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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Mulla Sadra's Seddiqin Argument For the Existence of God Part One: Mulla Sadra and His Philosophical Views Background Later Developments in Islamic Philosophy The Western world's interest in learning about Islamic philosophy was, in the past, centered on the active influence of Muslim thinkers upon the historical formation of Christian scholastic philosophy in the Middle Ages.

In order to study the philosophical ideas of such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus in their historical perspectives one must become acquainted with a detailed and accurate knowledge of the thought of at least Avicenna (980-1037) and Averroes (1126-1198). Any adequate history of medieval Western philosophy, in consequence, should include an important chapter on the history of Islamic philosophy.

Quite characteristically, however, the "history" of Islamic philosophy-viewed from the usual Western perspective-practically comes to an end with the death of Averroes, leaving the reader with the impression that Islamic philosophic thought itself also ceased when that Andalusian Arab thinker died. In reality, what came to an end was only the first phase of the whole history of Islamic philosophy.

That is to say, what ceased to exist after Averroes was simply the living influence of Islamic philosophy upon the formative process of Western philosophy. With the death of Averroes, Islamic philosophy ceased to be alive for the West, but this does not mean that it ceased to be alive for the East, as well.

It is important in this connection to remark that even those "histories" of Islamic philosophy written not as a chapter in the history of Western philosophy but for their own sake, have been largely dictated by the idea that the golden age of Islamic philosophy is the period of three centuries extending from Farabi (872-950) to Averroes, and that after Averroes, in the ages subsequent to Mongol invasion, except for few isolated prominent figures (like Ibn Khaldun, for example), the Muslim world produced nothing but commentators and super-commentators-a long series of lifeless and mechanical repetitions, without any spark of real creativity and originality.

That this is not a true picture of the historical facts has amply been made clear by the remarkable work done by scholars like Henri Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr concerning the intellectual activity of the Safawid Dynasty.