MULLĀ ṢADRĀ (AH 979/80–1050, 1571/2–1641 CE), popular name of Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī; Persian philosopher, theologian, and mystic. As his name indicates, Muḥammad, titled Ṣadr al-Dīn ("breast-plate [defender] of the faith") was born in Shiraz; his father, Ibrāhīm ibn Yaḥyā, is said to have been a governor of the province of Fārs.

Life

Little is known of the details of Mullā Ṣadrā's life. He came at a young age to Isfahan, which was the Safavid capital and the center of a flourishing school of philosophy established by Muḥammad Bāqir Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631), Mullā Ṣadrā's mentor and a philosophic thinker of fairly high caliber. Ṣadrā also studied theology with Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1621), a theologian, mathematician, and architect whose treatises on...