Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran

Reza Pourjavady, PhD (2008) in Islamic Studies, Free University of Berlin, is currently working as a research assistant at the institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Together with Sabine Schmidtke he published A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad: ʿIzz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) and His Works (Brill 2006).

"Copiously annotated, with a number of appendices which include Arabic texts, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran will be of interest to historians and philosophers concerned with the intellectual development of the early Safavid period."Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies, Summer 2011, Vol. IV. No. 3, p. 362."...Pourjavady deserves our thanks for this excellent contribution. Its appearance, one hopes, will constitute the pebble which will, or should, set in motion an avalanche of attention to the careers and contributions of all these figures from the fifteenth and sixteenth-century."Andrew J. Newman, in Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies Vol. IV, No. 4 (2011)"...this work can [...] be regarded as a substantial contribution to the necessary groundwork still to be done on the too long neglected intellectual developments especially in the Persianate world."Jan-Peter Hartung in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21.4 (2011), 517-518."... a highly welcome addition to the gradually increasing number of studies on the nature and extent of the history of post-Avicennan philosophy in Iran."Hossein Ziai in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 75.1 (2012), 155-156."[Pourjavady] dresse un tableau remarquable des débats au cœur des préoccupations des penseurs de ce temps […], et décrit les deux tendances principales présentes alors à Shīrāz, le centre de la culture intellectuelle à l’époque."Cécile Bonmariage in Revue Philosophique de Louvain 110.2 (2012), 384-386."...an admirable piece of scholarship that will be of help to many scholars and students in late medieval Islamic intellectual history."L.W.C. van Lit in Ilahiyat Studies 3.2 (2012).“This rich yet uncluttered presentation of philosophical issues debated in Shiraz in the late ninth/fifteenth and early tenth/sixteenth century by Reza Pourjavady, […], will delight scholars of the Middle East.”“[…]an admirable work of publishing[…].”Vika Gardner in Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 24.2 (2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2012.684750"... Reza Pourjavady is to be complimented for his clearly written, well-organized, and carefully presented portrait of the Shiraz school and its star pupil, Najm al-Dīn al-Nayrīzī. He casts important light on a thinker and school heretofore inadequately known or studied and advances understanding of the important movement both represent. In the process, he has demonstrated a compelling mastery of the relevant materials, especially the manuscript tradition, and an admirable ability to put them in context."Charles E. Butterworth, University of Maryland, in Iranian Studies 52.1-2 (2019)