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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today A Brief History of the Tradition of Theoretical Gnosis Before turning to theoretical gnosis itself and its significance today, it is necessary to provide a brief history over the ages in the Islamic tradition of the expressions of this Supreme Science which itself stands beyond history and temporal development, being at the heart of the philosohia perennis as understood by traditional authorities,3 and not being bound in its essence by the local coloring of various epochs and places.

Of course, the wisdom with which this Supreme Science deals has always been and will always be, but it has received distinct formulations in the framework of various traditions at whose heart is to be found this wisdom concerning the nature of reality.

In the Islamic tradition this knowledge was handed down in a principial manner by the Prophet to a number of his companions, chief among them ‘Alī, and in later generations to the Sufi masters and of course the Shi‘ite Imams, many of whom were in fact also poles of Sufism of their day.4 Besides being transmitted orally, this knowledge was often expressed in the form of allusions, elliptical expressions, symbolic poems and the like.

Gradually from the 4th/10th century onward some Sufis such as Hakīm Abū ‘Abd Allāh Tirmidhī (d. circa 320/938) began to write more systematically on certain aspects of Sufi doctrine. For example, Tirmidhī wrote on the central Sufi doctrine of walāyah/wilāyah, that is, initiatic and spiritual power as well as sanctity. During the century after him, Abū Hāmid Muhammad Ghazzālī (d.

505/1111) wrote on divine knowledge itself in both the Ihyā’ and such shorter treatises as al-Risālat al-laduniyyah (only attributed to him according to some scholars) as well as writing an esoteric commentary on the Light Verse of the Quran in his Mishkāt al-anwār. His brother Ahmad (d. 520/1126) expounded gnosis and metaphysics in the language of love in his Sawānih. Shortly afterwards, ‘Ayn al-Qudāt Hamadānī (d.

525/1131) dealt with the subject of divine knowledge and a philosophical exposition of certain Sufi teachings in his Maktūbāt and Tamhīdāt while in his Zubdah he criticized the existing rationalistic currents in the thought of some philosophers and pointed to another way of knowing which is none other than gnosis.