Illuminationism

The Illuminationist (ishraqi) tradition takes its name from Suhrawardi’s Philosophy of Illumination. Offering a Platonic critique of the dominant Avicennan philosophy, it holds that reality is a hierarchy of lights and that true knowledge is a matter of direct presence rather than definition and inference. It was studied in philosophical circles in the Islamic East from the thirteenth century onwards, and fed into the thought of Mulla Sadra.