Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) encounter with his Angelic Father in the Treatise of the Occidental Exile: the vision of the Intellect through the mirror of imagination.
This talk will closely examine a key doctrine that Suhrawardī (1154–1191), known as Shaykh al-Ishrāq (the master of the philosophy of Illumination), conveys in his allegorical treatise, The Tale of the Occidental Exile (Qişat al-ghorba al-gharbiyya). My commentary will center on the momentous encounter between Suhrawardī and his Angelic father, which marks the culmination of Suhrawardī’s mystical itinerary. As I will try to show, this ‘encounter’ expresses a foundational precept in Suhrawardī’s Illuminationist theory of knowledge, which is set against the backdrop of his ontology of the soul. The visionary apprehension of an Angelic being through the imaginative faculty is a paradigmatic instance of what Suhrawardī calls ‘presential knowledge’ (ʿilm al-ḥudūrī). Like Intellection, this mode of knowledge is not mediated by discursive thought or sense perception. It is actualized through the imaginative faculty, which plays a fundamental role in this epistemological scheme. By uncovering the true nature of the Angelic Father in this tale, we will see how Suhrawardī construed the apprehensions of the imaginative faculty in metaphysical terms.