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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books An Annotated Bibliography of the Works of Sadr Al-din Al-shirazi (mulla Sadra) With a Brief Account of His Life Sadra’s Life Mulla Sadra was born in Shiraz in 979-980/1571-1572 into a wealthy and influential family, his father reportedly having been the governor of the province of Fars.

Following the tradition of classical madrasah education, Sadra was trained first in what is called the transmitted sciences ( al-'ulum al-naqliyyah ), which included such disciplines as grammar ( nahw ), Qur'anic exegesis ( tafsi r), jurisprudence ( fiqh ), and the science of the sayings of the Prophet and Shiite Imams ( 'ilm al-hadith ).

Sadra's firm training in the transmitted sciences appears to have a lasting impact on his philosophical work as he was to write an incomplete commentary on the Quran. Considering that the majority of Muslim philosophers prior to Sadra were concerned with transmitted sciences only in a secondary way and that very rarely did they compose works in this field, Sadra stands out as a conspicuous exception, a figure who combines both the transmitted-religious and intellectual-philosophical sciences.

Having completed his formal education in Shiraz, Sadra left his hometown for Isfahan that had then become a major center of high culture in arts and sciences primarily thanks to the visionary leadership of Shah Abbas II (1588-1629), known with the honorific title of the ‘Great’.[^4] The vivid intellectual environment of Isfahan was to offer Sadra a unique opportunity to join the line of such Shi’ite philosophers as Mir Damad, Baha’ al-Din ‘Amili, and Mir Abu’l-Qasim Findiriski on the one hand, and to encounter the fierce opposition of many Shi’ite jurists to Sufism and other gnostic tendencies, on the other.

When Sadra began his philosophical career in Isfahan, the cultural and religious framework of the Safavid Iran had been to a large extent consolidated, and the process of establishing Twelve Imam Shi’ism as the official religious code of Iran, begun in 1501 by Shah Isma’il, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, had been completed[^5] .

The origins of the conflict between the Shi’ite religious authorities and the mystically oriented philosophers go back to the beginning of the Safavid dynasty when Shah Isma’il (1501-1524) and his son Shah Tahmasp (1524-1576) engaged in forcefully promoting Twelve Imam Shi’ism against Sunnism and Sufism[^6] .