Hikmat-i Khaqaniyya

Baha? al-Din Isfahani (d. 1137/1725), better known as Fadil Hindi, was born into a comfortable home in Isfahan. Being a particularly precocious child, he completed his studies in the traditional and the foreign sciences by the age of thirteen, even carrying the title of mujtahid (someone authorized to issue legal opinions in Shi?i Islam). He then accompanied his father to the court of the Mughal emperor Awrangzib (r. 1658-1707), where he remained for several years before returning to Isfahan. At a time at which Isfahan was under the spell of the anti-speculative, literalist Akhbari school in Shi?ism, Fadil Hindi was one of the few to engage in philosophy, so much so that one could call him equally a juristic philosopher or a philosophical jurist. The present work is a very readable, complete course in logic and philosophy that bears witness to his originality as a thinker in each of these domains.