The subject of this notice resembled Mullá Muḥsin in being a pupil and son-in-law of Mullá Ṣadrá and a poet,

Mullá 'Abdu'r­Razzáq-i-Láhijí. who wrote under the pen-name of Fayyáḍ, but his writings, though much fewer in number, are more read at the present day. The best known are, perhaps, the philosophical treatise in Persian entitled His Gawhar-i­Murád. Gawhar-i-Murád (“the Pearl of Desire”), and the Sar-máya-i-Ímán (“Substance of Faith”), also in Persian, both of which have been litho­graphed. The notices of him in the Rawḍátu'l-Jannát (pp. 352-3) and the Qiṣaṣu'l-'Ulamá are short and unsatisfactory. The latter grudgingly admits that his writings were fairly orthodox, but evidently doubts how far they express his real convictions and how far they were designed from prudential motives to disguise them, thus bearing out to some extent the opinion expressed by Gobineau.*

I have been obliged to omit any further notice than that already given * of the somewhat elusive figure of Mír Abu'l- Mír Abu'l­Qásim-i­Findariskí. Qásim-i-Findariskí, mentioned by Gobineau * as one of the three teachers of Mullá Ṣadrá, because, apart from the brief notices of him contained in the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín * and the Majma'u'l-Fuṣaḥá , in both of which the same poem is cited, and the passing reference in the Dabistán * to his association with the disciples of Kaywán and adoption of sun-worship, I have been unable to discover any particulars about his life or doctrines. He appears to have been more of a qalandar than a philosopher, and probably felt ill at ease in the atmosphere of Shí'a orthodoxy which prevailed at Iṣfahán, and hence felt impelled to undertake the journey to India. He must, however, have subsequently returned to Persia if the statement in the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín that his tomb is well known in Iṣfahán be correct.

Gobineau (op. laud., pp. 91-110) enumerates a number of philosophers who succeeded Mullá Ṣadrá down to the time of his own sojourn in Persia, but most of them have little importance or originality, and we need only mention one more, who was still living when Gobineau wrote, and whom he describes as “personnage absolument incomparable.”

It is not, however, necessary to say much about this celebrated modern thinker, since his philosophical ideas are Ḥájji Mullá Hádí of Sabzawár, b. 1212/1797-8, d. 1295/1878. somewhat fully discussed by Shaykh Muḥam-mad Iqbál at the end of his Development of Metaphysics in Persia, * while I obtained from one of his pupils with whom I studied in Ṭihrán during the winter of 1887-8 an authentic account of his life, of which I published an English translation in my Year amongst the Persians. * According to this account, partly derived from one of his sons, Ḥájji Mullá Hádí the son of Ḥájji Mahdí was born in 1212/1797-8, studied first in his native town of Sabzawár, then at Mashhad, then at Iṣfahán with Mullá 'Alí Núrí. Having made the pilgrimage to Mecca, he visited Kirmán, where he married a wife, and then returned to Sabzawár, where the remainder of his life was chiefly spent until his death in 1295/1878. His best- His works. known works, written in Persian, are the Asráru'l-Ḥikam (“Secrets of Philosophy”) and a commentary on difficult words and passages in the Mathnawí; in Arabic he has a versified treatise (Manẓúma) on Logic; another on Philosophy; commentaries on the Morning Prayer and the Jawshan-i-Kabír; and numerous notes on the Shawáhidu'r-Rubúbiyya and other works of Mullá Ṣadrá. He also wrote poetry under the pen-name of Asrár, and a notice of him is given in the Riyáḍu'l-'Árifín (pp. 241-2), where he is spoken of as still living and in the sixty-third year of his age in 1278/1861-2, the date of composition. Most of his works have been published in Persia in lithographed editions.

As stated above, * Mathematics (Riyáḍiyyát) “the Dis­ciplinary” and Ṭabí'iyyát the Natural Sciences, in con- Evolution of “Arabian” Science, and its connection with Philosophy. junction with Metaphysics (Má wará or Má ba'da'ṭ-Ṭabí'at), constitute the subject-matter of the theoretical or speculative branch of Philo­sophy, of which, therefore, they form a part. It is probable that to this manner of regarding them is partly due the unfortunate tendency noticeable in most Muslim thinkers to take an a priori view of all natural phenomena instead of submitting them to direct critical observation. The so-called “Arabian,” i.e. Islamic, Science was in the main inherited from the Greeks; its Golden Age was the first century of the 'Abbásid Caliphate (A.D. 750-850), when so much trouble and expense was incurred by the Caliphs, especially al-Manṣúr, Hárúnu'r-Rashíd and al-Ma'mún, to procure good and faithful Arabic translations of the great Greek philosophers, naturalists and physicians; and the great service it rendered to mankind was to carry on the Greek tradition of learning through the Dark Ages of Europe down to the Renaissance.

So much is generally admitted, but there remains the more difficult and still unsolved question whether the Arabs What, if any­thing, did the Arabs add to what they in­herited from the Greeks? were mere transmitters of Greek learning, or whether they modified or added to it, and, in this case, whether these modifications or additions were or were not improvements on the original. This question I have endeavoured to answer in the case of medical science in my Arabian Medicine, * but I was greatly hampered by insufficient acquaintance with the original Greek sources. For such in­vestigation, whether in the Medicine, Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy or Chemistry of the Muslims, three qualifi­cations not often combined are required in the investigator, to wit, knowledge of the science or art in question, know­ledge of Arabic (and, for later writers, of Persian and even Turkish), and knowledge of Greek. In the case of the “Arabian” (i.e. Muslim) physicians the conclusion at which Eminence of Rhazes (ar-Rází) as an observer. I arrived (already reached by Dr Max Neu-burger in his monumental Geschichte der Medizin) * was that Rhazes (Abú Bakr Muḥam-mad ibn Zakariyyá ar-Rází, i.e. a native of Ray in Persia) was, as a physician, far superior to the more celebrated and popular Avicenna (Ibn Síná), and was, indeed, probably the greatest clinical observer who ever existed amongst the Muslims. The notes of actual cases which came under his observation, as recorded in parts of his great “Continens” (al-Ḥáwí), have an actual and not merely a historical or literary value; and even from his methods of treatment it is possible that here and there a hint might be obtained. Avicenna was more logical, more systematic, and more philosophical, but he lacked the Hippocratic insight pos­sessed by his great predecessor.

In my Arabian Medicine I sketched the history of the art amongst the Muslims from its beginnings in the eighth Decay of learning after the Mongol Invasion. century of our era down to the twelfth, but made no attempt to follow it down to the period which we are now considering. The Mongol Invasion of the thirteenth century, as I have repeatedly and emphatically stated, dealt a death-blow to Muslim learning from which it has not yet recovered. Medical and other quasi-scientific books continued, of course, to be written, but it is doubtful if they ever approached the level attained under the early 'Abbásid Caliphs and maintained until the eleventh, and, to some extent, until the thirteenth century of our era. That they added any­thing which was both new and true is in the highest degree improbable, though I cannot claim to have carefully in­vestigated the matter. A long list of these books is given by Dr Adolf Fonahn in his most useful work entitled Zur Quellenkunde der Persischen Medizin, * which has pointed the way for future investigators. Of these later works the most celebrated is probably the Tuḥfatu'-Mú'minín, com­piled for Sháh Sulaymán the Ṣafawí by Muḥammad Mú'min-i-Ḥusayní in A.D. 1669. It deals chiefly with Materia Medica, and there are numerous editions and manuscripts, besides translations into Turkish and Arabic.*