Abstract

Sadr al-Din Qunavi --stepson and pupil of Ibn $ rm sp{c}$Arabi --played a pivotal role in the development of Islamic intellectual history. His contributions in the medieval period helped alter the course of mystico-philosophical tradition, which was then flourishing from Asia Minor and Persia to the major learning centers of the Arabic-speaking world. His importance was largely due to the complex mystical doctrine he expounded in the light of Ibn Sina's critique of knowledge. The age-old dilemma of knowledge was encapsulated in a famous declaration by Ibn Sina--the rationalist philosopher--who asserted that man is incapable of knowing intellectually "the realities of things," let alone the First Being. This did not imply that the realities were either unknowable in every sense, or that they did not exist. The question is in what sense and how are they knowable? It was Ibn Sina's special calling, Qunavi argued, to show the proper role and scope of reason in this quest. Philosophical knowledge may be represented chiefly through demonstrative logic, the only paradigm available to Ibn Sina. Qunavi on the other hand, set out to develop an exegetical grammar more suited to the movements of spiritual dialogue and paradox. For him, an intellectual knowledge of the "realities," in essence, rested on the relation between two distinct realities. Yet all agreed that God's knowledge of Himself was the root of all knowledge. It had to transform utterly the distinction between the two realities. God's self-revelation is furthermore an unfolding book divulged through the infinite possibilities of linguistic construction. Mysticism's technical vocabulary had, therefore, to distinguish itself from, though without displacing, the bare skeleton of demonstrative logic.