The Doctrine of the Transmigration of Soul according to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (killed 587/1191) and his Followers.

This paper investigates the attitudes of the Illuminationists towards metempsychosis. It considers Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī's (executed 587/1197) treatment of issue in his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Shahrazūrī's (d. after 688/1288) notion of metempsychosis in his Shajara al-ilāhiyya and Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā'ī's (d. after 906/1501) concept of transmigration in his Kitāb al-Mujlī. Whereas the aforementioned thinkers adhered to the temporal origin of the soul, other Illuminationists, namely the Jewish philosopher Sa'd al-Dīn Manṣūr b. Kammūna (d. 1284) and the Imanite Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311 or 716/1316) believed in the pre-eternity of the soul. Their notion of metempsychosis therefore necessarily differs from the concept of Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī and Ibn Abī Jumhūr.