Looking Through Taḥqīq Glasses: Early Modern Imagination and the Unveiling of Nature in Mīrzā Bīdil’s The Sinai of Knowledge

Abstract In this article I trace the contours of notion taḥqīq in Ṭūr-i maʿrifat “The Sinai Knowledge,” a late seventeenth-century poetic exploration natural phenomena by most important Indo-Persian poet-philosopher Mughal times, Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil (ʿAẓīmābād, 1644 – Delhi, 1720). collect and analyze all textual loci where term occurs Bīdil’s mathnawī , showing how “verification/realization” is key concept to make sense method observation, via imagination, phenomenic unfolding physis. also explore several surprising points contact between conceptualization nature some aspects Renaissance post-Renaissance Italian naturalistic thought.