Safavid Twelver Lettrism Between Sunnism and Shiʿism, Mysticism and Science: Rajab al-Bursī vs. Maḥmūd Dihdār
Global Intellectual History February 2, 2023 Matthew Melvin-Koushki 2 citations
Two Twelver Shi'i occultist authorities from the high Safavid period, al-Ḥāfiẓ Rajab al-Bursī (d. after 1410) and Maḥmūd Dihdār Shīrāzī (fl. 1576), are intimately connected and must be explained together, yet the first has been celebrated as a semi-extremist mystic while the second has been entirely overlooked. Both authors' primary scholarly reference was the New Brethren of Purity network of imperial Timurid and Ottoman Pythagoreanizing occultists radiating from late Mamluk Cairo. Al-Bursī was the first Shi'i author to draw directly on both Ibn ʿArabī and Aḥmad al-Būnī, representing lettrist theory and praxis; Dihdār was the most prolific Persian author on practical Būnian lettrism of the sixteenth century, providing a window onto how Safavid philosophy was imperially practiced.