Khosravani wisdom: a treasury of Iranian mysticism
Who Were the Khosravanioun?
Khosravani wisdom (hekmat-e khosravani) is the philosophy and mysticism of ancient Iran, and its thinkers are called the Khosravani sages, or the Khosravanioun. The great minds of ancient Iran, and their heirs in the Islamic era, were known for this philosophy. Khosravani wisdom was later recognized and brought to light by Suhrawardi in his Philosophy of Illumination, where it was joined with Islamic philosophy. Among those influenced by Khosravani wisdom are Jamasp, Frashoshtar, Plotinus, Bayazid Bastami, Abolhasan Kharaqani, Mansur al-Hallaj, Abu Sa’id Abolkheyr and Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi.
The Foundations of the Khosravanioun
The Khosravanioun were mystics who, after grasping the truths through unveiling and inner vision (kashf and shohud), expressed them in a language of secrets, veiled in the imagery of “light and darkness.” Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi calls the knowledge of these sages the Wisdom of Illumination or the “Khosravani leaven,” and calls the sages themselves “divine sages” (hakim-e mote’alleh): philosophers who reach the truth through the measure of both reason and the heart’s intuition, that is, love.
The Twelve Foundations of Khosravani Wisdom
- The first foundation is that God is one: ever-increasing, never static; and whoever walks the path of wisdom will reach the divine Sorush.
- The second is wisdom and reason. The foundation of Khosravani wisdom is endless truthfulness, and goodness is one with existence.
- The third is order, justice and the laws of progress in existence. Khosravani wisdom condemns stagnation and favors renewal.
- The fourth is the rejection of force: the sage acts together with existence.
- The fifth is farr (divine glory), one of the key concepts of Khosravani wisdom. It means that a person reaches a point where existence helps them add to existence and grow. Farr has several principles: it is not inherited, it is not permanent, and it is not separate from the whole of existence.
- The sixth foundation of Khosravani wisdom is the unity of creation.
- The seventh is the open path: the growth of existence has no end.
- The eighth is making good use of existence.
- The ninth is renewal.
- The tenth is Nowruz, meaning that human beings and existence must both be renewed.
- The eleventh is that futility does not last; once its impermanence becomes clear, the misguided and the ill-intentioned will turn back from their wrongdoing.
- Finally, the twelfth and last foundation of Khosravani wisdom is liberation from stagnation.
The Great Figures of Khosravani Wisdom
Jamasp, Plotinus, Bayazid Bastami, Abolhasan Kharaqani, Mansur al-Hallaj, Abu Sa’id Abolkheyr and Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi. Since Jamasp and Frashoshtar were among the first to follow Zarathustra, Suhrawardi’s silence about the name “Zarathustra” can be explained by the climate of his time. Or perhaps, by tracing the chain of the “Khosravani leaven” back to Jamasp and Frashoshtar and their bond with Zarathustra, he felt no need to name Zarathustra as the embodiment and source of Khosravani wisdom. Given the link Suhrawardi drew between Khosravani wisdom and Sufism, Dr. Abdolhossein Zarrinkoob rightly called Zarathustra “the ancient Sufi of Iran.”
Sheikh Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi
Sheikh Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi was the first in the Islamic era to point to the source of Iranian mysticism. He states that the “Khosravani leaven” reached him through four masters: Bayazid Bastami, Abolhasan Kharaqani, Mansur al-Hallaj and Abol’abbas Qassab Amoli. Yet there is no clear reference by those three to an Iranian source of mysticism, and had Sheikh Shahab al-Din not pointed to it so clearly, tracing the source might have been difficult, although in the end researchers could have uncovered it.
Unlike Aristotle, Suhrawardi considered the origin of wisdom to be entirely Iranian, not Greek; in Aristotle’s view, other peoples who lacked the wisdom he had in mind were “barbarians.” Suhrawardi called this wisdom the Wisdom of Illumination, Khosravani wisdom, the ancient wisdom or the eternal leaven, and held that wisdom in its true sense belonged to the peoples of the East, in the metaphysical East and in Iran, whose representatives were the great sages and kings (khosravan) of Iran. He also counted Confucius among the khosravan of China.
The Wisdom of Illumination
By compiling the Wisdom of Illumination and founding the Illuminationist school, Suhrawardi transformed Iranian and Islamic thought. His Illuminationist wisdom, which brings together his philosophical and mystical works and ideas, is expressed at its best in his book Hikmat al-Ishraq (The Philosophy of Illumination). Like Farabi, Suhrawardi did not write a separate work on the virtuous city, but he did speak about the ideal ruler and the right to rule. In his allegorical works, above all, he points to moral lessons that can lead the members of a society toward salvation.
Suhrawardi’s philosophy rests on the primacy of light, which shows his attention to the sages of ancient Iran. He refers again and again to the Khosravanioun and to the virtuous sages of ancient Iran, such as Zarathustra and Kay Khosrow, and in matters of politics and government, for example, he considered the rule of Kay Khosrow an ideal one. The other pillar of his thought is the Quran and the Islamic tradition, so his view of government and the ruler agrees with Islamic teachings. He also saw himself as indebted to the divine sages of Greece, such as Pythagoras and Plato, and to other divine sages of the world, such as Hermes, and he took up many views of his predecessors such as Farabi and Avicenna. It is therefore likely that in many respects he agreed with Farabi about the virtuous city and the qualities and conditions of its ruler.
The “Great Thought”
The “Great Thought” of the Master of Illumination is nothing less than the founding of a complete spiritual culture: one that embraces the whole of philosophical knowledge while also aiming at the full spiritual realization of the person. The path of Illumination, the path of the “Illuminationist” wisdom revived from the heart of the wisdom of ancient Iran, turns neither to the right nor to the left. The seeker who sets foot on it is called neither to become the theorist of a philosophy blind to philosophy’s true aim, nor an adventurer in the realm of mysticism, unaware of the dangers that befall those whom philosophy has not yet brought to self-awareness and protected against every kind of mirage.
That is why this path can be called the “royal road.” The term is borrowed from the mystical wisdom of Philo of Alexandria, whose works can in many ways be compared with those of the “Illuminationist” sages, although his works were unknown to them. These comparisons simply continue those that others have already drawn between Philo’s idea of the divine “powers” and the Amesha Spentas, the archangels of the Avesta.
The name “royal road” comes from the Book of Numbers in the Torah: “We will take the royal road, and we will not turn to the right or to the left until we have passed through your land” (20:17 and 21:22). This royal road is the road of gnosis. It brings the seeker to knowledge through direct vision, for it is the road of “the people of insight.”
Walking this road, the people of insight advance to the highest rank, which Suhrawardi calls ta’alloh (becoming godlike). It is the same road that led “the stranger” in the Tale of the Occidental Exile to the summit of Mount Sinai, from where he found the way to the “eighth climate.” This royal road is also what Muslim gnostics called the “straight path” (sirat al-mustaqim): a road that turns neither right nor left, the ridge of the mountain where everything that grows on both slopes rises to its peak and comes together.
Suhrawardi’s Great Thought left a deep mark on the spiritual culture of Iran. Certainly, this land had its theoretical philosophers, and also Sufis who looked down on philosophy; but none of them represents this culture in its complete form. Mulla Sadra of Shiraz already bore witness to this:
“The seeker of the path of truth should combine the two ways: his inner purification should not be empty of thought, nor his thinking empty of inner purification. Rather, like the way of the Illuminationist sages (the Persian Platonists), his way should be an isthmus that unites both.”
The Philosophy of Illumination and Rumi
The foundation of the Philosophy of Illumination is the “Supreme Light,” regarded as the origin and source of existence. It is linked to the Khosravani and Pahlavi wisdom of the ancient Iranians and to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, and Suhrawardi revived this philosophy within Islamic mysticism and wisdom. The frequent use of the word “light” and its synonyms in Rumi’s poetry shows the special place this word holds in his thought.
The ideas of ancient Iran and of the Mazdean faith, especially Khosravani philosophy, have influenced literary and mystical works after Islam to a greater or lesser degree. Looking at the breadth of the wisdom and philosophy of light in ancient Iran, at the God-centered view of “fire (light), farr and the Amesha Spentas” in Mazdean texts, and at their reflection in Rumi’s thought in the Masnavi, a descriptive, analytical and documentary study with a quantitative evaluation set out to identify the most radiant manifestations of Ahura Mazda in the Yasna and to trace them in Rumi’s Masnavi.
Fire, farr and the Amesha Spentas, as three radiances and luminous attributes of Ahura Mazda, hold a sacred place in the beliefs of the ancient Iranians and of Zoroastrians today. These manifestations, especially the element of “fire and light,” in the view of Zoroastrians and Mazdean texts and in Rumi’s Masnavi alike, all connect to the source of “divine light.” The glow of fire, with its rising rays, is seen as a symbol of God’s manifestation; the Amesha Spentas are also tied to the light and luminous attributes of God, and their ritual and social role is to raise human beings from the lower, material world to the spiritual world and to true peace. Throughout the Masnavi, Rumi draws on the mystical ideas and elements of the Zoroastrian faith only as allegories, to express and explain his own mystical thought.
Hafez of Shiraz
Among the heirs of the Khosravani sages that Suhrawardi described, Hafez too deserves his rightful place. Although this “sheikh” had no khanqah or Sufi lodge of his own, he should be counted among the Khosravani sages, the Khosravanioun. Hafez, too, was a mystic who, after grasping the truths through unveiling and inner vision, expressed them in a language of secrets, veiled in “light and darkness.”
Written by Yaser Tayefeh
