Philosophical Poetry and Courtly Appeal

Journal of persianate studies 15 (2022) 14–42
brill.com/jps
Philosophical Poetry and Courtly Appeal:

Fakhr al-Din Rāzi’s Didactic Panegyric for
the Khvārazmian Prince Nāser al-Din Malekshāh
Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed | ORCID: 0000-0001-6260-8191
Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program, Bard College,
Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
norajbh@bard.edu
Abstract
While Fakhr al-Din Rāzi’s (d. 1210/606) works of philosophical theology are well
known, his poetry has been largely ignored by scholars to date. This article provides
a translation and analysis of Rāzi’s previously untranslated Persian panegyric ode
(qasidat al-madh) entitled “Fi al-manteq va-ʾl-tabiʿa va-ʾl-elāhi va-madh al-soltān (On
Logic, Physics, and Metaphysics, and Praise of the Sultan).” Combining a historical and
literary approach, I argue that Rāzi strategically employs both the didactic and the
panegyric genres in his attempt to regain the favor of the Khvārazmian crown prince,
Nāser al-Din Malekshāh (d. 1196–7/593). In addition to demonstrating Rāzi’s belief in
the soteriological value of knowledge, the poem adds further evidence for elite sup-
port of Islamic philosophy after Ebn Sīnā—in this case, in the eastern lands of the
Islamic empire.
Keywords
Fakhr al-Din Rāzi – Islamic philosophy ( falsafa) – Persian poetry – panegyric – court
Despite burgeoning scholarship on the continued life of the philosophical

tradition, the engagement of philosophical thinkers with literary forms of
expression remains understudied and underemphasized. While the Greek
thinkers whose works sparked Islamic philosophy dismissed poetry as mere
imitation and illusion falling short of philosophical truth, Islamic philoso-
phers followed the Alexandrian tradition in incorporating Aristotle’s Rhetorics
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/18747167-bja10023

Philosophical Poetry and Courtly Appeal 15
and Poetics into his Organon, the collection of works on logic.1 Ebn Sinā
(d. 1037/428) expanded upon the Alexandrian tradition by according par-
ticular value to imaginative speech in its capacity to evoke a kind of assent
through wonder and arguably testing out his literary theories through experi-
mentation with poetry and allegory.2 For many thinkers whose works form the
fabric of post-classical Islamic philosophy, poetry, prose, and imaginative tales
were essential for conveying otherwise ineffable experience, reflecting engage-
ment with the Sufi and the Neoplatonic traditions as well as the prominence of
poetry in Arabic and Persian culture. The poetry of the eminent philosophical
theologian Fakhr al-Din Rāzi (d. 1210/606) is part and parcel of this develop-
ing tradition in which æsthetics “was not simply about artistic sentiment, but
rather was inseparable from ontic concerns” (Hughes, 4).
Fakhr al-Din Rāzi, increasingly recognized as one of the thinkers who
engaged most deeply and critically with Avicennian philosophy, is primar-
ily known for his scholastic works of philosophy and theology. Rāzi’s corpus
includes commentaries upon several of Ebn Sinā’s texts, original works of
Islamic theology (kalam) and classical Islamic philosophy ( falsafa), and a
voluminous Tafsir (Exegesis) that engages many of the same metaphysical
topics through a verse-by-verse exegesis of the Qurʾan. Other aspects of Rāzi’s
scholarship are tantalizing, including his engagement with the occult, made
most explicit in his al-Serr al-maktum (The Hidden Secret), an early work that
details the theory and practice of (licit) magic. A last and admittedly minor
aspect of this great thinker has been, however, largely ignored by scholars to
date: namely, Rāzi’s poetry.
Rāzi’s composition of poetry is noted by his biographers, most of whom
simply list this particular form of production along with the rest of his out-
put, but refrain from saying much else about this genre of his work. Ebn Abi
Osaybiʿa (d. 1269–70/668) provides excerpts of four Arabic poems written
by Rāzi in his biographical entry, stating that he composed poetry in both
Arabic and Persian. The first three poems express existential anxieties about
human incapacity and the transience of life, while the last poem is a panegy-
ric written in praise of the Khvārazmshāh ʿAlā al-Din Mohammad b. Tekish
(r. 1200–1220/596–617) upon his triumph over the Ghurids, likely when he
1 The division of the Organon into eight parts that included the Rhetoric and the Poetics was
adopted by most Arabic and Syriac scholars of Aristotle, an expansion thought to date back
at least to Simplicius ( fl. 533) (Rescher, 30).
2 On the poetic syllogism and the kind of truth accepted through the imagination (takhyil) in
Islamic philosophy, see Harb, 75–134.

16 Jacobsen Ben Hammed
captured Herat in 1208/605.3 One of Rāzi’s later biographers, Khalil b. Aybak

Safadi (d. 1363/764), provides an assessment of his poetic capacity. Despite
reserving the highest praise for Rāzi’s intellectual capacities, of his poetry, he
notes succinctly: “He was knowledgeable of literature (adab). He composed
poetry in Arabic, which was neither of high nor low quality, as well as poetry in
Persian—perhaps in Persian he was adept” (Safadi, IV, 248–9).
Although the apparent mediocrity of Rāzi’s poetry failed to ensure lasting
fame in that particular mode of composition (likely one reason why so little of
it survives), Rāzi’s poems are valuable beyond their æsthetic. The panegyric at
hand, entitled “Fi al-manteq va-ʾl-tabiʿa va-ʾl-elāhi va-madh al-soltān (On Logic,
Physics, Metaphysics, and Praise of the Sultan),” grants valuable insights into
his patronage as well as his understanding of the nature of knowledge and the
rational sciences. My goals in this article are twofold: I first analyze the poem
as situated in the tradition of Persian philosophical poetry, through which Rāzi
offers his reader a singular window into his understanding of the possibilities
and limitations of Islamic philosophy. Secondly, I approach the poem as a form
situated in a particular social context, thus being intimately connected to Rāzi’s
life and patronage. My analysis is both historical and literary, as I consider the
connection between the aims of the work and the chosen genres (the didactic
and the panegyric). Ultimately, Rāzi’s poem allows us to posit otherwise lost
details of his biography and patronage, while also granting further insights into
his view of falsafa and the continued life of philosophy in the region.
“On Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, and Praise of the Sultan”
Rāzi’s poem, written in Persian while making extensive use of Arabic philo-
sophical terms, is composed as a panegyric ode (qasidat al-madh), the literary
form that with the advent of Islam and the expansion of the Islamic empire
was utilized as a means by which to legitimize and curry favor with elite rul-
ers (Stetkevych 1997).4 It consists of seventy-eight couplets, composed in a
3 The first of these poems is also included in Rāzi’s conclusion to his Resālat dhamm ladhdhāt
al-donyā (An Epistle on the Censure of the Pleasures of This World) (Rāzi 2006, 262). The first
three excerpts fall into the genre of ascetic (zohdiyya) poetry, which highlights the human
being’s helplessness and the forces of destiny, the treachery of the world, and mortality, as
well as the value of asceticism (Hamori).
4 Although pre-Islamic poetry and a minstrel tradition existed in Persia before Islam, “in
Islamic times this was not perceived as poetry either in the formal sense (as ‘metrical and
regular’) or in the broader sense … and so, when panegyrists began to praise local rulers in
Persian, they did, indeed, ‘invent’ a poetry based on Arabic models.” The panegyric qasida is

mono-rhyme with each couplet ending in -ān. Rāzi begins his didactic poem
with instructional sections on logic, physics, and metaphysics which fall into
the didactic genre5 and ends with a final section of panegyric (madih) and a
concluding duʿāʾ al-ta‌ʾbid (an “immortalizing prayer” for the well-being of the
ruler) characteristic of the Persian panegyric tradition (Meisami 2003, 105).
Rāzi’s panegyric appeals to the Khvārazmian crown prince, Nāser al-Din
Malekshāh (d. 1196–7/593), and he takes as his object of praise not only the
ruler but also the philosophical tradition, the divine, and his own prowess as
a scholar and teacher. Simultaneously, the poem is didactic, as Rāzi details the
contents of the three foundational categories of philosophical study, namely:
logic (manteq), physics (al-tabiʿiyyāt), and metaphysics (al-elāhiyyāt). By and
large, the poem mirrors the traditional ordering of philosophical study as per
the Aristotelian tradition, and closely follows the treatment of each subject
in Ebn Sinā’s al-Eshārāt va-ʾl-tanbihāt (Pointers and Reminders), the founda-
tional philosophical text upon which Rāzi wrote a commentary some years
before in 1180/576.
Although the reader may be struck by the beauty of such verses as the first
(“O! having surpassed the boundary between the body and the world of the
spirit ( jān) / and O! having arrived at the lights of the world of ʿerfān [gnosis]”)
or fiftieth (“From the light of His wisdom, a pebble becomes a gem / Pearls
made manifest from drops of rain”), the vast majority of couplets are more
impressive in their compression of philosophical ideas into condensed poetic
meter. In their privileging of content over form, however, these first three sec-
tions which versify the subjects of logic, physics, and metaphysics are much in
“the courtly poem par excellence,” which, while rooted in the pre-Islamic Arab poetic tradi-
tion, spread throughout the Islamic empire into such languages as Hebrew, Persian, Urdu,
Ottoman, Kurdish, Pashto, Malay, Swahili, Fulfulde, and Hausa (Meisami 1996, 138–39). While
the qasida form was borrowed from the Arabs, the subjects which animated this poetry varied
depending on the geographical and cultural background of the poet. In the Persian context,
these included feasts celebrated in the Iranian calendar (such as Now-Ruz and Mehrgān),
the natural world in springtime, various forms of love, and the making and drinking of wine
(Moayyad, 122).
5 Didactic poems that instruct on a particular field of learning were common in the medi-
eval Islamic world, with such poems in Arabic numbering in the thousands, and the subjects
versified including “dogmatics, the law of inheritance, medicine, astronomy, history, rheto-
ric, prosody, calligraphy, the explication of dreams, algebra, bloodletting, logic, navigation,
agriculture, sexual intercourse, alchemy, jurisprudence, Koranic sciences, [and] the use
of toothpicks.” These poems became widespread particularly with the flourishing of the
madrasa system in the Islamic world (from the twelfth century onward) as they operated as
a mnemonic device for teaching and for learning (van Gelder, 106–8).

line with the didactic genre.6 This is not to say that the poem simplifies Rāzi’s
subject—certainly, many of the stanzas reveal the complexity of the philo-
sophical tradition, and furthermore, Rāzi at points appears to emphasize
the obscurity of the subject matter with the implication that he may clarify the
content through further in-person instruction.7 Further, the poem offers (in
contradistinction with his traditional philosophical treatises) a clear and nec-
essarily concise representation of Rāzi’s views on the philosophical tradition
and its import.
The Persian Tradition of Philosophical Poetry
Although Rāzi’s poem offers fascinating insights into the life and thought of
our author, it should not be taken as a singular innovation; rather, in writ-
ing his didactic panegyric, Rāzi participates in a burgeoning tradition of
philosophical poetry. Looking particularly to the Persian context (given the
language of Rāzi’s composition), we may take the poetry of Majdud b. Ādam
Sanāʾi Ghaznavi (d. c.1131/525) as a first point of comparison. Sanāʾi’s Hadiqat
al-haqiqah (The Garden of the Truth), a mathnavi written for the Ghaznavid
Sultan Bahrāmshāh in the early twelfth century, was also meant to serve as a
guide for self-perfection through a Sufi-philosophical exploration of the nature
of God and the human being’s relationship with the Creator. While the long
form of Sanāʾi’s poem allows for far greater digression, certain philosophical
impulses overlap. Just as Rāzi warns about the transcendent nature of God
beyond the confines of logic and the reaches of the intellect (see particularly
ll. 43–46 of Rāzi’s poem), Sanāʾi cautions his reader in the first sections of his
mathnavi that while all stems from God (including the first intellect), the divine
is inaccessible to imagination and reason alike (Sanāʾi Ghaznavi, 3–6). Rather
than comprehension, both Sanāʾi and Rāzi describe the state of the mind upon
encountering God as one of utter confoundment (khira). Yet while Rāzi’s sec-
tion on metaphysics aligns well with the thrust of Sanāʾi’s mathnavi, the content
6 While disagreeing on the exact characterization of the critique, both Khulūṣī and van Gelder
agree on the didactic poem’s simplistic style and the general lack of what van Gelder terms
“stylistic excellence” and what Khulūṣī calls “emotion and imagination.” If written in Arabic,
instructional poetry was often composed in the orjuza form, with the rajaz meter being both
the easiest to compose and memorize, and therefore the least æsthetically refined (Khulūṣī,
498; van Gelder, 107–8).
7 In its conscious abstrusity, Rāzi’s poem is not exceptional in the didactic genre, as many other
instructional poems of this period were so obscure as to become themselves the subject of
commentaries (van Gelder, 108).

of his sections on logic and physics are largely absent from Sanāʾi’s masterpiece
(save for sparse references in Sanāʾi’s mathnavi to a neo-Platonic emanation,
including intellect, soul, and the four elements). Instead, Sanāʾi concerns him-
self with the nature of God and the ethics of the wayfarer, conveyed, in part,
through didactic tales. Whereas the didacticism of Sanāʾi instructs a general
audience in a mode of ethical comport, Rāzi’s poem acts a kind of pedagogical
riddle that maps out key concepts of the falsafa tradition and invites a specific
reader (i.e., Nāser al-Din Malekshāh) to partake in further instruction in order
for Rāzi to act as “a knot-loosener of all difficulties” (l. 72).
We may also look to Ismaʿili poetry as an important influence upon Rāzi’s
composition. The poetic corpus of Nāser-e Khosrow (d. c.1061/453), too, incorpo-
rates elements of (Ismaʿili) philosophy, though, unlike Rāzi (and many others)
he famously eschewed panegyric court poetry. Nāser-e Khosrow’s philosophi-
cal poems are primarily concerned with Ismaʿili metaphysics and theology,
addressing, for instance, the universal intellect and soul and their interaction
with the universe (Lewisohn). A tenth-century Persian philosophical poem
written by the Ismaʿili philosopher and physician Abuʾl-Haytham Ahmad b.
Hasan Jorjāni (upon which Nāser-e Khosrow wrote an extended commen-
tary, Ketāb-e jāmeʿ al-hekmatayn [The Reconciliation of the Two Wisdoms],
produced at the behest of ʿAli b. Asad, the Ismaʿili amir of Badakhshān), may
have also influenced Rāzi’s composition. Jorjānī’s poem, like Rāzi’s, demands
the reader to produce knowledge of philosophy through riddling questions
(ninety-one questions in eighty-two bayts!). For instance, Jorjāni writes:
(32) Of the nature (hāl) of form (hayʾat) and of the proprium (khāssa),
Of description and definition, what do you know or have heard?
Speak and instruct!
(33) Everyone joins the self to ‘I’ but to what does this I refer?
Speak, do not just scratch your beard!
(34) Is it the body? Or the soul ( jān)? The intellect? Or the spirit (ravān)?
Or is it like the amalgam of horse and man in the knight?
Nāser-e Khosrow, 37
We may compare these lines to Rāzi’s brief probing into the nature of the
human being, when he inquires of his reader:8
8 Here and elsewhere, line numbers from Rāzi’s poem correspond to the Persian text and
English translation included below. All translations unless otherwise noted are my own.

(35) Tell, what is signified by the utterance “I”

Bring forth the true definition for the essence of the human being!
(36) A sage proclaimed it as an essence without extension
Mover of all of the limbs, manager of the body
(37) Formation of essence and attributes, abiding of substance
Its return after “all upon [earth] will perish.”9
The playful interrogation in Jorjāni’s poem is echoed by Rāzi. Unlike Rāzi’s

work, however, Jorjāni’s poem is distinctly less organized and wider ranging in
its topics, raising disjointed quandaries about everything from strange medical
ailments and cures, to time and fate, logic, linguistics, and cosmology, as well
as specifically Ismaʿili concerns. Yet its resultant exposition at the behest of a
ruler—albeit a century later, and by another (much exasperated) thinker!—
may have inspired Rāzi to compose his own riddling Persian poem on the
matter of philosophy in a bid to secure patronage.
Finally, a work of considerable significance for Rāzi’s composition is
the Persian didactic poem by Abuʾl-ʿAbbās Lawkari (d. c.1123/517), entitled
Qasida-ye asrār al-hekma (A Poem on the Secrets of Knowledge), that, like
Rāzi’s, addresses the philosophical sciences.10 Lawkari, who studied under
Ebn Sinā’s student Bahmanyār (d. 1066/458), was a key figure in the spread of
Avicennian peripatetic philosophy in the Islamic East, and his poem and its
commentary reflect his devotion to transmitting the philosophical tradition.
Similar to Rāzi’s piece, Lawkari is concerned less with æsthetics than peda-
gogical content (though he composed other poetry in Arabic and Persian that
was described by Shahrazuri as “exquisite”), and he notes in his commentary
that this poem should be understood as “scientific” (ʿelmi) in nature (Marcotte,
147; Lawkari, 12). Lawkari likely composed the poem “to serve as a mnemonic
device to help students memorize the most important theses of the philosoph-
ical corpus of the time (logic, physics, and metaphysics),” and of note is its
composition in the language of the peoples of Khorasan who spoke almost
exclusively Persian (Marcotte, 149). Lawkari’s poem, at 151 verses, is longer than
Rāzi’s, and is “quite elegant for a philosophical and didactic poem, more so per-
haps [than Rāzi’s]” (ibid.), though it is well worth noting that both Rāzi’s and
Lawkari’s didactic poems follow the same meter (vazn) and rhyme (qāfiya),
with the second hemistich in each rhyming in -ān (Pourjavady, 552). Lawkari’s
poem contains five sections (three of which are treated in Rāzi’s poem, in both
subject and content), namely: logic, physics, mathematics, metaphysics, and
9 A reference to Qurʾan 55:26.

10 The similarity is noted by Pourjavady in his introduction to the poem; see idem, 552 n. 1.

ethics. Given its overlap in both structure and content, as well as its circulation
in Khorasan, Lawkari’s poem was a likely influence on Rāzi’s work.
Philosophy in Rāzi’s Panegyric
Rāzi’s poem is further evidence of the popularity enjoyed by Ebn Sinā’s legacy,
indicating in particular that Avicennian philosophy became “the fashion of
the day” not only in Baghdad but also in the eastern Islamic provinces.11 Upon
encountering Nāser al-Din, Rāzi would have been in his late thirties or early
forties. At this point, he had studied philosophy extensively and produced
major works both critiquing and creatively building upon philosophical meth-
ods and views. These include: critical works treating philosophy, including
al-Mabāheth al-mashriqiyya (Eastern Investigations), completed 1178–79/574–
75; commentaries upon Ebn Sinā’s corpus, namely the theoretical principles
of medicine, al-Kolliyyāt (The Collected Works) of the Qānun fi-ʾl-tebb (The
Canon of Medicine), completed 1177–1178/573–574, and Ebn Sinā’s dense
and esoteric account of his philosophy, al-Eshārāt va-ʾl-tanbihāt, completed
1180/576; and his own handbook on philosophy that includes a significant sec-
tion on logic, al-Molakhkhas fi-ʾl-hekma (The Compendium on Knowledge),
completed 1180/576 (Altaş). It seems likely that Rāzi was initially chosen by
Nāser al-Din for his knowledge of falsafa, given the poem’s explication and
praise of the branches of philosophy. Indeed, Rāzi proclaims his own achieve-
ments in philosophy through exaggerated praise of his own abilities, declaring
in ll. 65–66 that Ebn Sinā “would bow to my works” and that he outstrips even
Aristotle. Far from eschewing the study of philosophy as somehow heretical,
the Khvārazmian rulers, like other ruling elites of the time, evidently sought
out prestigious teachers of philosophy to adorn their courts.
Rāzi’s account of logic, physics, and metaphysics in the first sections of the
poem closely mirrors Ebn Sinā’s treatment of each subject in his al-Eshārāt
va-ʾl-tanbihāt, upon which Rāzi had written a commentary some years before
in 1180/576. In the poem’s first part on logic, Rāzi discusses Aristotle’s five
predicables, various types of premises, and the valid figures of syllogistic
reasoning. In the second part on physics, we encounter proofs regarding the
material makeup of reality (be it atomistic or hylomorphic) and time (whether
it be continuous or formed of successive but discrete instants), discussion
of the elements and the celestial spheres, and the nature of the self and the
11 What Gutas terms “the golden age of Arabic philosophy” in Baghdad dated in fact to the
centuries after Ebn Sīnā (namely 1000–1350).

immortal soul. In metaphysics—here rendered as “Theology,” in keeping with

the Islamic philosophical tradition’s interpretation12—Rāzi reproduces the
Avicennian proof for God, who, by virtue of being necessarily existent, pro-
duces the existence of all else that is contingent. Shifting into praise of this
Source-of-All existence, Rāzi writes that God is above all—above contingency,
above temporal origination, but also above being grasped by the intellect or
even by “musings of the soul.” Theology crowns this ode to the philosophical
sciences. God’s knowledge, singular and unchanging, neither begins nor ends
and encompasses all that exists. While the poem has begun along intellectual
lines in its praise of the achievements of the rational sciences (termed by Rāzi
the “sciences of certainty”), its third section concludes with the admission
that the intellect is confounded in the light of the glory of God. The intellect,
while powerful, is ultimately overcome, and the soul falls into trembling.
Though fully articulated in its final stanzas, this blending of the divine
with the earthly, so characteristic of the philosophical tradition in the Islamic
world, is immediately evident from the very first lines. “O! having surpassed
the boundary between the body and the world of the spirit ( jān),” Rāzi begins,
“and O! having arrived at the lights of the world of ʿerfān / I will inquire into
the intricacies of truths / By the aid of the Creator, by the mercy of God.”
Immediately, Rāzi weds logic with the achievement of superrational aware-
ness of a divine reality (ʿerfān). It is the passing beyond the boundary between
material and immaterial reality that allows for awareness of the true nature
of things; it is the arrival at the “lights of the world of ʿerfān” that allows Rāzi
to understand these philosophical disciplines so fully as to be able to instruct
the ruler in their intricacies. Philosophy as developed in the Islamic tradition
is that which accesses the true nature of reality—a universal truth, ultimately
characterized by the mercy of a divine Creator. At the highest levels, this truth
12 Razi’s nomenclature is both expected given his theological interest and standard within
the tradition. Theology—literally “the divine things” (al-elāhiyyāt)—along with “first
philosophy” (al-falsafa al-ola) were both used as synonyms for metaphysics (mā baʿd
al-tabiʿa or mā baʿd al-tabiʿiyyāt) in the Arabic tradition. Both terms were borrowed
from the Greeks, with Plato describing metaphysics as that which is in the realm of the
divine (theologia), a term adopted by Aristotle in addition to describing the study as “the
first philosophy” and as metaphysics (Arnaldez). Fārābi, however, makes a distinction
between the two in an essay on the purposes of Aristotle’s metaphysics (a short treatise
which, Ebn Sinā notes in his autobiography, clarified the subject for him). Fārābi writes
that theology (al-ʿelm‌al-ellāhi) belongs to “the universal science (al-ʿelm‌al-kolli)” as it
studies God, a principle of absolute being. This science, the object of study of which is
that which is common to all beings and thus is abstracted from particular matter, should
be called “metaphysics”—i.e., what comes after physics (mā baʿd al-tabiʿa) (Fārābi, 35).

can only be experienced rather than cognized, and is consequently ineffable

because the true nature of that Creator is beyond the scope of the intellect.
Furthermore, gaining access to these truths is that which ultimately ensures
the felicity of the soul. Concluding the second part on physics, Rāzi enjoins,
“Seek the truths of these spiritual secrets / So that you may find the means
of peace and salvation.” While the full formation of this conviction regarding
the import of knowledge for the soul is explored throughout Rāzi’s later cor-
pus, here we find it spelled out plainly. The didactic commendation of logic,
physics, and metaphysics ascends from discursive reasoning, to riddling quan-
daries regarding the nature of the material world and the immaterial soul, to a
metaphysics that presents proof of God’s existence as the Necessarily Existent
before dissolving into praise of the divine and ultimately into confounded awe
and trembling before God’s utter transcendence and power. Thus, the poem
presents to its reader a map of the soul’s journey along this intellectual path to
God, beginning with discursive reasoning and contemplation on nature, and
tracing backwards/inwards/upwards from that which is caused to the First
Cause, from the created to the Creator.
Rāzi’s Search for Patronage and the Appeal of the Panegyric
Whereas the first didactic sections of the poem allow us a window into Rāzi’s
erudition in the falsafa tradition and its soteriological import, the final panegy-
ric grants us insight into his biography and his struggle to secure patronage.13
Although his younger years were characterized by relative poverty (Qefti, 291),
Fakhr al-Din Rāzi’s own scholarly success was ultimately met with enthu-
siastic and generous patronage by two warring powers, the Ghurids and the
Khvārazmshāhs. Undoubtedly factoring into his support by the Ghurids was
the explicit alignment of the élite leadership with the Shafiʿi school of law,
despite a populace that adhered to the literalist Karrāmiyya sect (with which
Rāzi was openly in conflict) (Bosworth, 162). This patronage changed Rāzi’s
fortunes completely, and he died a wealthy man.14
Rāzi’s intellectual career began with the study of Islamic jurisprudence (ʿelm‌
al-osul) under his father, Zeyāʾ al-Din Makki, a theologian of some renown
13 For a comprehensive overview of Fakhr al-Din Rāzi’s life, work, and patronage, see Griffel
2007.
14 Safadi writes that, upon his death, Rāzi’s wealth had accumulated to eighty thousand
dinars, not counting other forms of wealth such as animals and land (Safadi, IV, 254).

whose own intellectual lineage is traced back to both Ashʿari and Shafiʿi.15
After his father’s death, Rāzi studied under Kamāl Semnāni (d. 1179–80/575) in
Nishapur, then returned to Rayy and studied philosophy under Majd al-Din Jili,
whom he followed to Marāgha in Azerbaijan after Jili was invited to teach there
(Ebn Khallikān, IV, 250; Griffel, 318–19). Ebn Abi Osaybiʿa relates that Mohyi
al-Din, a judge in the nearby city of Marand, told him that Rāzi studied juris-
prudence ( feqh) with his father who headed the madrasa in Marand, and that,
at the same time, he independently took up the study of various branches of
philosophy (al-ʿolum‌al-hekmiyya). Rāzi distinguished himself, relates Mohyi
al-Din, and he outshone all others (Ebn Abi Osaybiʿa, II, 23).
Rāzi’s excelling in his studies, including the study of philosophy, is a com-
mon theme in the biographies.16 After this period of learning, Rāzi traveled
extensively. In his autobiographical work Monāzarāt‌jarat‌fi‌belād mā vara‌ʾ al-
nahr (Debates Taking Place in the Lands Beyond the Oxus), Rāzi writes that
he journeyed to the Transoxianan cities of Bukhara, Samarqand, Khujand,
and Banakath, then to Ghazna and the region of India, debating scholars
throughout his travels (Rāzi 1936, 7). His account mentions the year 1186/582,
when he encountered Sharaf al-Din Masʿudi (Rāzi 1936, 32; Griffel, 320). If he
did spend time with Nāser al-Din as his patron, this patronage would have
occurred directly after these series of travels and debates, during the period
of Nāser al-Din’s rule in Nishapur and Merv (r. 1187–97/583–93) (Pourjavady,
556). Pourjavady further speculates that the poem was written not when Nāser
al-Din reigned in Nishapur (r. 1187–93/583–89), but rather when he took power
in place of his deceased uncle in Merv (r. 1193–97/589–593)—an elucidation
regarding the chronology Rāzi’s life that is made possible solely by the poem
at hand (ibid., 557).
After the death of Nāser al-Din, Rāzi settled in Herat (1199/595); it was
around this time that he became close to the Ghurid leadership from which
the vast majority of his wealth was derived (Griffel, 328–29). We know that
Rāzi was well supported by the Khvārazmshāh ʿAlā al-Din Mohammad b.
Tekish (r. 1200–20/596–617), Nāser al-Din’s younger brother (and possibly a
15 For these intellectual lineages, see Ebn Khallikān, IV, 252.

16 Qefti relates (291) that Rāzi studied the works of Ebn Sinā and Fārābi during his time in
Khorasan—“and he learned a great deal from that.” Ebn Khallikān describes (IV, 249)
Rāzi as “surpassing the people of his time in theology (ʿelm‌al-kālām), [the science of]
the intelligibles (al-maʿqulāt), and the science of the ancients [i.e., Greek and Hellenic
philosophy, ʿelm‌al-avāʾel].”

former student of Rāzi’s), when he captured Herat in 1208/605.17 Indeed, it

appears that his patronage under the Ghurids is in fact bracketed by relation-
ships with the Khvārazmian leadership. The biographical literature reflects this
nuance; as Griffel notes (320), Ebn al-Shaʿār writes that Rāzi did in fact return
to Khvārazm and Khorasanian lands before traveling to Bamiyan in Ghur. The
poem at hand, dedicated to the Khvārazmshāh Tekish’s (r. 1172–1200/567–96)
eldest son Nāser al-Din Malekshāh, attests to Rāzi’s support by Khvārazmian
leadership both before and after his patronage under the Ghurids. Three other
Persian works are further evidence of some degree of patronage under the
Khvārzmshāh Tekish, namely: Jāmiʾ al-ʿolum (The Compendium of Sciences), a
scientific compendium dedicated to Tekish (Pourjavady, 555); Hadāʾeq al-anvār
fi‌haqāʾeq al-asrār (Garden of Lights in the Truths of Secrets), a Persian histori-
cal work which includes a history of Tekish’s rule; and al-Ikhtiyārāt al-ʿAlāʾiyya
(The Selection of Propitious Times), an astronomical work whose title alludes
to Tekish, who adopted the laqab ʿAlāʾ al-Din at the beginning of his rule
(Griffel, 333).
The poem at hand is evidently written after a relationship between Rāzi and
Nāser al-Din developed and then experienced either a hiatus or wilted com-
pletely; Rāzi writes in l. 70 that Nāser al-Din chose Rāzi above his peers, but in
l. 73 laments, “Oh Sultan, now it has become the case, that in over two months I
was not able to be at your glorious side for even an hour.” The poem reads as an
entreaty to be brought back to the good graces of Nāser al-Din, whether that be
through instruction on philosophy, law, rhetoric, or theology. L. 71 in particular
makes this plea explicit. Rāzi states: “As you have chosen me, do not humiliate
me again / Having summoned me in endearment, drive me not from your side.”
Given the utter paucity of reference to Nāser al-Din in biographical entries on
Rāzi, and the admission within the poem that Rāzi has been set aside by this
particular patron and wishes to resume their relationship, we may reasonably
conclude that his poem was not successful in its implicit goal or that Rāzi’s bid
for patronage was cut short by Nāser al-Din’s death. Perhaps it was this very
failure to secure successful patronage under the Khvārazmshāhs in this period
that drove Rāzi eastward to seek out the support of the Ghurids in modern
day Afghanistan. Yet Rāzi is able to dress this otherwise undignified appeal in
a trope that was well-established by his time, that of the analogy between the
poet and the lover, the patron and the beloved, with “the true (and only) object
17 According to Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri ( fl. 1282/680), Rāzi also served as tutor for ʿAlā
al-Din Mohammad b. Tekish during his reign. As Griffel notes (338), however, Shahrazuri’s
chronology of Rāzi’s life differs from all other historians (see also Pourjavady, 556).

of the poet’s devotion [being] the prince, and loss of his favor [being] the most
devastating of calamities” (Meisami 1996, 149–50). Here and elsewhere in the
poem, the form of the qasidat al-madh allows Rāzi to both appeal to his patron
and to advertise his own worth tactfully through the well-developed tradition
of courtly panegyric.
Verses extoling Nāser al-Din should not be understood as a record of his
historical greatness. Rather, the courtly panegyric takes as its subject a par-
ticular ruler, but praises an idealized monarch (Meisami 1987, 43–47; Meisami
1990, 41).18 Rāzi’s appellations for Nāser al-Din are representative of this ideal-
ization, as he names the crown prince the “Noble of the World” and “Sultan of
the Era” (l. 57). He writes:
(62) O Lord! Since the time of Alexander’s rule

No king has been like you, of any astral conjunction or age
(63) It is you who is like the heart of the world
All other great kings like arteries
(64) You are the perfection of rank, the essence of glory
Neither description nor declaration can reach the root of your
perfection
His praise of Nāser al-Din—an otherwise minor figure in the history of the
Khvārazmian Empire—verges on idolatry, as the ruler’s perfection reaches
such a degree to be ultimately ineffable.
The display of the poet’s erudition in the form of a boast ( fakhr) was
a similarly well-recognized aspect of the panegyric which was introduced as a
component of the madih under the Umayyads (Stetkevych 2002, 106). Rāzi’s
self-praise therefore should not be considered by the modern reader as a mere
show of arrogance (though he was known to possess this character trait19), but
rather as making use of this poetic form to advertise himself as a scholar and
intellectual of irreplaceable value to a once-patron. Having compared Nāser
al-Din to Alexander the Great, Rāzi subsequently insinuates that he may take
the place of Aristotle—the greatest philosopher instructing the greatest world
18 Eloquently encapsulating the standard description of the ruler (regardless of the particu-
lar object of the poet’s praise), Meisami writes (1996, 144) that at the center of the court
and of the qasida is the ideal ruler, “King of Kings, victorious, just, generous to his sub-
jects, ruthless to his foes, virtuous, pious, and enlightened. He demands and receives total
dedication and devotion—a devotion expressed both as admiration and as love.”
19 Ebn Abi Osaybiʿa relates (II, 23), for instance, that the judge Mohyi al-Din told him that
Rāzi “was haughty even in respect to kings.”

conqueror.20 The comparison becomes explicit in the following lines, in which

Rāzi writes:
(65) As long as the world has been devoid of Aristotle

I alone have raced and outstripped him
(66) Abu ʿAli (Ebn Sinā) would bow to my works
Compared to me, the wisdom of the Greeks appeared as nonsense
Rāzi employs the form of the panegyric to describe an idealized version of both
ruler and poet/philosopher. Certainly, Rāzi’s arrogance is evident, yet it also
plays into the form of the panegyric itself, of which both a display of the poet’s
erudition and excessive praise of an ideal ruler were standard components.
Rāzi’s employment of this form and its component of the boast ( fakhr)
also allows him to advertise his expansive abilities along with his appeal to be
brought back into the service of Nāser al-Din. The three first parts of the poem
are markedly difficult in their subject matter, and Rāzi implies that in-person
instruction would clarify the subject matter. He writes in l. 72 that he hopes
“that [his] utterance would be / a knot-loosener of all difficulties of those in
need.” The poem serves as an advertisement for his expansive capacities, and
Rāzi boasts that, in addition to philosophy, he excels in his knowledge of the
law, dialectics, and theology:
(67) If you wish to ask me questions regarding the science of Shariʿa

It is I who am the explainer of the sciences of Muhammad [Shāfiʿi] and
Noʿmān [Abu Hanifa]
(68) In the science of dialectics, a mountain is insignificant before me
In the science of rhetoric, [I am] like a thousand Sahbāns21
(69) If you argue the science of kalām and [theological] principles
I too am in command of the doctrines, an interpreter of creeds
Notably, despite following his father in adhering to the Shafiʿi school of law—
which, by Rāzi’s time, had aligned with Ashʿari kalām (Madelung, 28)—Rāzi
writes that he is able to explain both the Hanafi and Shafiʿi schools of law with
no clear preference in the poem. Given the widespread support for the Hanafi
20 Given his relationship with Aristotle, Alexander the Great is a particularly astute choice
in Rāzi’s madih, but was also routinely used as a hero of old with whom the ruler was
compared in Ghaznavid and Saljuq court poetry (Tetley, 5).
21 Sahbān Vāʾel was an orator and poet of legendary rhetorical ability in early Islamic Arabia.
It became a common phrase to boast that one was “more eloquent (ablagh) than Sahbān”
(Fahd).

school of law in the region and the often violent conflict between the two
schools of law, Rāzi’s ambiguous allegiance is markedly strategic.22 This claim
bespeaks a degree of desperation on the part of the author. Rāzi likely penned
this panegyric before his fortunes changed, and the poem throughout is tell-
ing of his precarious position—he both expresses utter conviction in his own
worth as a scholar, and entreats the ruler that his intellect may serve in what-
ever capacity the ruler desires.
This emphasis on scholarly erudition offers us additional insight into what
was desired of an intellectual employed at court in Khorasan. Rāzi is writing in
praise of both the depth and breadth of his own learning, assuring Nāser al-Din
that he can serve him not only as an expert in falsafa as evidenced by the previ-
ous sections of the poem, but also as a scholar with a foundation in the arts of
rhetoric and theology as well as both of the schools of law at play in the region.
The assertion is instructive both regarding Rāzi’s capacities and the desires
of the ruler to which the claim is directed, a perfect example of the ways in
which such esoteric subjects, including the continued study of falsafa and,
22 From the tenth century onwards, the Shafiʿi and Hanafi law schools rivaled each other
such that they were known as “the two factions ( fariqān)” (Madelung, 26). While the Shafiʿi
law school and Ashʿari thought gained recognition in Khurāsān under the Saljuqs (in part
through the Nezāmiyya schools), they remained suspect in the western Islamic provinces,
which favored the Hanafi and Hanbali schools of law. Only years before Rāzi was born, the
Saljuq state, the sultans of which had remained Hanafi despite the ʿAbbasid caliph’s adop-
tion of the Shafiʿi school of law, persecuted and expelled Shafiʿi scholars from Baghdad,
Ray, and Esfahan (Bosworth, 73). Further, “the attempt of the Saljuqs to establish Ḥanafism
everywhere as the official religion, giving preference to Ḥanafites in all religious and gov-
ernment appointments and patronage, led to a major clash between the Ḥanafite and the
Shāfiʿite communities in the major Iranian cities resulting in recurrent factional war and
extensive destruction in the later Saljūq and post-Saljūq age” (Madelung, 32). Anti-Shafiʿi
and anti-Ashʿari sentiments were widespread among the Turks in the region; around the
year 1170/565—when Rāzi was in his early twenties—the Shiʿi polemicist ʿAbd al-Jalil Rāzi
in Ray, Rāzi’s home town, wrote “to remind the Shāfiʿites that if one of them would be
questioned by a Turk in the market or the army camp concerning his beliefs he certainly
would not dare confess his Ashʿarism but would have recourse to taqiyya, precautionary
dissimulation” (ibid., 35). Factional violence between the Hanafi and Shafiʿi communities
continued throughout Rāzi’s lifetime; in 1200/596, for instance (ten years before Rāzi’s
death, and roughly ten years after the composition of the poem at hand), when Nezām
al-Molk Masʿud b. ʿAli, vizier of the Khvārazmshāh Tekish (who at that time was support-
ing the Shafiʿis) “built a mosque for the Shāfiʿite community in Marw which surpassed
the Ḥanafite mosque in height … the Ḥanafites, led by the rāʾis Shaykh al-Islām, burnt
it down, causing rioting to ensue between the two factions” (ibid., 36). The rivalry was
so severe in such towns as Ray and Nishapur, in fact, that “the factional feuding … had
already reduced some of the major towns of Iran to ruin before the Mongols invaded the
country to complete the devastation” (ibid., 37).

in particular, the Avicennian tradition, thrived because of the support of the

ruling elites.
‫فى المنطق والطّبيعى والالهى ومدح‬
‫السلطان‬
Text and Translation: Fakhr
al-Din Rāzi, “On Logic, Physics,
and Metaphysics, and Praise
of the Sultan”23
The First Part: On Logic ‫الفصل الاول فی المنطقيات‬

‫ل ن‬ ّ ‫ن‬ ‫گن‬
� ‫�� ش��ت��ه � ��سر��د ن��س و ع�ا م ن��ا‬
1 O! having surpassed the bound- � ‫ات�ا‬
ary between the body and the ‫م‬
world of the spirit ( jān)
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
and O! having arrived at the � ‫و ت�ا ��ت��د ه ن��ه ا �وا � ع�ا لم �عر��ا‬
lights of the world of ʿerfān
‫ؤ‬
2 I will inquire into the intrica- ‫� ��ت��ا �تت� ��سوا ل ن�وا �ه ك‬
‫�رد‬ ‫��لا ت‬ ‫ن �ش‬
� ��‫م‬ �
‫م‬
cies of truths
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
By the aid of the Creator, by the � ‫ن��ه �عو� �م ن��دع ا ش��ت��ا و �ح�� ت� ت�رد ا‬
mercy of God
‫ت ت‬ ‫ش‬ ّ ‫گ ت‬
3 Tell me: what is conception �‫�و�ى ��صو� چ��ه ن�ا ��س�د و ��ص�د �ت‬ � �‫�مرا ن‬
(tasavvor), and what is assent
(tasdiq)? ّ
‫گن‬ �‫�مرا ن��نر د ه ا ن� ��د ع��ل و ن‬
Inform me of the limit (hadd)24 ‫��ل و م‬
�‫�ا‬
of knowledge, ignorance, and ‫م‬
supposition! ّ
‫ت‬
4 Of definition, description, ‫ن� ��د و ��س و �مش��ا ل و �ت��ا ��س و ا ��ت��ت��را‬
‫م‬
example, analogy, and
induction
23 My primary reference is the printed version of the poem published in Pourjavady’s Du

mojadded (idem, 560–64). I have also made recourse to the two manuscripts to which
Pourjavady refers in producing my translation, namely: (1) Min maqālāt Fakhr al-Din
al-Rāzi (Rāzi n.d.), MS. Princeton University Library (Princeton), Garrett no. 3559Y, n.d.,
which is missing the fourth section in praise of Nāser al-Din; and (2) Qasida (dar fal-
safa va manteq) (Rāzi 2002/1381), facsimile in Safina-ye Tabriz, Tehran, 2002, pp. 304–5.
The Safina-ye Tabriz, often referred to as “The Treasury of Tabriz,” is a fourteenth-century
Persian manuscript containing 209 works on a range of subjects in both Arabic and
English. The version of the poem preserved in the Safina is fully extant, including the
final section on praise of the sultan, and is the primary manuscript to which Pourjavady
referred in producing his transcription in Du mojadded (consulting, too, the Princeton
manuscript).
24 Hadd denotes both limit and definition. Given the arch of the poem, moving from what
Rāzi terms “the sciences of certainty” to an explicit acknowledgement of the limits of the
intellect, I have chosen to translate the word as “limit.”

‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
Rhetoric, dialectic, poetics, � ‫��ط�ا ن� ت� و ن��د ل و �ش�س�عر و ش��ن�� ت� و ن�ر�ه�ا‬
sophism (shobhat), and dem-
onstration (borhān) ّ ‫ن‬
‫نؤ‬ ‫ح گ‬
5 Of subject and predicate, pray � �
‫�و�ى و �ك�لى و ن رى‬ � �‫ن� و ن�ص و ��ل ن‬
‫ع‬
tell, of universal and particular ‫ؤ‬
‫ان‬ �‫ن�وا � �م�ا و �ه� و ا �ى و ل ن ن‬
Seek, and know, the answer to � ‫�و�ى و ن��د‬ ‫م‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ن‬
“what” and “whether,” “which”
and “why”
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ّ ‫ن ن ت � ن‬
�‫ن ن‬ �‫� ص‬ ‫ن ��م‬ �� ‫د ا � ع‬
‫� ى و ر ى و � ن ��س و �� ل و � وع‬
6 Of essential and accidental, of
genus, differentia, and species
‫ن‬ ‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن ن‬
Of property and accident— � ‫� ��ا �ص�ه و �عر�س ا�تس ��ص�ل �ا ن�ت��ا � ن�ت��ا‬
articulate this distinction!
ّ ‫ت‬
7 Which “what” stands for ‫��ه ��ا ت� �م��ت��ا ا �ى ن�ود‬
� �‫�� ا �م�ا �� ت‬ �
‫م م‬ ‫م‬
“which”?
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن ن‬ ّ
What “which” is unmarked by � ‫��ه �مرو �ا � ��ص�ل ��مت�� ت� � ش��ا‬ � ‫�� ا ا �ى‬
‫م‬
�
differentia?
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
8 Which species is real (haqiqi) �� ‫��ه ن��مت�� ت� �وع �م��ص�ا‬ � ‫�� ا �وع ��ت��ت��ت��ى‬ �
‫م‬
and not relative (mozāf)? ‫گ‬
‫�ش ت ن� ا � ن گ� ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫گ‬
Which kind of summum genus � ‫��ا‬ ‫�ون��ه ن��م��س ن�ر�ت نس �� و �س��ل‬ � �‫چ‬
‫ع‬
surpasses the lower species?
‫ش‬ ‫ت‬ ‫گ� � ت‬
9 Tell me, what is categorical and ‫��ه �ا چ��مت�� ح�� ت�ل�ى و ��سرطى‬ ‫�وى‬� �‫�مرا ن‬
hypothetical?
‫آن‬ ‫ن ت‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
Inform me of the state of this, � ‫�مرا ��نر د ه ا � ��ا ل ا�تس و ��م� ت� ا‬
and the division of that! ّ
‫ن‬ ‫گ‬
10 Tell, what is the limit of univer- ‫��سرك�لى و ن�رو�ى‬ � ‫�و�ى ت�ا چ��ه ن�ود‬ � �‫ن‬
sal and particular? ‫گ‬
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫� ن �م �� س�ا �� سن‬
And if you can speak of the � ‫�� نس ن��د ا �ى �ا‬ ‫و كر � و ن ن و ن‬
affirmative and the negative,
go on! ‫آ‬
11 The modes of the relation ‫س‬��
‫ن‬ ‫و‬ ‫�د‬
‫م‬ � ‫� � ن��ط �ت ن��ص�ات�ا چ�را ��س�ه ا‬
‫��ا ت‬
� �‫ن‬
between propositions—why
three, and no more? ‫گ‬
‫ا� � ن‬
One is necessity, the other � ‫��ا‬‫�ر ا�مت�م ن��ا و چ��س م‬
‫�ى و ن�و ن� و د ك‬
‫ت� ك‬
‫ع‬
impossibility, and, lastly, the
possible ‫ت‬
‫ت گ‬ ‫ت‬
12 What is equipollent (ʿodul) and � �‫��مت��ل ا ن��د � ��ن��مت��ه چ��مت�� ن‬
‫�و�ى‬ � ‫ع�د ول و‬
�
positive (tahsil) in that proposi-
tion, pray tell25
25 ʿOdul can also been translated as metathetic, and tahsil as determinate. In her translation
of the section “Logic” of Ebn Sinā’s Eshārāt, Inati translates al-ʿodul as “an equipollent

‫ن ن ن‬ �‫�وا �م�د ا � � ن ن‬
It is not right to remain igno- � ‫ن�م�ا �ى و �ا د ا‬
‫��ه ع�ا �ل‬
rant, to not know!
13 Three are absolute, and four are ‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ �‫��س�ه �م��ط��ل ت� ا �� ت� و چ‬
‫��ا � ا �� مم��س‬
possible, dear student26 �� ‫ا � ط�ا‬
‫� ان‬
‫د‬
‫ش گ‬
‫ك‬ ‫�س‬� �� ‫ا‬
��‫م‬� � ‫س‬ ‫ش��ىش�� ا ��ن�� ت ت��س ن‬
There are six in the category � ‫رو� ى ن س ر ر‬ � � ‫س‬
of “necessary”—don’t be
‫م‬
confounded!
‫نت ن‬
14 The contradiction of an abso- �‫��ت��س �م��ط��ل ت� ع�ا مى د وا م ��س�ل� ن� و�ى ا �� ت‬
lute universal proposition is
always its negation27
‫ن‬
The contradiction of abso- ‫ن��ت��ت�� ن��س �م��ط��ل ت� ن��ا ��ى د وا ��ر د و ك‬
� ‫�را‬ ‫م‬
lute particulars are ever both
extremes
‫ش ت‬ ‫ت ن‬ ‫نت ن‬
15 The contradiction of an ‫��ت��س �م��ط��ل� ��ا ��ى ن��ه �ن�م�� ر د و‬
absolute particular affirmative �‫و ن�و ن‬
proposition are both necessary
‫�گ ن‬
The contradiction of the uni- � ‫�ر �م�ا‬ ‫ن��ت��ت�� ن��س مم�� نس ع�ا مى ت� ك‬
‫�ى و دت� ك‬
versal possible proposition, one
and the other remains
‫ش‬ ‫تن‬ ‫ن‬
16 Of the conversions of the ‫� �ع��ا �ى ��ص�ات�ا �ى ح��لى و ��سرطى‬
categorical and hypothetical
propositions
‫ن ن‬ ‫ك �ن‬ ‫ن‬
Explain to me the condition � ‫�ت�� ن�ر �م� نس �وا‬‫� ��ا ل ��ر ت��ك د � م و‬
of each one in quantity and
quality!
‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬
17 Of the conversion of the ‫� �ع��س �م��ط��ل� ع�ا مى و ��س�ا �� ن� ��ا ��ى‬
general absolute and the nega-
tive particular
‫ن‬ ‫ن آن‬ ‫ن‬
Be as clear as the sun in its � ‫ن�� نس ن�ت��ا �ى چ�و� ا �ت��ا ن� د � لم��ع�ا‬
shining!
proposition” and defines it as a proposition “in which either the subject, the predicate,
or both are composed of a simple positive expression and a negative particle.” The tahsil,
alternatively, she translates as “positive,” meaning “‘real,’ in the sense of ‘existent.’ But the
term is extended to mean any affirmative simple expression. Thus ‘blind’ which indicates
a privation of being is taken to be a positive expression” (Ebn Sinā, 83).
26 The word for “student” in Arabic and Persian (tāleb) may also be read as “seeker.” In this
case, the word could be translated either way; Rāzi is addressing the reader as his student
and as a seeker of truth.
27 See the fifth method of Ebn Sinā’s “Logic” in the Eshārāt (idem, 107–9).

‫آ‬
18 Why is it that in the compara- �� ‫�د‬
‫م‬ � �‫��ل ا �ت�مت��ه چ‬
‫��ا � ا و ن س‬ � ‫��ه �ش�س‬
� ‫چ�را‬
tive figure, four came, and no
more?28
‫ت آ ن‬
Point out the state of each with � ‫ن�� نس ن��ه ��ا �� ت� ��ر ت��ك ا �ش�س�ا � �ى ا ��س�ا‬
ease!
‫ؤ‬
19 Why is the negative particular �‫��ل � نا�ع د و‬ � ‫چ�را �� ت� ��س�ا �� ن� ن� نر �ى ن� �ش�س‬
far from the fourth figure?
‫ن‬ �‫چ�را �� ت� �مو ن�� ن� ك�ل ن��ر چ‬
Why is the universal affirmative � ‫��ا � �وا‬ ‫ى‬
active in each of the four? ‫گ‬
‫ت‬ ‫ن ع��ل �م ن��ط ت ��ك � ش‬
20 Only one difficulty remains in �‫�ر ن�ا ��مت�� ت‬ � ��‫م‬
‫��ل د ك‬ ‫� م �ت‬
the science of logic:
‫گ � ن� ت � ن ت ن ا ت � ن‬
Tell of the distinction between � ‫��ا‬ �� ‫�وى ر� مت��ا � ت��ت��س و‬ � �‫ن‬
certain demonstration, and the
agreed upon!
The Second Part: On Physics ‫الفصل الثانی فی الطبيعي ّات‬

‫�تس ن گ‬
21 Of the part that does not subdivide, ‫�و�ى ��م نر�ى چ� ن��د‬ � �‫ن� ن� نرء لا ت ن�ر�ى ن‬
some riddles tell ‫ن گ‬
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
in which understanding and � ‫�� ت� و ن��ا‬ ‫�ش‬ � ‫��ه و�ه و �� د �و �ت��ره‬
‫م‬ ‫�س� ن م‬
imagination were confounded, � ‫چت��ا‬
and mind ( jān) perplexed ‫چ‬
22 As the right side of the part is ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
‫ت�مت��س ن�رء چ�و عت��س �ت��ا � ا و ��نود‬
not the same as its left
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫�� نا��ت��ا � ش‬
Its division is thus without � ‫م��س ن�ى ع�ا ت� ت� ا �� ت� و ن�ى چ�ات�ا‬ ‫چس‬
limit or end ‫گ تگ‬
‫ن‬ ‫�� ن‬
23 And if you say that nothing is �‫��ه �ود �ه��ت��چ� چ�ت�� نر ��ا �سر ن��مت�� ت‬ ‫�ر �و �وتى‬ ‫وك‬
present in itself
‫ت� ا ن � � گ ن ت آ ن‬ ‫گ‬
How may its passing be judged? � ‫�� ش�س�� نس ا‬
� ‫� و � كرد ن ّر‬ ‫�ون��ه � ك‬ ��
24 And as its nonexistence is con- ‫م��س �مت��ص�ل�ه�مى ن��ه و ن�ود‬ ‫چ � ن� � دم ع�د � ش‬
‫و چ و نو‬
nected entirely with existence ‫آ‬ ّ
‫ن‬ ‫ن تت‬ ‫ن‬ ‫آن‬
Then time is composed of the � ‫� ن� �ش�س�د ا � ��ا لى ا‬ � ‫چ��س ا � ن��م�ا � �مت��ر‬
succession of the time-instant
‫� ممت�م ن�� ن��نود‬ ‫� ن ت�ت��ا ل اآن�ا ت‬
25 And as the succession of time-
‫ع‬ ‫و چ و� ى‬
instants is not impossible
28 In fact, neither Aristotle nor Avicenna posited a fourth figure in syllogistic logic. Rather,
the fourth figure was developed in the later Arabic tradition, with the earliest Arabic
thinker to posit it being Ebn al-Sari (d. 1153). Rāzi, and later, his student Khunaji (1194–
1248), endorsed the fourth figure (El-Rouayheb, 75).

There can be no disputing29 the

‫ن‬
30� ‫ن�ت�وا‬ ‫� نر�ى نم‬
�‫��ا د �� ت‬ ‫ن� ن� نرء لا ت�تنس‬
part that does not subdivide
‫� ن �م�ا ن� �� ت��ه ا �� ت� اآ ن� ط ن� ش‬ ‫گ‬
26 And if time is contiguous, and ‫ر س‬�� ‫و‬ ‫ا كر � چتو‬
that is its part
‫ن‬ ّ ‫تن‬ ‫�ن‬ ‫د و ن��ن�� م‬
Then there are two pure � ‫��س �ش�س�د ��س�م��د ��ر د و �مت��ص�لا‬ ‫ى‬
negations, each of the two
connected ‫گ نن ن ن ن گ‬
27 If it is the case that time con- ‫��ت��ه ن�ود‬
� ‫�ر چ��ا ��ك ��م�ا � چ��د �ى‬
‫اك‬
sists in broken units
‫ن تت آن ن‬ ‫تگ‬
Then the succession of time- � ‫�� ت� ن��ه ن�ر�ه�ا � ��ا ��ى ا �ا‬
‫�ش‬� �� ‫د‬
instants is demonstrably true
‫ت‬ ‫ؤ ت‬
28 A void is determined, and �‫ن��لا �م��د � و ��ر چ� ا و �م��د � ا �� ت�ك ا �� ت‬
whatever is determined is
‫م‬
quantifiable
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
And whatever is quantifiable � ‫و ��ر چ��هك ن�ود ا و �ود �م�لا �� ت� ن�ى ن��ت��ا‬
itself is undoubtedly filled
‫م‬
29 A void is here filled, according
‫ت‬ � ‫� �ش�س‬
‫��ل �ت��ا ��س‬ ‫�ك‬�‫��ا ن‬‫ن��لاؤ �م�لا ن�ود ا ت� نس‬
‫ن‬
‫م‬ ‫م‬
to the form of the syllogism
‫ن �ه م � ن‬ ‫ن نت ؤ‬
What a false conclusion! What � ‫��هى ��م��ت�� ن��ه ن�ا ط�ل � ى ��ا ل عت��ا‬
a manifest impossibility! ‫ن گ‬
30 What is the proof that the ‫و ��سرد ن��ه ا ن��د‬ ‫ر‬� � �‫د ��ت��ل چ��مت�� ت‬
‫��ه ا ��لا ك ك‬
‫م‬
spheres are neither hot nor
cold
‫ن نگ‬ ّ
Neither moist nor dry, nor � �� ‫ن��ه ت�ر و ن� ش��ك و ��ه‬
‫�ت�� نس و ن��ه ��ن��ك ن��ه‬
colorful, neither light nor ‫گ ن‬
� ‫�را‬
‫ك‬
heavy
‫ت ن‬ ‫ن ن‬ ‫ن ن ش ن‬
31 Elaborate on the rotation of the ‫ن�ت��ا � ن��نم��س و�ص�عى ن��س � �ا ه ت��ت��س‬
planets around their axes in the
manner of certainty
‫تت ن‬ ‫ن مّ گ‬ ‫ن‬
Elaborate on the description of � ‫�و ن�ا ��س�مت��ا‬� �‫ن�ت��ا � و�ص� ��د د ن‬
the spheres—be sure!
32 What is the proof that there are �‫كا ن� چ‬
‫��ا � ن��مت ش��س ن��ه ا ن��د‬ � �‫د ��ت��ل چ��مت�� ت‬
� � ‫��ه ا‬
four essential [elements], and
no more?
29 There is here a discrepancy between the printed edition and the manuscripts. The printed
edition (Pourjavady) transcribes “mojāvazat” (exceeding, forgiving). The Princeton manu-
script (Rāzi n.d.), however, clearly notes “mojādalat” (disputing), and the second manuscript
(Rāzi 2002/1381), while separating the final two letters, seems to agree.
30 I differ from Pourjavady in interpreting both Rāzi n.d. and 2002/1381 to read mojādalat
rather than mojāvazat.

‫��س ا � ن ا ن‬
Inform us of the definition and � � ‫� نس ا ن� ��د و � م تس‬
� ‫كا‬ �� ‫�مرا ن��نر‬
description of these essentials!
‫ت ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
33 Give proof that generation and ‫�و� و ��ا د‬ � �� ‫��ه ن�ر�ت ش��ا � �وا‬ � ‫�و‬ � ‫د ��ت��ل‬
decay are permissible for them
‫آن‬ ‫ن‬
Show well that their transfor- � ‫ن��ه �م� نس �م�ا �ى �وا ن�ود ا ��ت��ا �� ت� ا‬
mation is permissible
‫�ن �ه گ ن‬ ‫ن‬
� ‫ن� ن��ن��س ن�ا ط��ت��ه ا �ش�س‬
34 I will not discuss the intricacies �‫�� ت‬
� ‫��ا ��ا �وا‬
‫م‬
of the rational soul ‫گ‬
‫ن ن � ت �ن ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫� ش�� ك ت‬
Hear by the ear of wisdom, � ‫�وا‬ ‫�� ن� ش��و ن��ه ��ط ع��ل ن‬ ‫ن��ه �و س‬
recite by the utterance of the
intellect ‫ؤ‬ ‫گ‬
35 Tell, what is signified by the ‫م��ا � ا ��ت��ه ��ن�� ن��ط ا ن�ا‬
‫��ه ��م�� ت� � ش‬
‫�و � چ ت‬� �‫ن‬
utterance “I”
‫ن ن‬ ‫ّ تت‬
Bring forth the true definition � ‫ن�ت��ا � ��د ��ت��ى ن�و��ر ا ��ا‬
for the essence of the human
being!
‫ت‬ ‫ت‬ ‫گن‬
36 A sage proclaimed it as an � ‫��ه ا و ن�و��ر ت�� ن�ى �م��د ا‬ � �‫�� ت‬
� ‫��ت�س‬
essence without extension
‫م‬
‫�ً �ه� ا � ن � ّ� ش ن‬
Mover of all of the limbs, man- �‫مرك ��ه ع��ص�ا م�د ن ر ن��ما‬
ager of the body
‫ت‬ ‫ن ت‬ ‫ش ن ت‬
37 Formation of essence and attri- ‫��د و� د ا � و �ص��ا � و ن��ا �ى ن�و��ر ا و‬
butes, abiding of substance
‫ن ن‬ ّ
Its return after “all upon [earth] � ‫كل �م� نس ع�ل�ت��ا ��ا‬ � ‫�م�ع�ا د ا و ن� چ��س‬
will perish”31
‫ن‬ ّ ‫� ت ت ن‬
38 Seek the truths of these spiri- ‫�و ��ا �ت� ا�تس ��سر�ه�ا �ى �و��ا �ى‬ ‫نن‬
tual secrets
‫ن‬ ‫ؤ ن ت‬ ‫� ت‬
So that you may find the means � ‫��ه �ا ن�ت��ا ن�ى ��سر�م�ات��ه ن��ا � و ا�م�ا‬
of peace and salvation!
The Third Part: On Metaphysics ‫الفصل الثالث فى الالهي ّات‬

39 Since the course of the intel-
‫ن‬
‫�� ش�� ت‬ ‫ش‬ ‫تّ ت ت ن ن ت‬
lectual faculty has passed over 32� � ‫�عر��س‬ �‫چ�و ��ست��ر �و� �ع��لى � �و‬
the Throne
Now enter the court of the ‫ن ن آ‬
‫ّ ن‬ ‫گ‬
Originator, the Conqueror � � ‫��و� د �ا �ى ن��ه د‬
� ‫كا ه �مو ن��د د ت�ا‬ �
31 A reference to Qurʾan 55:26.

32 I differ from Pourjavady in reading this line as fowq rather than farq. Rāzi n.d. clearly
states “fowq,” and while Rāzi 2002/1381 appears to read “farq,” fowq seems, to me, to be
more semantically appropriate.

‫آن‬
40 All that is a body is contingent ‫ن��س ن�ود مم�� نس ا �و ن�ود ن�ود‬ �‫��ر ا چ‬
‫م‬ �
of existence
‫ّ� � ت ن ت اآ ن �� ن‬
The preponderance of which � ‫�مرن� م�ع��ول ��مت�� ن �ا‬ ‫��ه ن�تى‬
�
is inconceivable without a
perponderator ‫آ ن ّ� گ‬
41 Thus, if that preponderator is �‫� ت��ا ن�� ت‬
�‫�ر مم�� نس ا �� ت‬
‫م‬ ‫چ��س ا � �مرن ا ك‬
�
contingent, then it is in need ّ ‫گ‬
‫�ن‬ ‫� ت �ن‬
Each one being a cause to the � ‫��ا‬ � ‫��ا‬
�‫ن��ه ت‬ �‫�ى ن��ه د كر ع��ل�ى ت‬‫و ��ر ت� تك‬
other, one to the next ‫ؤ‬
42 And the source of all is indeed ‫و �م ن��د ا �ه��ه ن�ود وا ن�� ن� ا �و ن�ود ن�ود‬
the Necessary of Existence
‫ن‬ ‫ن ت‬
As both infinite regress and cir- � ‫چ�و ن�ا ط��ل�� ت� ن�ر�ه�ا � ��ل��ل و د و�ا‬
cularity are demonstrably false
‫ت ن ت نّ ت‬ ‫ن‬
43 And as the necessity of exis- ‫و چ�و� و ن�و ن� و ن�ود �� ع�� عر� ا و‬
tence is a quality of His glory
‫� ن نّه ا ت ن ا� � ن ن نّ ن ش ن‬
He is above contingency, above � ‫��ا � �م��ره ا � ��د �ا‬ ‫م��ر �� م‬
temporal origination
ّ
44 He is above intellectual and ‫ت‬ �‫�م ن�� نره ا �� ت� ن� ت�ر‬
‫�ت�م� ن� �ع��لى و ��ى‬
sensory composition
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬ ّ‫ن ن‬
Beyond being grasped by the � ‫�م��ره ا �� ت� � ا د �ا ك �ع��ل و ��ا طر ن��ا‬
intellect and the musings of the
soul ّ‫ت‬
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
45 Too holy for day and night, for �‫� ��ت��ل و ��ا � و ��س�ا �ع� ت‬ �‫�م��د ��س ا �� ت‬
timely measure ‫ن‬
�‫و ّ�و‬
‫نش‬ ‫ن ش‬ ‫ت‬
Too holy as well for the divine ‫�هم ا � �عر��س و �ر��س و ن��ا و‬ �‫�م��د ��س ا �� ت‬
‫� �ن‬
throne (ʿarsh) and outspread � ‫م��ا‬
earth ( farsh), place and space ّ ‫آ‬
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
46 He is beyond definition, genus, ‫��ه و�ا ��د و ن��م��س و ��ص�ل ن�ود‬ � �‫ن�ر�ى ا ن� ا ن‬
and species
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن ن ّ ننّ ش‬
Beyond contrary and like, and a � ‫ن�ر�ى � �ص�د و ��د و ��سر�ت�ك د � �ر�م�ا‬
partner in command
‫ت ت‬ ‫ش‬ ‫تن ّ ت‬
47 Changes in occurrences are ‫��عت��را � �وا د � د ��ت��ل ��د �� ا و‬
proof of His power
‫تت ن‬ ‫ن ن‬
Surely, the proof of His knowl- � ‫ص��س ا ��م ن��ا �� ع�ل ن�ا لا ��ا‬‫د �� ع�ل� ش‬
‫تل‬
edge is the varieties of action
‫كا ه ��ر د و ت� ك‬ � ‫�وه و‬� ‫� او‬ ‫��ه ��م ش�� ت�د ت‬
48 Before His power, mountains ‫�ى‬ � ‫ن چت س‬
and straw are as one
Before His power, elephants ّ
‫ن ن‬ ‫ت ت‬
and gnats are alike � ‫ن��ه چ��مت ش��س ��د �� ا و چ�ت��ل و چ� ش��ه ن�ر ت��ك �وا‬

‫ؤ‬ ‫ن‬
49 He makes without the prec- ‫�ه�مى ن��ا �د ن�ى �� تن� ا �ت��ما ��س و ��سوا ل‬
edent of request and demand
‫ن ن‬ ‫ت ن نن‬ ‫ن‬
He knows without interpreter, � ‫�ه�مى ن��د ا ��د ن�ى �ر نح��ا � و ��ط و � ش��ا‬
utterance, and sign ‫گ‬
50 From the light of His wisdom, a ‫�� ت� ا و ��ن�� ت� نره ��ع�ل �ش�س�د ه‬ ‫ن� ن�و� � �ك‬
pebble becomes a gem ‫آ‬
‫ن‬ ‫ؤ ن ت ؤ‬
Pearls made manifest from � ‫چ��د ت��د ا �م�د ه �و� ؤو � ��طره ن�ا �ا‬
drops of rain
51 By a singular, eternal knowl-
‫ن‬
‫� و � وا ل‬ ‫��ه ع��ل ا ��د �ا �ت�م�� ت� � ��د ش‬
‫نى و‬ ‫ن مو ون ت‬
edge, without origination or
perishing
‫ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
Knowing all without error, � ‫�ه��ه ن��د ا � ن�ى ��و و ش��ن�� ت� و ��ت��ا‬
doubt, or forgetfulness
52 From clouds of goodness and ‫��ا ن� ن�وا ل مى ن�ا �د‬ ‫ن� ا ن�ر ن�ود و ��س‬
fortune, there rain ‫گن‬
‫ن‬ ‫ت‬
Drops of His forgiveness upon � ‫��ه‬
� ‫كا �ا‬ � ‫ن�ش��ا � �م ن�ع��ن��ر� ش��س ن�ر �ه��ه‬
all sinners
‫ن‬ ‫نت‬ ‫��ه ت��د ت ن‬
53 By the eternal power, in accor- ‫� ا � لى ن�ر و��ا � ع��ل ا �ل‬ � ‫ن‬
dance with eternal knowledge ‫م‬
‫ن‬ ‫� ن� � ن‬
He created the world and mani- � ‫�رد �وا‬ ‫نت��ا ر�ت�د ن‬
‫��ا � و چ��د ت��د ك‬
fested the soul (ravān)
54 From the light of His glory, the ‫� ا و چ� ش��س �ع��ت��ل ن�ت��ره �ش�س�د ه‬ ‫ن ن� �ع ن ت‬
‫م‬ ‫� و� ر‬
mind’s eye was confounded
‫ن نت ن‬ ‫ن ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬
From fear of His power, the � ‫� ن�تسم ��طو� ا و ن��ا � �ت��ا د ه د � ��ا‬
soul fell in trembling
The Fourth Part: On Praise ‫الفصل الرابع فى مدح السلطان‬

of the Sultan
‫ت ن‬ ‫گ‬
55 I have revealed the secrets of ‫�ش��ا ه ك‬
‫�رد ه ا م ا ��سرا � ع�ل�ص��ا �ى ت��ت��س‬ �
the sciences of certainty
‫ن ن‬ ّ‫ن ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
By the aid of God’s mercy and � ‫ن��ه �عو� �ح�� ت� ت�رد ا � و �ر �ش�س�ا ه ��م�ا‬
the glory of the King of the Age
‫ت‬
56 The sky of mercy, the sea of jus- � ‫�وه و��ا‬ � ‫�ل�ما ء �ح�� ت� و د �ت�ا �ى ع�د ل و‬
tice, the mountain of majesty
‫� ن گ� ن � ن‬ ‫� ن ت‬
The world of the abstracted ‫��ا � �ع��ل نمرد ��د تا��ا � ن‬
� ‫��ا‬ ‫ن‬
intellect, the great lord of the
world
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
57 Noble of the World, Sultan of ‫�ع��طتسم ع�ا لم و ��س��ل��ط�ا � د و� �ا �سر د�تس‬
the Era, Nāser-e Din

‫ن‬
Malekshāh b. Tekish, Crown- ��‫�ن ش��س �م�ل�ك ت‬
� ‫كا‬ �‫�� ت�ا ن ن‬‫�م�ل�ك �ش�س�ه ا � ن ت�� ش‬
� ‫نس س‬
Bestower, King of Great Kings ‫ش نّگ‬ ‫ن‬
58 From the light of the glory � ‫��ت��ه چ�و‬
‫�وه‬ ‫�ش‬� ‫ن� ن�و� � ّر �م�ع�ا �ل�مت��س د �ه‬
of his highness, an atom has
become like a mountain
‫ن‬ ‫آ ن‬ ‫ت ت‬ ‫ن‬
From the smiling of his exalted � ‫��س ��ر ��ع�ا �ل�مت ش��س ا �ل�ما� �ت��را‬
‫� ن� مت‬
conquest, the sky is bedazzled
‫ّ ت‬ ‫ن ت‬
59 By the knowledge of �‫ن��ه ع��لم ا ح��د �مر��س�ل ن��ه �ص��و� �ص�د �ت‬
Mohammad the messenger,
sent to the chosen, the faithful
‫�ن ت � ش ن‬
By the veneration of ʿOmar, and �‫ع�ما‬ �‫ن��ه �هت��ن�م� ت� �ع�مر و ن�ا ��س�ا و‬
the generosity of ʿOthmān
‫�ه‬ ‫ت ت‬
60 By the dignity, rank, and purity ‫ن��ه ن��ا ه و ��ن�م�� و چ�اكى و ن�ود � �� چ�و ع��لى‬
of the likes of ʿAli
‫ح�� ت ا � ن ن ت ن‬ ‫ن‬
By the benevolence, mercy, and � ‫��ا � �ت�ا د � ا‬ ‫ن��ه ��طن�� و � � و‬
beneficence beyond even � ‫��س�ل�ص�ا‬
Salmān33
‫ن‬ ‫ن ت‬
61 Never-ending arrows from the ‫��ا م ن�ا �مت�م ن��ا �هى � �و��ا �ى ��ل�ك‬
arches of the sphere
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ش‬
Aimed at his enemy like rain � ‫�رد ه چ�و� ن�ا �ا‬ ‫ن��ه ن� ن�م� ن� د �ل�م� نس ا و ��ص�د ك‬
62 O Lord! Since the time of ‫ن‬ ‫ن��د ا�گ� ن ن‬
� ‫��ا��ا ا � �ع��د د و� ا ��س��د‬ ‫ت‬
Alexander’s rule
‫�ت ا ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬
No king has been like you, of � ‫��نود �ه� �� چ�و �و �ش�س�ا �هى ن��ه �ه��ت��چ� د و� و ر‬
any astral conjunction or age
‫ش‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ت� � � ّ � ن‬
63 It is you who is like the heart of ‫��ا � �ا ن��ا � د ل ��س�د ه ا �ى‬ ‫كل ن‬ � ‫ونى ��ه‬
the world ‫ن گ‬
‫ن ش ن‬
All other great kings like � ‫�ر د � �مش��ا ل چ�و� ��سرت�ا‬ ‫و ن��سروا � د ك‬
arteries
‫ت‬ ‫ؤت‬ ‫ت‬
64 You are the perfection of rank, ‫�ا ل ن��ا ه �و و �م�ات��ه ��ع�ا لى �و‬ ‫م‬
the essence of glory ‫آ‬
‫ن ن ت ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫��ه � ن ن ن‬
Neither description nor dec- � ‫��ه ا � �ر��س�د ��ه ن�ت��ا � و ��ه �ن�مت��ا‬ ‫ن‬
laration can reach the root of
your perfection
‫ت ت‬ ‫��ه ت�ا ن ا ��ط � ن ش‬ ‫ن‬
65 As long as the world has been ‫�مسم � � � و ن‬
‫��ا � ��س�د �� هى‬
devoid of Aristotle
33 Salmān “the Persian” (Salmān al-Fārisi) was a semi-legendary figure said to be one of the
companions of Mohammad who was appointed by ʿAli to be the first governor of Fars
after the fall of the Sasanians. Salmān represents the proto-Persian conversion to Islam,
and legends surrounding his figure include the Prophet’s foretelling that the Persians will
form the better part of the wider Muslim community (Levi Della Vida).

‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫� ن‬

I alone have raced and � ‫��ى ��نرد ن ن�ر �م� نس ا � و ��ن��ا � و ��ه�ا‬
outstripped him ‫ن‬
66 Abu ʿAli (Ebn Sinā) would bow ‫��د‬ ‫� �مرا ن�و ع��ل �� نس‬
� ‫�ود‬ ‫�م��منّ�� ن��ا ت‬
‫ى‬
to my works ‫ن نگ‬
‫ن ن‬
Compared to me, the wisdom � ‫�� ت� �تو�ا‬
‫�� ت� � �ك‬‫�ش‬� � ‫ن��ه چ��مت ش��س �م� نس �ه�د ت�ا‬
of the Greeks appeared as
nonsense ‫ؤ ن‬ ‫ش ت‬ ‫گ ن‬
67 If you wish to ask me questions ‫�ر � ع��لم ��سر�ت�ع�� مرا ��سوا ل��ى‬ ‫اك‬
regarding the science of Shariʿa
‫ّ ن ن‬ ‫ن‬
It is I who am the explainer of �‫�مسم �م ن��ت�� نس ع��ل محمد و ��عما‬
the sciences of Mohammad ‫م‬
[Shafiʿi] and Noʿmān [Abu
Hanifa]
‫ن ن‬ ‫��ه �ت� ت� ع��ل ��د ل � ش‬
68 In the science of dialectics, ‫�وه چ��مت��س �م� نس �ا چ�ت��ر‬ ‫م ن‬ ‫ن و‬
a mountain is insignificant
before me
‫ن� ت �� ن ا � ن ��س ن‬ ‫ت‬
In the science of rhetoric, [I � ‫� ن��ا‬ �‫ن�و و�� ت� ع��ل ��ط�ا ن�� ر � چ و‬
am] like a thousand Sahbāns34 ‫م‬
‫ش ن‬ ‫� ن‬‫گ‬
69 If you argue the science ‫ى‬ �
��
� ‫ن‬ ‫ل‬‫و‬‫ص‬� ‫ا‬ ‫و‬ ‫ا‬
‫ل‬ ‫ك‬
� ‫ع‬
‫��ل‬ � ‫ر‬‫اك‬
‫م م‬
of kalām and [theological]
principles
‫ن‬ ‫ن ت ت‬
I too am in command of the � ‫�مسم �م��ر� ا �وا ل و �ش�س�ا �� ا د ت�ا‬
doctrines, an interpreter of
creeds
‫گ‬ ‫ن ن‬ ‫ت� ن� د ا ن ا � ن‬
70 Vaunt not possessing all these � ‫تس �ه��ه ا �واع � ن��ص�ل �ه��ت��چ �م‬
‫�ت��ر‬ � ‫و و‬
�
forms of learning
‫� ن هؤ � ت ت� گ ت ن ت ن‬ ‫گ‬
For haven’t I been chosen by � ‫ن��ه �م� نس كر�ت�د ع��ل و‬
� ‫�ش��س ا � ا �را‬
your intellect above my peers?
‫م‬
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ن ن‬ ‫گن‬
71 As you have chosen me, do not ‫�ر�ت�د �ى ن�ا �م د ��ت��ل و �وا � �م��س‬ ‫چ�و ن�ر ك‬
humiliate me again
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫نن ن‬ ‫ن ن‬
Having summoned me in � ‫چ�و �وا ��دت�م ن��ه �عر�تر�ى � چ��مت ش��س �و�ت ش��س �مرا‬
endearment, drive me not from
your side
ُ‫ن‬
72 It is my hope that my utterance ‫��ه ��ن�� ن��ط‬
‫�م� نس ن�ا �ش�س�د‬ � ‫�مرا ا�مت��د چ� ن��ا � ن��د‬
would be ‫گ گ‬
‫ن‬ ‫��لا ت‬
a knot-loosener of all difficul- � ‫� ت��ا ن��ا‬
‫م‬� ‫�ش��ا � �ه��ه � ش‬
� ��‫م‬ ‫�ره � ى‬ ‫ك‬
ties of those in need
‫ن‬ ‫�ن ن‬
73 Oh Sultan, it is now the case �‫ك نا��د � د و �م�ا ه ت��ك ��س�ا �ع� ت‬ � ‫��و� چ� ن��ا � �ش�س�د‬
that in over two months
34 See n. 21.

‫ن‬ ‫ن‬
I was not able to be at your glo- � ‫�مى ��سم ن��ه ن� ن��ا ن� ن��لا �� ت� ا �ى ��س��ل��ط�ا‬
rious side for even an hour
‫ا �ت ا � ن‬
74 Always, as long as the earth is a �‫�و‬ � ‫��ه ن�ود ن��ا ك � ر � و �س‬ � ‫�ه��مت ش��ه ت�ا‬
place of tranquility and rest
‫ن‬ ‫آ ن‬ َ � ‫�ه��م ش��ه ت�ا‬
Always, as long as the body of � ‫��ه ن�ود ن�رم ا �ل�ما� ن�ن�م ن��ا‬ ‫ت‬
the heavens are in motion35
‫��س ا �م� �م��ا د ا ن ا گ ت‬
75 Let not the horseman of the �‫كا ه �و د و‬ � � �‫و � ل�ك ن � ن‬
kingdom be far from your hall
of justice
‫ن ن ت نت ن‬ ‫ت‬
Let the rider of your justice be � ‫��سوا � ع�د ل �و د و� ا � �ت�ا د � و ��ص�ا‬
far from excess and deficiency
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫� ا � ن �ل ت � ن‬
76 The palace of the creatures ‫��ا � ا ن� چ�ى ��ا د و ن��ن��ا د‬
‫�سر ى �� ن‬
of the world, moving towards
decay and annihilation
‫ن‬ ‫ن‬ ‫نن ن ت ت ت‬
Obeying your power in destruc- � ‫��ا د ��د �� و د � �را ن� و د � �ع�مرا‬
tion and construction ‫ن‬
‫ت��نم� ت� د �� ت� و د �� ت� �ش�س�ا د و ن��ا ط ت � �ع‬
‫ر� نى م‬
77 May your body be healthy, your
heart be glad, your mind be
free from sorrow
‫ن‬ ‫�ن‬ ‫ت ت‬
Your desires met, your state � ‫�� ت� ن�وا‬ ‫�مرا د ��ا �ص�ل و د و�� و�ى و ن‬
strong, and your fortune young
‫�س‬� �‫� دگ‬ ‫ت‬
78 May God the Merciful be your
‫كا � � تم‬ ‫ن��ه ��ر �مرا د �ى ت�ا � �و كر‬
companion in every desire
‫ن‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ت‬
May the guidance of the � ‫ن��ه ��ر �م��ا مى ن�ا �و �ه�د ات� ت� �ح��ا‬
Compassionate be with you in
every station.
Acknowledgment
While the translation of the poem from the original Persian is my own, I am
indebted to Catherine Ambler and Mohammad Sadegh Ansari for reviewing
my translation and providing invaluable suggestions and corrections.
35 These lines reflect the association between the rule of the sultan and the enduring har-
mony of the cosmos, as is typical in the supplication (doʾā) which “invokes images of
stability and continuity” (Meisami 2003, 106). A similar framing may be found, for exam-
ple, in the doʾā of Rashid al-Din Vatvāt’s (d. 1182–83/578) panegyric to the Khvārazmshāh
Atsiz, in which he writes, “As long as the stars’ place is in the firmament; as long as the
limbs find their strength through the soul … / May God long grant you and your servants
such a month, such a year, such a day, such a favour!” (ibid., 375).

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Philosophical Poetry and Courtly Appeal

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Journal of persianate studies 15 (2022) 14–42