An Evaluation of Suhrawardi’s Hadithism in the Context of His Work Awarifu’l-Maarif

Abstract

Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (d. 632/1234) was a versatile scholar who was born in Suhraward, a province of Zanjan in Iran, during the near collapse of the Abbasid state. He had his first education there and continued his education in Baghdad for eighty years as a scholar. He was one of the most prominent scholars of his time and demonstrated this with more than thirty books and treatises that he wrote in almost all areas of Islamic science. Although Suhrawardi was known as a tariqat sheikh, he was also a good muhaddith, mufassir and faqih. During this period when the tariqats were just beginning to form, Suhrawardi wanted to present the truths of Sunni Sufism in his Awarif work and it was effective. It is like a summary of Ghazali's (d. 505/1111) Ihya. We have identified 586 marfu narratives in Awarif. Both the richness of the hadiths and the manner in which the subjects were dealt with hadith almost gave this work the identity of a hadith book. In this study, his life and his hadithism will be discussed and evaluated in the context of his work Awarif.