A Review of Hadi Sabzavari’s Sharḥ al-Manẓūma as a Textbook

Only few philosophical works, such as Hadi Sabzavari’s Sharḥ al-manẓūma (literally, commentary on verses concerning philosophy), are used as textbooks. Consisting of didactic verses composed and explained by Sabzavari, the book is regarded as one of his valuable works and a main textbook on Islamic philosophy. The research question is how we can examine and evaluate this work as a textbook, or how we can re-write it to provide a more useful textbook.I aim to foster a discourse of critique and evaluation of existing textbooks, encouraging and motivating the academic community to enhance and supplement these texts, and to provide up-to-date and useful versions of philosophical textbooks. Some critical views of Sharḥ al-manẓūma have been proposed in a number of books and articles, including Teaching philosophy: a comparative study of Sharḥ al-manẓūma and Nihāyat al-ḥikma (Izadi 2013, 59), “Haj Mulla Hadi Sabzavari and his Sharḥ al-manẓūma” (Fani 1983, 44), “A Comparative Study of Sharḥ al-manẓūma and Nihāyat al-ḥikma” (Taba’i Izadi 2001, 58), “Teaching Transcendent Philosophy or obfuscating and destroying it?” (Shijari 2016, 51).Given its significance, Sharḥ al-manẓūma merits thorough examination and review to capitalize on its strengths and mitigate its weaknesses.  The present article contributes by discussing specific passages of Sharḥ al-manẓūma to illustrate certain educational difficulties within the text in a tangible manner. In light of these challenges, suggestions are put forth for the improvement of this and other philosophy textbooks.    

This article addresses a theoretical question using the library research method. In this method, after formulating the question and developing schematic and detailed plans, sources were provided, notes were taken, and an initial edit was conducted through thematic categorization of the notes. Subsequently, the finalized version was prepared after further reconsiderations. 

Apart from its strengths, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma, like all human creations, has weaknesses that are analyzed in detail in the article. One such weakness is its explanation of the content through versification and commentary mixed with the text. This has placed Sabzavari in a challenging position, making it difficult for him to clarify phrases and shape the structure of sentences, resulting in the complexity and difficulty of understanding phrases in Sharḥ al-manẓūma. Furthermore, other drawbacks of Sharḥ al-manẓūma include theoretical complications, criticisms of other views, and elaboration of objections. At times, Sabzavari unexpectedly adds fuel to the fire of lengthy theoretical debates and controversies, which do not align with the structure of the discussion and the reader’s capacity.Among other issues with Sharḥ al-manẓūma is its excessive optimism towards views, a tendency to justify them, and taking a charitable stance towards them without due regard for the facts of the history of philosophy. Moreover, Sabzavari attributes and justifies various views in terms of religious teachings. This approach has cast doubts on some of the citations in the book (Mutahhari 2011, 304). Furthermore, the prominence of Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent philosophical approach in Sabzavari’s Sharḥ al-manẓūma, and latter’s alignment with mystical principles and discussions, have sometimes led Sabzavari to make intricate mystical remarks. However, understanding these remarks requires a beginner in philosophy to be relatively or even fully familiar with the issues of theoretical mysticism.       

Conclusion and Suggestions:

Although sharing many outstanding characteristics of standard textbooks, Sharḥ al-Manẓūma suffers from issues such as the complication of its versification, difficulties arising from the blending of texts and commentaries, literary digressions, inclusion of mystical allusions, excessive justification and a charitable stance, neglect of historical context, digressions in explanations of reasons, and personal interpretations of Quranic verses and hadiths. In these respects, the book lacks some characteristics of a textbook. A contribution of this article is its content analysis of some parts of the text in a concrete and tangible way. Finally, this study suggests that Sharḥ al-manẓūma should be re-written preserve its authenticity and yet be transformed to an up-to-date and useful textbook with as many faults removed as possible.