Continuing our critical review of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai’s History of Political Thought in Iran, we have reached chapter six, which addresses the period that Tabatabai calls the beginning of the “decline of practical wisdom in Iran.”

In earlier chapters, we learned that in Tabatabai’s account, after Islam, with the Arab conquest and the fall of the Sasanian Empire, three principal traditions emerged in the sphere of Iranian political thought.

1) The first was a tradition that understood politics from the perspective of Islamic sharia and produced works of religious-political prescription, seeking to derive political thought directly from the Qur’an, hadith, and jurisprudential texts. This is the tradition that, in his account, ultimately becomes the dominant current of political thought up to the modern period.

2) The second current consisted of writers of siyasat-namehs, such as Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk, who tried to combine pre-Islamic Iranshahri thought with religious and Islamic texts. This tradition tends toward a form of pragmatic philosophy grounded in sharia, the roots of which, according to Tabatabai, can also be found in the political perspectives of Imam Muhammad al-Ghazali and Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. In Tabatabai’s view, this current is the principal heir to Iranshahri thought. After the sixth century AH and the Mongol invasion of Iran, it ultimately disappears, giving way on one side to sharia-centred writing and on the other to a mysticism that withdraws from politics and life.

3) A form of idealist political philosophy represented by al-Farabi, which attempts to derive political thought from philosophy, metaphysics, and philosophical methods. According to Tabatabai, this effort begins and ends with al-Farabi and never develops into a continuing tradition in the political thought of the Iranian lands. Tabatabai argues that thinkers such as Khwaja Nasir al-Din Tusi attempted in some way to return to this mode of thought, but that their practice ultimately rested upon a kind of flight from reason that contributed to the decline of practical wisdom in Iran.

With thanks,
Aydin Areta

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