Zoroastrian Philosophy in the Islamic World

This dissertation describes a school of Zoroastrian philosophy that flourished in the 8th to 10th centuries of the Common Era. It is the first analysis of the school in terms of its own definitions, distinctions, and argument patterns. The school is named the Dēnkard School after the central extant text: the Dēnkard. The proponents of the Dēnkard School drew from Greek, Indian, and contemporary Islamic thought in order to articulate and advance a worldview rooted in the ancient Avestan literature of the Zoroastrians. They wrote in Middle Persian, and this makes them the earliest extant robust system of philosophy preserved in the Persian language. The dissertation discusses them both historical and philosophically. The historical origins of the school are obscure, but the fully articulated system dates to the early ʿAbbāsid period (8th – 10th CE). It is possible to outline six generations of the school, though only the thought of three of them stand out clearly. The earliest figure is The earliest representative is Adurfarrōbay (late 8th – early 9th), who is credited with revitalizing the Dēnkard as well as defending the religion in public. The second figure is Mardānfarrox (mid-9th), who was likely a younger contemporary of the philosopher al-Kindī (c. 800 – 873) and who wrote the most sophisticated public presentation of Dēnkard School philosophy. The third figure is Ādurbād (late 9th – early 10th), who finalized the Dēnkard as we have it today. The school mysteriously vanished in the century following Ādurbād, and the reasons for this disappearance are unclear. The philosophy of the Dēnkard School is articulated in two types of text: technical and public. The technical texts are terse and presume fluency in the system and so were likely only for internal scholastic use, while the public texts are clear and accessible and so show the school interacting with contemporary thinkers. Both types show familiarity with Greek, Indian, and contemporary Islamic thought, and both use this variety of sources to defend the metaphysical thesis of bifoundationalism. It’s the claim that all reality arises out of two independent and irreconcilable sources. Mardānfarrox develops this position through a polemic against the atheists, in which he argues for the existence of both a creator god as well as a contrary opposed to god. The Dēnkard develops it in a variety of ways, such as by arguing against absences or ontological negatives as well as by arguing that it’s directly available to the mind by being the absolute presumptions of thought.

Department dc:contributor.department

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Good, John Theodore

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Raffaelli, Enrico G
• Andrés-Toledo, Miguel Ángel

• Dēnkard
• global philosophy
• Islam
• Late Anitquity
• Zoroastrianism

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/129844

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/129844