Philosophy and the Isfahan Scholars

Safavid scholars pursued philosophical questions through teaching, commentary and debate. Mir Damad, Shaykh Bahai and Mulla Sadra were among the figures connected to the intellectual life of Isfahan under Abbas I. Their work examined how the world depends on God, what it means for something to exist and how human beings acquire knowledge.

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Scholars and places of study

Mir Damad taught Mulla Sadra, whose learning also connected him to Shaykh Bahai. These relationships combined the study of philosophical texts with religious and other learned disciplines. They developed within a world of patrons, teaching circles and manuscripts.

Mulla Sadra’s career extended beyond Isfahan. He spent time at Kahak near Qom and later taught at the Khan madrasa in Shiraz. His writings and correspondence travelled across these settings. The philosophical activity associated with the capital consequently belonged to a wider network.

Mir Damad and creation

In works including the Qabasat, Mir Damad addressed the relationship between divine eternity and a changing created world. He distinguished temporal succession from a level of dependence described through dahr, a term for an order beyond ordinary time.

His account of origination sought to explain the world’s dependence on God without treating creation simply as one event following another within the world’s own time. The distinction allowed him to examine a longstanding problem shared by theology and philosophy: how a changing universe relates to an eternal cause.

Mulla Sadra and existence

Mulla Sadra’s Four Journeys brought together arguments about existence, God, nature and the human soul. He gave priority to existence over essence. In this account, the reality of an existing thing comes first; the description of what kind of thing it is belongs to the concepts through which it is understood.

He also presented existence as having degrees of intensity. Beings could differ while participating in a connected reality. This approach allowed him to discuss both the multiplicity of things and their dependence on the source of existence.

His doctrine of substantial motion extended change to the underlying reality of material things. Change was therefore not confined to an object’s place, size or other outward attributes. Its very mode of being could develop, a claim with consequences for his account of the soul and its growth.

Knowledge, scripture and disagreement

These philosophers treated reasoning, religious texts and spiritual understanding as connected sources of inquiry. Mulla Sadra wrote on the Quran and Shiite traditions as well as philosophical subjects. His account of knowledge examined the relationship between the knower and what is known.

Later scholars responded to such arguments without accepting them all. Qazi Said Qomi, for example, criticised substantial motion. Intellectual connection did not require agreement on every doctrine.

The term School of Isfahan was developed by modern scholars to describe this related activity. It is useful for identifying connections among thinkers, but should not imply that they formed one institution or taught a uniform system. Their named works preserve distinct answers to questions debated across several generations.

For the wider setting, see Safavid Culture and Arts.