Husayni Isfahani


Ghiyāth al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī Amīrān Iṣfahānī was a fifteenth-century Persian physician and scientist from Isfahan, Iran. He was, in the words of Daniel Beben, 'a polymath in the service of several of the Timurid governors of Badakhshān in the second half of the 15th century' CE. Little is known of him beyond the works attributed to him.

Works

Asrār al-ḥurūf, dedicated to then governor of Badakhshān Abū Bakr, son of the Timurid ruler Abū Saʿīd Mirza.Dānish-nāma-i jahān, dedicated to Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mirza, also a son of Abū Saʿīd Mirza, governor of Badakhshān from 873/1469. This is Ghiyāth al-Dīn's best known work, a Persian encyclopedia of the natural sciences, concerned with meteorology, mineralogy, botany, and anatomy.Durrat al-misāḥa, on measurements and geometry, likewise dedicated to Sulṭān Maḥmūd Mirza.Khulāṣat al-tanjīm va burhān al-taqvīm, on astronomy.Maʿārif al-taqvīm, also known as Nujūm, also on astronomy.

''Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn''

According to one recension of Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn, also known as Tuḥfat al-nāẓirīn and Sī ū shish ṣaḥīfa, Ghiyāth al-Dīn also composed that text; Daniel Beben has accepted this attribution, arguing that its explicit Ismailism, which would have been unacceptable to the Timurids, implies that this text was composed before their conquest of Badakhshān. In Beben's assessment, 'the Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn is an important yet understudied work covering a series of topics related to Ismaili theology and doctrine, and is noteworthy for being the first Ismaili text known to have been composed within Badakhshān after Nāṣir-i Khusraw ', who seems to have been the person who introduced Ismailism to that region.
Most manuscripts of the Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn attribute the text to the legendary pīr Sayyid Suhrāb Walī, though Beben has suggested that the original person behind this figure might himself have been Ghiyāth al-Dīn.
The date of composition of the work is usually stated to be 856/857 AH/1452–1453 CE. As of 2022, thirteen manuscripts of the text were known ; the oldest manuscript was copied in dated 1137/1725.

Editions