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The history of Islamic philosophy and theology in India has yet to be properly written. The learned culture of the high Mughal period has increasingly attracted attention, with a focus on the role of the Dars-i Nizämi curriculum, devised in the eighteenth century to produce cohorts of capable imperial administrators, and on the intellectual life of Delhi, Lucknow, and the Doab in the middle to late Mughal period. 1 Some have identified the significant role of Mir Fathulläh Shiräzi (d. 997/1589), a philosopher trained in the school of Shiräz, a student of the philosopher and sometime sadr of the Safavid empire, Mir Ghiyäthuddin MansOr Dashtaki (d. 949/1542), and emigrant to the court of Akbar (r. 1556-1605). 2 Numerous works, both academic and popular, stress his role as the foremost philosopher and scientist of his time in the Persianate world, and attribute to him a series of important technological innovations and reforms of the administration, including the adoption of Persian as the official language of the Mughal chancellery; he is also regarded as the main conduit for the serious study of philosophy and theology in India, laying the foundations for the Dars-i Nizami curriculum, which emphasized the study of the intellectual disciplines (culum caqliyya). It is common, therefore, for intellectual historians of Islamic thought in India to trace a lineage from Shïrâzï (and, indeed, from the ishraqi Avicennan tradition that he inherited) to the "founder" of the Dars-i Nizami, Mulla Nizamuddin SihaTvï Farangï-Mahallï (d. 1 161/1748). 3 It was in this early Mughal period that Islamic philosophical traditions seriously began to penetrate Indian scholarly circles.4
Shïrâzï is praised in the biographical literature by friend and foe; the universal approval reflects his significant political status at the court of Akbar. 5 His friend AbO 1-Fazl wrote:
He was so learned that if all the previous books of philosophy disappeared, he could have laid a new foundation for knowledge and would not have desired what had preceded. 6
Another contemporary and an official historian at court, Khwaja Nizam al-Dïn Ahmad Bakhshi (d. 1003/1594), wrote:
He was superior to all the ulema of Persia, Iraq, and India in his knowledge of the scriptural and intellectual sciences. Among his contemporaries, he had no equal. He was an expert in the...