al-`Alawī, Sayyid Aḥmad b. Zayn al-Ābidīn [`Āmilī, Isfahānī] ( d. c.1041/ 1650).

 

An Isfaḥānī first cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad Baqir Āstarābādī Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1641), Sayyid Aḥmad al-`Alawī was a major philosopher- theologian and polemicist  who made considerable study and reflection upon Abrahamic scripture, especially the Hebrew Bible (tawrat) and the Christian Gospel (s) (injīl). Giving precedence to the Qur’ānic “Word of God” in the light of Shī`ī hermeneutical and doctrinal norms, as opposed to a partly altered and corrupted Jewish-Christian Bible, he wrote four weighty Persian treatises in dialogue with Jewish and Christian `people of the Book’:

• Laṭā'if-i Ghaybī (Subtleties of the Unseen), some Hermeneutical preliminaries.

 • Sawā`iq-i raḥmān  (The Thunderbolts of the All-Merciful). A disputation with  Judaism and the Torah.

• Lavāmi-yi rabbānī.

  •  Kitab Lavāmi`-yi  rabbānī fī radd al-shubba  al-naṣrāniyya   (The Lordly Brilliancies in refutation of Christian misconceptions") (completed 1031/1622). A confrontation with Christianity, an affirmation of biblical taḥrīf  and an attempt to prove the superiority of Islam.

        • Lavāmi-yi rabbānī. Edin. Univ. Lib. Orien. Mss. Spec. Coll. No. 372.

  • Miṣqāl-i ṣafā dār tajliyya va taṣfiya-yi ā’īnih-yi ḥaqq-namih dar radd-i madhhāb-i naṣārah (“The Polisher of Purity to burnish and make clear the ‘Mirror showing the Truth’, in refutation of the Christian religion”), written 1032/1622 in response to the Āyīnih-yi ḥaqq-namih (“Mirror displaying the Truth”) by the ADD  1609 CE. 

    • Miṣqāl-i ṣafā dār tajliyya-yi ā’īnih-yi ḥaqq-namā (CHK). ed. Ḥ Naji Iṣfāhānī, Qumm: 1415/ 1373 Sh/ 1995 CE.

      This fourth work  is a response to the  Āyīnih-yi ḥaqq-namih  (“The Mirror showing the Truth”, 1609) of  the Portugese Jesuit missionary Girolamo (Jerome) Xavier (d. 1617) who was also the author of a Persian life of Christ based on the Gospels entitled Mir’āt al-qūds (The Mirror of Sanctity) also referred to as  Dāstā–i Masīḥ,  as well as a life of the Apostles, Dāstā–i Aḥwāl-i Hawāriyyān.  Not the only Safavid `ºlim to respond to Xavier (Lee, 1824:cxiiiff; Hairi, 1993:155),  Sayyid A{mad apparently wrote this work after a “dream-vision” of the twelfth Imam as a supplement to the Lavāmi`  (<--). Therein he referred to Xavier’s volume as kalām bī-farjam  ( “useless discourse”) (Hairi, 1993:156). Responses to Sayyid Aḥmad’s polemic were written by Phillipus Guadagnolus and the Italian Pietro Della Valle (d.1652) who had met Mīr Dāmād  in Isfahān and presented him with his own Persian Risāla  (Ellis, BMCat. 1:col. 592; Rossi, 1948:32ff; Gurney, 1986)

Note also:

  • Sharḥ al-Qabasāt ( A Commentary onMir Damad's Kitab al-Qabasat), ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Isfahani with Persian and English introductions by M. Mohaqeeq. Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies, 1997 (19+747pp.) [= Mirath-i Maktub vol. 21].
  • Sharḥ al-Qabasāt ( A Commentary onMir Damad's Kitab al-Qabasat), ed. Ḥāmid Nājī Isfahani with Persian and English introductions by M. Mohaqeeq. Tehran: Institute of Islamic Studies, 1997 (19+747pp.) [= Mirath-i Maktub vol. 21]. *

 

Corbin, H

·         `Aḥmad b. Zayn al‑`Abedīn `Alawī'. Enc.Ir. 1:644