Commentary on the Versified Treatise

Introduction

Hadi Sabzawari composed a didactic poem in Arabic on logic (al-Laʾālī al-muntaẓama) and on philosophy (Ghurar al-farāʾid) and completed his own commentary on it, the Sharḥ-i Manẓūma, in 1845. The poem sums up the philosophy of Mulla Sadra in memorable verses – the primacy of existence over essence, the gradation of being, mental existence, substantial motion, the soul and its return – while the commentary explains and defends them against earlier views. Since the nineteenth century it has been the basic textbook of philosophy in Iranian seminaries, many times glossed and commented on, among others by Morteza Motahhari in the twentieth century. Toshihiko Izutsu and Mehdi Mohaghegh edited the metaphysical part (1969) and translated it into English as The Metaphysics of Sabzavari (1977).

Connections

Builds on

• The Four Journeys (al-Asfar al-arbaʿa)c. 1628 · Mulla Sadra

More works by Hadi Sabzawari

• c. 1869Secrets of Wisdom