Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi

Shihāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash ibn Amirak as-Suhrawardī
Manuscript of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq. Copy created in post-Seljuq Iran, dated 13 October 1220
Personal life
Born1154
Died1191 (aged 3637)
Other namesSohrevardi, Shihab al-Din
Religious life
ReligionIslam, Shafi Sunni
SchoolIlluminationism
Perennial philosophy
Senior posting
Based inSuhraward
Period in office12th century

Shihāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī (Persian: شهاب‌الدین سهروردی, also known as Sohrevardi) (1154–1191) was a Persian philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy. The "light" in his "Philosophy of Illumination" is the source of knowledge. He is referred to by the honorific title Shaikh al-ʿIshraq "Master of Illumination" and Shaikh al-Maqtul "the Murdered Master", in reference to his execution for heresy. Mulla Sadra, the Persian sage of the Safavid era described Suhrawardi as the "Reviver of the Traces of the Pahlavi (Iranian) Sages", and Suhrawardi, in his magnum opus "The Philosophy of Illumination", thought of himself as a reviver or resuscitator of the ancient tradition of Persian wisdom. Suhrawardi provided a new Platonic critique of the peripatetic school of Avicenna that was dominant at his times, and that critique involved the fields of Logic, Physics, Epistemology, Psychology, and Metaphysics.