Edward G. Browne This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. www.mullasadra.org

   www.mullasadra.org/new_site/en - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/2/2006   Last Visited: 6/13/2008

   Such earlier Western scholars as E. G. Browne and Laurence Lockhart had viewed the early and mid-eleventh/ seventeenth century as a period of intellectual renaissance and enlightened philosophical inquiry.
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   Secondly, for Browne this picture served mainly to contrast the earlier part of the century with the late eleventh/seventeenth century which these scholars saw as dominated by religious intolerance and bigotry, chiefly promulgated by Baqir al-Majlisí, the severity of which so weakened Safavid Iran that it was unable to resist the Afghan invasion in the early twelfth/eighteenth century.Thirdly, that this picture of the eleventh/seventeenth century as having begun with a burst of cultural and intellectual achievement, in an atmosphere of military, political, and economic stability, only to end in the darkness of fanatical religious orthodoxy amid military, political, and economic chaos remains the dominant framework within which Western scholars view the accomplishments of such figures as Sadra.
   
   In sum, Western-language studies of the period and its intellectual figures, including Sadra, has undergone little development in the more than seven decades since Browne published the fourth volume of his A Literary History of Persia in 1924[1].In essence, I would argue, Sadra was and is still a figure who attracts Western interest mainly insofar as he serves as a foil for Baqir al-Majlisí.Thus, if the question in my title is provocative, the answer is intended to be even more provocative.The answer is ‘abuse'.
   
   Early Views of the Achievement of Sadr al-Dín al-Shírazí
   
   In our own century Western conventional wisdoms about the Safavid period all too often have their origins in the works of Edward Browne.Browne perhaps was the first Western scholar in this century to stress the philosophical proclivities of a select group of early seventeenth\century Imamí clerics, and emphasize their role in the broader process of enlightenment and intellectual achievement characteristic of the reign of ‘‘Abbass I. Browne identified such figures as Mír Damad (d.1041/1631\1632), Shaykh Baha'í (d.1030/1620\1621), Muhsin Fayè al Kashaní (d.1091/1680), Mír Findiriskí (d.1050/1640), and ‘Abd al Razzaq al Lahíjí (d.1072/1662) as ‘philosophers, as well as, or even more than, theologians[2].
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   As to Sadr al-Dín al-Shírazí (d. 1050/1640) in particular, Browne referred to him as ‘the greatest philosopher of modern times in Persia', in ‘constant conflict with the ‘ clergy' and whose ‘speculations' were not ‘conditioned by and subordinated to revealed Religion (sic).' He repeated earlier suggestions that Sadra's works provided the bases for the later development of Shaykhí and Babí thought but does not himself seem to have studied any of Sadra's works first hand.[3]
   
   By the end of the century, however, the ‘clergy' with whom Sadra had been in conflict during his own lifetime were now in control, headed by Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisí (d.1111/1699-1700) whom Browne called ‘a fanatical divine' and ‘perhaps the most notable and powerful doctor of the Shí'ah who ever lived'.Elsewhere, Browne declared al-Majlisí ‘one of the greatest, most powerful and most fanatical mujtahid of the Safavid period', and suggested that ‘the narrow intolerance so largely fostered by him and his congeners' ... ‘left Persia exposed' to ‘the troubles which culminated in the supreme disaster of 1722', the Afghan invasion.[4]
   
   Although in his 1958 The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty Laurence Lockhart devoted no attention at all to the philosophical achievements of the early eleventh/seventeenth century, he did continue to exploit the name of al-Majlisí in the same manner as had Browne, and with just as little justification, since Lockhart, like Browne, had read very little of any of al-Majlisí's writings.Lockhart's characterization of al-Majlisí's impact on Safavid society both echoed and, in several areas, elaborated upon those of Browne.
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   It both aroused the ire of Iranian Sunnis and failed to inspire Iranian Shí'ah ‘ with any real martial spirit ‘ at ‘ the moment of supreme national crisis in 1722' - the latter a point validated by reference to Browne's earlier description of the wider impact of al-Majlisí and his ‘ congeners'.[6]
   
   Lockhart was not, however, content merely to validate Browne by reproducing either the thrust of his arguments or his actual comments.
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   Arjomand simply added a sociological dimension to the picture of the period already drawn by Browne.Indeed Arjomand described Mulla Sadra primarily in terms of his having been attacked by ‘the Shi'ite hierocracy' for ‘gnostic/philosophical' views and put al-Majlisí at the head of that eventually ‘triumphant hierocracy' which assumed control of the society and the state in the latter part of the century and sought to suppress all intellectual inquiry and minority religious tendencies; as for Browne, for Arjomand the activities of al-Majlisí and his supporters were ‘an important cause' of the overthrow of the Safavid dynasty following the Afghan invasion.[23] Popular' scholarship especially accepted Arjomand's new synthesis of Corbin and Nasr and the debate over the political nature of the faith generally and, more specifically, the revitalization his sociological analysis offered an sixty-year-old understanding of the Safavid period.[24]
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   At the same time both this synthesis in particular and the earlier ‘analyses' offered by Browne and Lockhart to which it gave new life were also accorded prominence in subsequent scholarly works, particularly those of an introductory nature, as the field of Iranian and Islamic studies in the West struggled to explain the resurgence of Islam in Iran.
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   Momen's sources on the role and influence of al-Majlisí were Browne and Lockhart.[25]
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   Halm's description of al-Majlisí, in that it portrayed al-Majlisí as representative of the anti-philosophical reactionary clergy, differed little from that offered by Browne more than sixty years before.According to Halm al-Majlisí.
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   Indeed following the Revolution Western-language scholars have only breathed new life into the analyses offered by Browne and Lockhart of Safavid-period religious discourse.
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   [2]. E G Browne, A Literary History of Persia, IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), pp.250-251, 406-410, 426.See also pp.103f, 118-120, 372- 373, 403-404, 406-410, 426-32.
   
   [3]. Browne, ibid , pp.408, 426-27, 429-32.See also 257, 407, 411, 434-37.
   
   Although he dos mention several of Æadrà's works (p.430) it would appear that Browne's observations on Æadrà were based on such secondary sources as M. Iqbal's Development of Metaphysics in Persia (London: Luzac, 1908) - in which Iqbal (p. 175) argued that Æadrà's philosophical contributions underlay the development of Shaykhism and early Babism because the founder of the former, Ahmad Ahsai, composed commentaries on several of Æadrà's works - as well as the Comte de Gobineau's Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale (Paris: Didier, 865), pp.80-92 - in which the Æadrà Shaykhí connection may first have been mooted - and such biographical works as Qisas al Ulema and Raudat al-Jannat.
   
   [4]. Browne, ibid, pp.120, 194, 359, 366, 379, 381, 403-4, 409-10, 416-18, 432.Browne seems also to have read little of al-Majlisí's works.See, esp.409-10, 410n1, 417-18
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   The author's evaluations of al-Majlisí displayed none of the violent dislike visible in Browne.
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   32-33, 71, citing Browne, ibid,IV: p. 120, itself cited above.
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   113, 115-16, 115n7, citing Browne, ibid, p. 404, Lockhart, ibid, p. 70.