*** The study of the writings of Mulla Sadra presents...

*** The study of the writings of Mulla Sadra presents certain difficulties which are not easy to surmount and which have driven many scholars away into less forbidding and more familiar fields of research. There is first of all the question of the availability of his writings.

Until about thirty years ago, only the most famous works such as the Asfar and al-shawahid al-rububiyyah were available in lithograph editions of such formidable character that to find the beginning of a particular chapter or discussion itself required long periods of study. However, many of Mulla Sadra's works remained either in manuscript form or in unsatisfactory editions. Even his most important opus, the Asfar, does not possess a critical edition despite the…