Suhrawardi's epistemology: critique of peripateticism and knowledge by presence

Shihāb ad-Dīn Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī, also known as Shaikh al-Ishraq (from the Arabic Ishraq, i.e., illumination) or Shaikh al-Maktul (murdered or martyred), is the founder of Ishraqism, a trend of Arab-Muslim philosophy, which represents the integration of the preceding ancient philosophical and religious movements, views of Neoplatonists and Islamic mystics. This is, on the one hand, an attempt “to revive the great wisdom and theosophy of ancient pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran”, but, on the other hand, Suhrawardi seeks to grasp a higher and unchanging truth, whose description and means of achievement are the subject of his philosophical reflections. In this study, the aim is to identify one of the most important aspects of Suhrawardi’s philosophy - his epistemology, presented as a unique type of knowledge, knowledge by presence (al-ilm al-khuduri), the argumentation of the reliability of which is built primarily through criticism of peripatetism. Knowledge by presence of Suhrawardi is of particular historical and philosophical interest for the reasons that it has a number of analogues with more modern epistemological representations, and also because it is practically not represented in Russian studies, although it is able to fully reveal not only epistemology, but also many other aspects of Suhrawardi’s philosophy.