The Entanglement of Philosophy, Politics and the Occult: The Hidden Secret of early Post-Avicennan Thought in the Islamic East

By the thirteenth century, philosophy, politics and occult science had become deeply entangled in Persianate Islamic world. Two of greatest luminaries this intellectual milieu were Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.1210) Shihāb Yaḥyā Ibn Ḥabash Amīrak al-Suhrawardī (d.1191/2), who at one point fellow students philosophy under a certain Majd al-Jīlī Marāgha northeastern Iran. Both subsequently sought royal patronage, former travelling eastwards to Transoxania secure generosity Khwārazm-Shāhs, latter Levant gain intimate trust Malik al-Ẓāhir, son Ayyūbid sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn—known West as Saladdin. composed works devoted talismanic astral ritual. And crucially, both developed philosophical soteriologies coloured by their meditations on “craft”—soteriologies with profound implications for nature political authority.