The Autograph Manuscripts of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1045 AH / 1635 CE): Classification and Preliminary Study

Abstract

This article is a first overview of the autograph manuscripts left by Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), one of the most important figures of the Iranian renaissance of the seventeenth century. He is considered to be the author of more than one hundred books and treatises, and the corpus of his manuscripts numbers more than 2200 copies. So far it has been possible to identify twenty-four manuscripts copied by Mullā Ṣadrā, between 1596 and 1633. These items include collection of treatises, some of them authored by Mullā Ṣadrā’s teachers (Mīr- Dāmād and Šaiḫ Bahāʾī) and copied from their own autograph copy and authenticated by them. Other manuscripts contain excerpts of treatises or poetical quotations he copied for his own personal use. These manuscripts are an incomparable source in understanding the intellectual formation of this major thinker. It is possible to show that Mullā Ṣadrā used these manuscripts as drafts or aide-memoire in his own writing. Additions to some of the manuscripts dating back to the early period of Mullā Ṣadrā’s intellectual life shed light on his process of authoring books.