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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today Muslim India We have been moving eastward in this brief historical survey and logically we should now turn to Persia and adjacent areas including Shi‘ite Iraq, which has been closely associated with Persia intellectually since the Safavid period and Afghanistan which also belongs to the same intellectual world as Persia.

Because, however, of the central role played in Persia in the cultivation of ‘irfān-i nazarī during the past few centuries, we shall turn to it at the end of this survey and first direct our attention farther east to India, Southeast Asia and China.

Although a thorough study has never been made of all the important figures associated with the School of Ibn ‘Arabī and theoretical gnosis in the Indian Subcontinent, the research that has been carried out so far reveals a very widespread influence of this School in that area. Already in the 8th/14th century Sayyid ‘Alī Hamadānī, the Persian Sufi who migrated to Kashmir (d. 786/1385), helped to spread Ibn ‘Arabī’s ideas in India.

He not only wrote a Persian commentary on the Fusūs, but also composed a number of independent treatises on ‘irfān.29 A century later ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘Alī ibn Ahmad Mahā’imī (d. 835/1432) not only commented upon the Fusūs and Qūnāwī’s Nusūs, but also wrote several independent expositions of gnosis of a more philosophical nature in Arabic. These works are related in many ways in approach to later works on gnosis written in Persia.

He also wrote an Arabic commentary upon Shams al-Dīn Maghribī’s Jām-i jahānnamāy which some believe received much of its inspiration from the Mashāriq al-darārī of Farghānī. It is interesting to note that Maghribī’s poetry, which like that of many other poets such as Kirmānī, ‘Irāqī, Shabistarī, Shāh Ni‘mat Allāh Walī (d.

834/1431) and Jāmī were based on basic gnostic theses such as wahdat al-wujūd, was especially appreciated by those followers of the School of Ibn ‘Arabī who were acquainted with the Persian language as was the poetry of Ibn al-Fārid among Arab, Persian, Turkish and Indian followers of that School.

Notable exponents of theoretical gnosis in India are numerous and even the better known ones cannot be mentioned here.30 But it is necessary to mention one figure who is probably the most profound master of this School in the Subcontinent. He is Muhibb Allāh Ilāhābādī (also known as Allāhābādī) (d.