The present volume is a critical edition of a highly significant 13th century text, Al-Tanqihat fi Sharh al-Talwihat : al-Fann al-Thanifi al-Tabi‘i, on natural philosophy and psychology.

The text was written in Arabic by Sa‘d b. Mansur b. Hibat-Allah b. Kammuna, better known as Ibn Kammuna (d. 683 A.H./1284 A.D.), a distinguished philosopher and oculist from a learned Jewish family of Baghdad, at the Nizamiyya Madrasa in the year 667 A.H./1268A.D. It demonstrates the analytical side of rationalist Islamic philosophy, specifically of the holistic system known as the “Philosophy of Illumination,” and is an extensive commentary on one of the four major texts by the 12th century Persian (Iranian) innovative philosopher, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi. The text, as indicated by its title, is not a simple commentary, rather an analytical refinement of the Persian thinker’s arguments on natural philosophy and psychology, with specific emphasis on Illuminationist philosophy.

Ibn Kammuna’s position in Islamic philosophy is well established. He is known as an Illuminationist philosopher, and is identified as such by the Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra in a discussion of philosophical schools in his al-Asfar al-Arba‘. His genuinely analytical views on philosophy, evidenced in the present text, Al-Tanqihat fi Sharh al-Talwihat, is proof that philosophy had not died out in the East during the 13th century. This text, the second part of which on natural philosophy is published for the first time, helped solidify the position of Illuminationist philosophy in the 13th century, providing an alternative philosophical system to Islamic Peripatetic philosophy. This, at a time when thinking had been circumscribed by philosophical “text-books” composed by theologians. Ibn Kammuna’s text, together with Suhraward’s own compositions plus other commentaries on his other works, defined the “new” school of Islamic philosophy, the “Illuminationist.”

The edition has been prepared by Hossein Ziai, Professor of Islamic and Iranian Studies at UCLA, with the assistance of one of his advanced graduate students in Islamic philosophy, Mr. Ahmed Alwishah. The volume includes an English introduction to the text, which introduces the life and works of the author, Ibn Kammuna, and examines a seleced number of philosophical topics of the text.