of the plan most commonly utilized: first he explains logic, then metaphysics, and ends with physics. It is noteworthy in that the eschatological section of the metaphysics is a literal reproduction of certain pages written by al-Suhrawardi the Shaykh al-Ishriiq.
