Author

Mullā Ṣadrā

Persian philosopher who joined philosophy, illumination and Sufi metaphysics.

c. 1571–1640

Also known as Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, Sadr al-Muta’allihin

Biography

Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī, known as Mullā Ṣadrā, was born in Shiraz around 1571, the son of a notable family. He studied in Isfahan, the capital of Safavid Iran, with the leading teachers of the day, among them Mīr Dāmād and Shaykh Bahāʾī. Accused of heresy by some of the jurists, he withdrew for years to Kahak, a village near Qom, where he devoted himself to spiritual practice.

He returned to teach at a school founded for him in Shiraz, and wrote prolifically. His great work, The Transcendent Wisdom concerning the Four Intellectual Journeys, usually called the Asfār, “Journeys”, takes its structure from the Sufi idea of the journeys of the soul to God, in God and back to the world. He died at Basra on his way back from the pilgrimage to Mecca; the year is given as 1640, or by some sources 1635.

His school, the “transcendent philosophy”, brought together the philosophy of Ibn Sīnā, the illumination of Suhrawardī, the metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī and Shīʿī theology. It became the dominant tradition of philosophy in Iran, taught to the present day.

Major works

The Wisdom of the Throne: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mulla SadraTranslation, tr. James Winston Morris, 1981Morris’s translation, with a long introduction, of Mullā Ṣadrā’s late treatise al-Ḥikma al-ʿArshiyya, on God, the soul and the return to God, a concise statement of his philosophy of being and its spiritual purpose.

Philosophical ideas

Scholarship

Existence, not essence, is what is real; it is one reality in many degrees of intensity, and essences are only the limits of particular existences.

All bodily things are in constant change in their very substance (“substantial motion”), and the soul, beginning in the body, rises through this motion toward the spiritual.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “Mullā Ṣadrā.” Author. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/mulla-sadra.
Chicago (note): “Mullā Ṣadrā,” author, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/mulla-sadra.
MLA: “Mullā Ṣadrā.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/mulla-sadra.
BibTeX: @misc{authors-mulla-sadra, title = {{Mullā Ṣadrā}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Author. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/mulla-sadra} }

Related authors

Influenced by: Ibn Sīnā
Suhrawardī
Ibn ʿArabī

Related concepts

Related traditions

Islamic philosophySchoolThe philosophical tradition of the Islamic world, from al-Kindī and Ibn Sīnā to the illuminationists and Mullā Ṣadrā.