Isfahan School

The Isfahan School (Persian: مكتب اصفهان ‎‎) is a school of Islamic philosophy. It was founded by a number of Persian philosophers, most notably Mir Damad, Sheykh Baha'i and Mir Fendereski. The name was coined by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Henry Corbin.

Because of the attention of Shah Abbas during the Safavid Dynasty in Iran to intellectual tradition in Islam, Isfahan became a famous academic city, and the intellectual center of Iran at the time, along with the cities of Rey and Shiraz.

This school of thought began to develop once Iran was economically and politically stable. The Safavid court also provided funding for the arts, which also contributed to the development. At the time, there were many disputes between Shiite scholars, such as Ahamad Alavi, and Christian and Jewish scholars. In this period the intellectual life of Suhrevardi has been revived by Mir Damad and Mulla Sadra. According to Seyyed Hosein Nasr, this school of thought is plays an important role both in terms of the relation between philosophy and prophecy, and in the training of Mulla Sadra. The school of Isfahan a subsidiary of the Shiraz school of philosophy. Several philosophers that were noot part of the Shiraz school of thought had very important roles in preparing the Isfahan school, such as Ibn Turkah, Qadi Maybudi and Ibn Abi Jomhour Ahsaei. The group of founders then announced Shia as formal religion in Persia, in an attempt to unify the entire country, with Isfahan as their capital.

Mir Damad founded the Isfahan philosophical school. He was the nephew of Muhaqiq Karaki, an important Shia scholar who had influence in the Shia jurisprudence. Some consider him familiar with philosophical prophecy as a result to the problem of Time. Corbin describes Mir Damad as having an analytic mind and aware of religious foundation of knowledge. Perhaps the most important characteristic of Mira Damad's philosophy is a synthesis between Avicennism and Averroism, or his synthesis is between the intellectual and the spiritual. Mir Damad's theory on Time is as popular as Huduth Dahri's, though Damad's philosophical opinion is criticized by Huduth's pupil, Mulla Sadra. Historically, there was great strife between Mulla Sadra and Mir Damad, as a result of the differences of their philosophical theories on subjects such as time.

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