Reza Pourjavady – författare

Muslim philosophical activities on the cusp of the Safavid era (i.e., late 9th/15th and early 10th/16th centuries) have so far escaped the attention of modern scholars. In Iran, the city of Shiraz was the principal center of philosophy at this time, and it was here that Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī (d. after 933/1526), whose life and works are the subject of this book, spent his formative years. An accomplished Shīʿī scholars, Nayrīzī engaged with Avicennan as well as Suhrawardian philosophy in his works. Beside Nayrīzī, the present study introduces his contemporaries among the philosophers of Shiraz and provides an outline of the main challenges of their thought, particularly of the two leading figures, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī (d. 908/1502) and Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī.

Maqālīd al-ʿulūm (Keys to the Sciences) is a significant source on definitions of Arabic scientific terms in the post-classical period. Composed by an anonymous author, it contains over eighteen hundred definitions in the realm of twenty-one religious, literary, and rational sciences. The work was dedicated to the Muzaffarid Shāh Shujāʿ, who ruled over Shiraz and its neighbouring regions from 759/1358 to 786/1384. The present volume contains a critical edition of Maqālīd al-ʿulūm based on its three extant manuscripts. In the introduction, the editors review previous scholarship on the text, present an overview of patronage at the court of Shāh Shujāʿ and identify some of the sources used by the author of the work. They suggest that the work in its structure mirrors Abū ʿAbdullāh Khwārazmī’s Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm, completed in 366/976.