Mullā Ṣadrā is the name usually given to Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, the most outstanding of the later Muslim philosophers. (Mulla means teacher.) He is also known by the honorific title Sadr al-mutaʾallihin, "the foremost among the theosophers." Born in Shiraz into an aristocratic family, he received his early education in that city and his advanced training in Ispahan, the Safavid capital, where he studied with Mīr Dāmād and Bahāʾ al-Dīn ʿAmilī. After completing his formal education he retired to a village near Qum, where he spent ten years in asceticism and self-purification. Then, upon the demand of the Persian king, he returned to Shiraz as a professor in the school of Allāhwirdī Khān, where he taught and wrote for the...