The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani

fl. 996–1020 CE

Also known as al-Kirmani

Leading Ismaili theologian and philosopher of the Fatimid age, who replaced the Neoplatonic pair of Intellect and Soul with a cosmos of ten intellects, adapted from al-Farabi.

Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani was probably born in the Persian province of Kirman, and spent most of his life as a missionary for the Fatimid caliphs in Iraq and western Iran, working to win local rulers and tribal leaders to the Ismaili cause against the Abbasids. Under the caliph al-Hakim, the Fatimid mission in Cairo counted him the foremost Ismaili theologian of the day.

He knew Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy, and the systems of al-Farabi and of his contemporary Avicenna, and was familiar with the Hebrew Bible, the Syriac New Testament and later Jewish writings. He finished his masterwork in Iraq in 1020 and died soon after. His cosmology was not adopted by the Fatimids, but later Ismaili scholars in Yemen built on it.

Key ideas

Ten intellects
In his Repose of the Intellect, al-Kirmani set aside the Neoplatonic pair of Intellect and Soul adopted by his Ismaili predecessors, and put in its place a series of ten separate intellects, adapting al-Farabi’s Aristotelian cosmos.
Against al-Razi
In The Golden Sayings al-Kirmani set out to refute Abu Bakr al-Razi, who had died in 934, just as other treatises of his answered Zaydi, Twelver Shi’i and other Muslim critics of the Fatimid imams.
Against the deifiers of al-Hakim
Summoned to Cairo, he wrote a series of refutations of the dissident missionaries who proclaimed the caliph al-Hakim divine, and helped check the spread of the movement that became the Druze.
Region
Iraq, Persia and Cairo

Influences

Influenced by

Hamid al-Din al-Kirmanifl. 996–1020 CE

Influenced by

Hamid al-Din al-Kirmanifl. 996–1020 CE

Where these links come from
  • Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani argued against Abu Bakr al-Razi. Source: Farhad Daftary, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani drew on al-Farabi. Source: Farhad Daftary, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • Repose of the Intellect (Rāḥat al-ʿaql), 1020

Sources

  1. Farhad Daftary, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy