The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani

1097–1131

Also known as ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, Ayn al-Qudat

Persian philosopher, Sufi master and judge, executed at thirty-four, whose Essence of Reality was the first full philosophical defence of mysticism in Islamic thought.

Ayn al-Qudat was born in Hamadan in 1097 and trained in law, theology, philosophy, logic, poetry and mathematics, the last with Omar Khayyam. He became a judge before he was twenty, earning the title by which he is known, “the most eminent of judges”. In 1112 he went through a crisis of certainty like al-Ghazali’s, and after four years immersed in al-Ghazali’s writings he turned to the inner life, becoming a disciple, and later a guide, on the Sufi path.

He wrote The Essence of Reality in just three days, aged twenty-four, building on Avicenna and al-Ghazali and anticipating the philosophical Sufism of Ibn Arabi’s school. Charged with heresy, he was imprisoned in Baghdad in 1129 and publicly executed in Hamadan in 1131. His Persian writings shaped Sufi orders in Persia, the Ottoman lands and India.

Key ideas

Knowledge and recognition
Ordinary knowledge works by concepts and syllogisms and keeps the knower apart from what is known. Recognition (maʿrifa) is non-discursive: it closes the gap between knower and known, which is why reason, for all its power, has limits.
Know yourself to know God
Without recognising oneself, Ayn al-Qudat taught, no one can recognise God; but that self-recognition, won through spiritual discipline, has to be sought through God, the ground of our very awareness.
Being is one
There are necessary and contingent beings, but existence is ultimately one and belongs, strictly, only to God. All existing things are immersed in God’s existence and draw their being from it.
Reality of reality
The Absolute has no trace of multiplicity in it; it is less like anything describable than like an indivisible point in geometry. Seen one way it is beyond every name and description; seen another, it shows itself in the world.
Region
Hamadan, Persia

Influences

Influenced by

Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani1097–1131

Influenced by

Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani1097–1131

Where these links come from
  • Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani drew on Avicenna. Source: Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani studied with Omar Khayyam. Source: Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani drew on al-Ghazali. Source: Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • The Essence of Reality (Zubdat al-ḥaqāʾiq)
  • The Exile's Complaint (Shakwā al-gharīb), 1129

Terms on this page

maʿrifa
Recognition, or gnosis: for ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, a knowing beyond concepts and syllogisms that closes the gap between knower and known, reached through spiritual practice.

All terms in the glossary

Sources

  1. Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy