Research library

The Research Library is a working catalogue of scholars, texts, papers, articles, lectures, and resources relevant to Hikmah Islam, organised by field, subject, method, and rational entailment.

• Name / Work:
• Type: Academic / Book / Paper / Article / Lecture / Website / Dataset
• Field:
• Subject:
• Related entailments:
• Use for WikiHikmah:
• Status: To read / Read / Important / Cited / Questionable
• Notes:

Philosophy

Metaphysics

Persistence, time, and identity

Four-dimensionalism / perdurantism

Sider, Theodore. “Four Dimensionalism.” The Philosophical Review 106 (1997): 197–231.

• Perdurantism; B-theory of time; Eternalism; Ontological parsimony; Ontological priority

• Sider argues for four-dimensionalism using considerations from vagueness and mereological composition.

• Useful for developing the argument that objects persist through temporal parts rather than being wholly present at each moment. Relevant to the Hikmah account of time, temporal extension, identity, and the ontology of the block universe.

Islamic Studies

Shi'i Studies

Islamic social thought and revolutionary sociology

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. On the Sociology of Islam — Ali Shariati

Shariati, Ali. On the Sociology of Islam: Lectures. Translated by Hamid Algar. Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1979.

• Type: Book / Translated lectures / Primary text / Social and political thought
• Field: Sociology of religion; Islamic social thought; revolutionary theory; political theology; intellectual history; modern Iranian thought
• Subject: Tawhid; society; class; ideology; religious consciousness; historical change; social contradiction; revolution; colonialism; cultural alienation; human agency
• Description: A collection of lectures in which Ali Shariati develops an explicitly Islamic approach to sociology and historical interpretation. Rather than treating Islam solely as a system of private belief, ritual observance, or inherited doctrine, Shariati presents it as a worldview capable of interpreting social structures, historical conflict, class relations, cultural alienation, political domination, and revolutionary transformation.
• Key themes: The social meaning of tawhid; the relationship between worldview and social order; the distinction between prophetic and oppressive forms of religion; religion as either an instrument of domination or a force of liberation; the formation of collective consciousness; human responsibility within history; the role of intellectuals in social transformation.
• Related entailments: Sovereignty of Intellect; Noocracy; Self-Cultivation; Revelation as movement; Wilayah; social transformation; revolutionary consciousness; anti-colonialism; collective wellbeing
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Highly relevant to the Hikmah Islamic understanding of religion as a historically embodied intellectual and civilisational movement rather than merely a collection of propositions, rituals, or communal identity markers. Shariati provides conceptual resources for explaining how an underlying metaphysical and ethical vision becomes a social force through symbols, institutions, narratives, leadership, collective memory, and revolutionary mobilisation.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: His treatment of tawhid as possessing social and political implications parallels the Hikmah claim that metaphysical unity should entail opposition to domination, fragmentation, exploitation, inherited hierarchy, and the reduction of human beings to passive social functions.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Useful for articles on Ali Shariati, revolutionary Shi'ism, Red Shi'ism and Black Shi'ism, sociology of religion, ideology, cultural alienation, anti-colonialism, social transformation, revolutionary leadership, collective consciousness, and the Iranian Revolution.
• Use for WikiHikmah: The work can also help articulate the sociological dimension of Revelation as Movement: revelation becomes historically consequential when a community receives, interprets, institutionalises, and acts upon a transformative vision.
• Critical considerations: Shariati frequently writes as a revolutionary intellectual and public lecturer rather than as a methodologically neutral academic sociologist. His historical constructions, binary categories, and claims about early Islam should therefore be independently evaluated using historical-critical scholarship.
• Status: Important / To read / Cited
• Online access: Bibliographic information and digital-library entry
• Notes: Particularly useful when read alongside Shariati's works on the sociology of shirk, the philosophy of history, alienation, martyrdom, the role of the enlightened intellectual, and the distinction between revolutionary and institutionalised religion.

1. 1. 1. 1. Introductory Islamic doctrine and worldview

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Islamic Teachings in Brief — Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i

Tabataba'i, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn. Islamic Teachings in Brief. Translated by Muzhgan Jalali. London: Imam Ali Foundation.

• Alternative identification: This is the verified Tabataba'i work most closely corresponding to the informal title “Introduction to Islam.”
• Type: Book / Primary text / Introductory doctrinal survey
• Field: Shi'i studies; Islamic theology; ethics; jurisprudence; religious anthropology; Islamic worldview
• Subject: Religion; human nature; knowledge; society; tawhid; divine attributes; prophethood; imamate; resurrection; ethics; worship; law; social duties
• Description: A systematic introduction to Islamic teachings written in relatively accessible language. The work presents Islam as an integrated intellectual, ethical, spiritual, legal, and social order rather than as a collection of disconnected beliefs and ritual practices.
• Description: Tabataba'i discusses the human need for religion, the relationship between individual and society, the foundations of moral and legal order, the existence and attributes of God, prophethood, revelation, imamate, resurrection, worship, ethical conduct, and social responsibility.
• Key themes: The intelligibility of religion; the need for a comprehensive human order; the unity of doctrine and practice; the relation between individual formation and social wellbeing; prophetic guidance; the authority of the imams; ethical discipline; the rational structure of Islamic belief.
• Related entailments: Sovereignty of Intellect; Self-Cultivation; Revelation as movement; Wilayah; ethical order; social coordination; human perfectibility
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Useful as a concise presentation of the inherited Twelver synthesis of metaphysics, theology, ethics, law, society, prophethood, and imamate. It establishes the conventional intellectual framework from which Hikmah Islam both inherits concepts and develops philosophical reinterpretations.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: The book supports the view that Islam is intended to form complete human beings and ordered societies rather than merely regulate private ritual. It is particularly relevant to the Hikmah understanding of Islam as submission to reality expressed through knowledge, ethical formation, social coordination, and orientation towards human perfection.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Useful as a baseline source when explaining classical Shi'i positions before presenting a specifically Hikmah Islamic reconstruction. It can help distinguish inherited confessional teachings from conclusions independently established through logic, philosophy, historical inquiry, or empirical investigation.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Relevant to introductory articles on Islam, tawhid, prophethood, imamate, resurrection, ethics, jurisprudence, human nature, society, religious authority, and the relationship between belief and action.
• Critical considerations: This is an internal and confessional presentation of Islam rather than a historical-critical investigation of Islamic origins. Its theological, philosophical, historical, and legal claims should therefore be evaluated according to the appropriate method for each domain.
• Status: Important / To read / Cited
• Online access: Read online
• Notes: Useful for showing both the continuity and distinction between mainstream Twelver doctrine and Hikmah Islam. The book should not automatically be treated as expressing Tabataba'i's complete philosophical position, since it is deliberately introductory and written for a general audience.

1. 1. 1. 1. Islamic law and practical order

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Shari'at-e Islam — Ruhollah Khomeini

Khomeini, Ruhollah. Shari'at-e Islam or Islamic Laws. Exact edition, translator, publication place, and original-language title to be confirmed from the title page of the edition being catalogued.

• Title note: Khomeini's practical legal rulings circulate in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and English under several titles, including editions described as Islamic Laws, Practical Laws, Tawdih al-Masa'il, collections of his fatwas, and instructional works based upon his legal judgements. The bibliographic details of the particular edition held by WikiHikmah should be copied directly from its title and copyright pages.
• Type: Book / Primary text / Jurisprudential manual / Collection of legal rulings
• Field: Shi'i jurisprudence; practical law; ritual law; social regulation; legal authority; applied religious ethics
• Subject: Ijtihad; taqlid; legal classification; purity; prayer; fasting; pilgrimage; charity; commercial activity; family law; personal conduct; communal obligations; religious authority
• Description: A practical presentation of Islamic legal rulings associated with Khomeini's jurisprudence. It belongs to the tradition of Shi'i legal manuals intended to explain the obligations, prohibitions, recommendations, discouraged acts, and legally neutral actions governing the practical life of a religious adherent.
• Description: Depending upon the edition, the work may concentrate upon everyday ritual and personal law or may also include questions of transactions, social relations, family life, public duties, collective obligations, adjudication, and the authority of qualified jurists.
• Key themes: The translation of general religious principles into concrete practice; disciplined action; the classification of conduct; juristic reasoning; religious authority; continuity between personal ethics and collective order.
• Related entailments: Self-Cultivation; Wilayah; Noocracy; Sovereignty of Intellect; legal order; disciplined conduct; social coordination; collective responsibility
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Relevant as evidence that Khomeini's project cannot be reduced to abstract metaphysics, private mysticism, or revolutionary rhetoric. His thought also includes a highly structured conception of practical action, social obligation, embodied discipline, and the organisation of individual and collective life.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: The work provides an important contrast with the Hikmah Islamic distinction between universal rational and ethical principles and historically conditioned legal implementations. It can be used to ask which legal conclusions are permanently rational, which depend upon particular social circumstances, and which should be reconsidered in light of historical scholarship, scientific knowledge, changing institutions, and the maximisation of wellbeing.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Useful for articles on Khomeini, jurisprudence, shari'ah, taqlid, ijtihad, wilayat al-faqih, religious authority, ritual, ethical discipline, legal development, and the relationship between law and spiritual formation.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Particularly useful for distinguishing Khomeini's jurisprudential rulings from his metaphysical, mystical, ethical, and political writings. The existence of a ruling in a legal manual does not by itself establish that it is a necessary metaphysical or moral entailment.
• Critical considerations: The manual represents juristic conclusions within a particular Twelver legal tradition. Its rulings should not automatically be identified with timeless morality, the complete philosophy of Khomeini, or the necessary position of Hikmah Islam.
• Critical considerations: Historical circumstances, evidential assumptions, inherited legal precedents, the reliability and interpretation of transmitted reports, changes in social organisation, and contemporary empirical knowledge must all be considered when assessing particular rulings.
• Status: Important / To read / Bibliographic details to verify
• Online access: Add a link to the precise edition only after its title, language, translator, and contents have been verified.
• Notes: Do not silently identify this edition with Tahrir al-Wasilah, Islamic Government, or another Khomeini work unless the title page establishes that identification.

1. 1. 1. Islamic Philosophy

1. 1. 1. 1. Metaphysics and first philosophy

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Bidayat al-Hikmah: The Elements of Islamic Metaphysics — Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i

Tabataba'i, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn. The Elements of Islamic Metaphysics: Bidayat al-Hikmah. Translated by Sayyid 'Ali Quli Qara'i. 2nd revised ed. London: ICAS Press, 2018.

• Original title: بداية الحكمة, Bidayat al-Hikmah, meaning “The Beginning of Wisdom”
• Type: Book / Primary philosophical text / Philosophical textbook
• Field: Islamic philosophy; metaphysics; ontology; philosophical theology; epistemology; philosophy of mind
• Subject: Being; existence and quiddity; the fundamentality of existence; gradation of existence; necessity and contingency; unity and multiplicity; causality; actuality and potentiality; knowledge; intellect; the soul; the Necessary Being; divine attributes
• Description: A concise but systematic textbook of Islamic metaphysics written by Tabataba'i for students beginning the formal study of philosophy. It presents a structured sequence of ontological arguments concerning existence as existence, the relationship between existence and essence, modes of being, causation, unity, multiplicity, motion, knowledge, immateriality, and the Necessary Being.
• Description: Although described as an introductory work, it presupposes careful philosophical reasoning and familiarity with technical concepts. It represents the later Islamic philosophical tradition shaped especially by Avicennism, the School of Isfahan, and the transcendent philosophy associated with Mulla Sadra.
• Key themes: The self-evidence of the concept of existence; the fundamentality of existence; existence as a single gradational reality; the distinction between existence and quiddity; necessity, contingency, and impossibility; the dependence of contingent beings upon causes; the impossibility of causal circularity; actuality and potentiality; knowledge as a mode of existence; the Necessary Being as the source of being and perfection.
• Related entailments: Consciousness; Sovereignty of Intellect; ontological priority; gradation of existence; necessary being; divine simplicity; causation; grounding; unity and multiplicity
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: A core comparative source for the metaphysical vocabulary used by Hikmah Islam. Its discussions of the fundamentality and gradation of existence, necessity and contingency, causality, immaterial intellect, knowledge, and the Necessary Being provide one of the clearest modern presentations of the Sadrian philosophical inheritance.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Especially important for comparing Tabataba'i's account of existence with the consciousness–existence identity proposed by Hikmah Islam. The text supplies much of the conceptual background needed to determine where Hikmati metaphysics continues, modifies, rejects, or radicalises established Sadrian positions.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Its proposition that existence is a single gradational reality is directly relevant to hierarchical or emanational accounts of reality. Its analysis of necessity and complete causation is also relevant to Hikmah discussions of necessitarianism, atemporal dependence, grounding, and whether a complete cause can fail to produce its effect.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Essential for articles on existence, essence, quiddity, the fundamentality of existence, gradation of existence, divine simplicity, necessity, contingency, causality, grounding, the Necessary Being, intellect, knowledge, soul, emanation, and Sadrian philosophy.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Useful as a technical vocabulary source. Articles should explain Tabataba'i's argument before comparing it with Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, Plotinus, contemporary analytic metaphysics, and the current Hikmati model.
• Critical considerations: The work is a philosophical manual, not a neutral history of Islamic philosophy. Its arguments must be reconstructed and evaluated rather than accepted solely because of Tabataba'i's authority or their place within the seminary curriculum.
• Critical considerations: Hikmah Islam should distinguish between shared terminology and genuine agreement. The use of terms such as existence, gradation, necessity, intellect, or causality does not establish that Tabataba'i and Hikmah Islam assign them identical meanings.
• Status: Core / Important / To read / Cited
• Online access: Arabic-English text / Publisher and edition information
• Notes: The 2018 second edition is translated by Sayyid 'Ali Quli Qara'i and includes revised terminology, explanatory notes, and a glossary. It should ideally be studied alongside Nihayat al-Hikmah, Tabataba'i's more advanced philosophical manual.

1. 1. 1. Irfan and Mysticism

1. 1. 1. 1. Ethics, spiritual psychology, and self-cultivation

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Forty Hadith: An Exposition — Ruhollah Khomeini

Khomeini, Ruhollah. Forty Hadith: An Exposition on Forty Ahadith Narrated through the Prophet and His Ahl al-Bayt. Translated by Mahliqa Qara'i and Sayyid 'Ali Quli Qara'i. Qum: Ansariyan Publications.

• Original Persian title: اربعین حدیث or چهل حدیث, Arba'in Hadith / Chihil Hadith
• Type: Book / Primary text / Hadith commentary / Ethical and mystical treatise
• Field: Irfan; Islamic ethics; spiritual psychology; hadith commentary; philosophical theology; self-cultivation
• Subject: Jihad of the self; pride; ostentation; self-conceit; envy; anger; prejudice; hypocrisy; love of the world; repentance; patience; trust in God; remembrance; contemplation; fitrah; divine encounter; tawhid; knowledge of God
• Description: Khomeini's extended commentary upon forty traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt. Thirty-three of the selected traditions principally concern ethics and spiritual formation, while the remaining seven address theological and metaphysical subjects.
• Description: The work is not merely a collection of hadiths. Khomeini uses the traditions as points of departure for a sustained analysis of the human ego, moral vice, intention, consciousness, spiritual perception, disciplined practice, divine knowledge, and the transformation of the self.
• Key themes: The greater jihad against the undisciplined self; purification of intention; the psychology of pride and self-deception; the destructive effects of envy and anger; the relationship between outward conduct and inward character; contemplation; remembrance; fitrah; reliance upon God; love of God; the degrees of faith and knowledge.
• Related entailments: Self-Cultivation; Consciousness; Sovereignty of Intellect; Wilayah; moral psychology; purification; spiritual discipline; degrees of awareness; human perfectibility
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: One of the most important sources for understanding the ethical, psychological, and mystical foundations of Khomeini's thought. It shows that his revolutionary and political project was grounded in a programme of inner transformation rather than being conceived solely in terms of institutions, state power, or jurisprudential authority.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: Directly relevant to the Hikmah principle of Self-Cultivation. The book treats moral failure not merely as disobedience to external rules but as a deformation of perception, consciousness, motivation, and character. Ethical development therefore requires sustained attention, practice, self-observation, emotional regulation, and the restructuring of habitual desire.
• Relevance to Hikmah Islam: The work is also useful for investigating the relationship between levels of consciousness and levels of reality. Khomeini repeatedly treats knowledge, spiritual perception, moral purification, and proximity to God as connected rather than independent domains.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Essential for articles on Khomeini's irfan, ethics, spiritual psychology, the greater jihad, self-cultivation, pride, envy, anger, hypocrisy, intention, contemplation, fitrah, remembrance, moral development, and the formation of revolutionary leaders.
• Use for WikiHikmah: Useful for the Hikmah project of developing empirically informed methods of ethical and psychological training. Traditional exercises and observations in the text can be compared with contemporary research in psychology, psychotherapy, cognitive science, neuroscience, habit formation, emotional regulation, attention, and personality development.
• Critical considerations: The individual hadiths should not automatically be treated as historically authentic merely because Khomeini comments upon them. Their transmission histories, textual development, and dating remain separate historical questions.
• Critical considerations: The psychological and ethical insights of the commentary may be assessed independently of the historical authenticity of a particular report. Conversely, spiritual authority should not exempt psychological, metaphysical, or historical claims from critical evaluation.
• Status: Core / Important / To read / Cited
• Online access: Read online and download
• Notes: Completed in 1939, before Khomeini became the leader of the Iranian Revolution. The work is especially valuable for demonstrating the continuity between Khomeini's early mystical-ethical formation and his later conception of revolutionary action, leadership, discipline, and political responsibility.

History

Ancient Philosophy

Platonism and Neoplatonism

Lloyd P. Gerson

Gerson, Lloyd P. From Plato to Platonism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.

Gerson, Lloyd P. Aristotle and Other Platonists. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Gerson, Lloyd P. Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020.

Gerson, Lloyd P. Plato's Moral Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

• Type: Academic / Books / Secondary scholarship

• Field: Ancient philosophy; Platonism; metaphysics; ethics; philosophy of religion; history of philosophy

• Subject: Plato; Aristotle; Plotinus; Platonism; anti-naturalism; the Good; intelligible reality; metaphysical realism; moral realism

• Related entailments: Consciousness; Sovereignty of Intellect; Ontological priority; Noocracy; Self-Cultivation; Wilayah

• Use for WikiHikmah: Gerson is useful for treating Platonism not merely as the historical philosophy of Plato, but as a continuous metaphysical tradition concerned with intelligible reality, the Good, intellect, being, order, and normativity. His work is especially relevant where Hikmah Islam draws on the Platonic and Neoplatonic inheritance behind Islamic philosophy, illuminationism, metaphysical hierarchy, noetic governance, and the claim that ethics must be grounded in metaphysics rather than preference, convention, or naturalistic reduction.

• Status: Important / To read / Cited

• Notes: Especially useful for defending the continuity between Plato, Aristotle, and later Platonism; for resisting overly modern oppositions between Platonism and Aristotelianism; and for framing the Good as a metaphysical first principle rather than a merely moral ideal.

Scholars and thinkers

Ancient philosophy, Platonism, and metaphysics

Lloyd P. Gerson

Canadian philosopher and scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, especially Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Platonism, metaphysics, and moral realism. Relevant to Hikmah Islam as a major contemporary interpreter of Platonism as a living metaphysical tradition centred on intelligible reality, the Good, intellect, and the critique of naturalism.

Philosophy of mind, psychiatry, and consciousness

Iain McGilchrist

British psychiatrist and philosopher. Relevant to philosophy of mind, psychiatry, neuroscience, attention, consciousness, hemispheric cognition, imagination, and critiques of reductive rationality.