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2. Works.

Besides the Diwan which will be dealt with later, the works of Nasir can be enumerated as follows:

Rawshanai-namah (The Book of Light), a poem of 582 lines in the Berlin edition. Ivanow suggests 444/1053 as the probable date of composition. Ismaili concepts of Divine Unity, Logos, Universal Soul, the human soul and its becoming, the necessity for a spiritual guide, reward and punishment in the hereafter are discussed it is also known as Shish fasl (Six Chapters), under which title it has had extensive influence on later Persian poetry.

  • Safar-namah (Travel Book) a lucid and highly readable account in Persian of his voyages to Egypt and elsewhere, containing valuable geographical and historical information; it has been translated into European and Eastern languages several times.
  • Wajh-i din (The Face of Religion), a basic work of Ismaili doctrine in Persian dealing with metaphysics, theology and ritual. The Berlin edition is faulty.
  • Gushayish wa rahayish (Release and Deliverance), a treatise in Persian in thirty questions and answers dealing with the Creator and the creature, the relation of God and the world, the eternal and the created, being and nothingness, substance, matter, physics, jurisprudence, etc.
  • Khwan al-ikhwan (The Feast of the Brethren), in a hundred chapters, written in Persian for less educated readers and dealing with the same topics as No. 4. The author draws on many Ismaili works which are no longer extant, including some of his own lost works.
  • Zad al-musafarin (Provision for the Road) written in Persian in 453/1061, divided into 27 chapters; purely philosophical in nature, with little reference to specifically Ismaili themes. Quotes extensively from earlier Islamic philosophers concerning whose philosophical ideas little is known, such as Muhammad ibn Zakariyya, Razi and Abul-Abbas Iranshari.
  • Jami al-hikmatayn (Harmonisation of the Two Wisdoms; i.e., the philosophical and the religious), the last work of Nasir; an attempt to unify Greek philosophy, especially that o Plato and Aristotle, with the tenets of Islam, and particularly Ismailism. This book is an answer to the famous ode of Abul Haytham al-Jurjani in which crucial questions in philosophy, theology, logic, physics, grammar, cosmology, hermeneutics and eschatology are raised. Written in Persian in 462/1070 at the request of the Emir of Badakhshan.

There are about seven other works of Nasir, mentioned by him but unfortunately lost.


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