al-Fayd al-Kashani
1598 CE–1680 CE · Kashan
Muhammad ibn Murtada Muhsin al-Fayd al-Kashani was a Twelver Shia scholar of Safavid Iran, remembered as a traditionist (muhaddith, a collector and transmitter of hadith — reports of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams), a Qur'an commentator, and a philosopher. He was born in Kashan in 1007 AH (1598) into a family known for learning, and received his first education from his father's library.
As a young man he studied in Isfahan — reportedly in the circles of Baha al-Din al-Amili and Mir Damad — and briefly in Shiraz under Sayyid Majid al-Bahrani. His decisive teacher was the philosopher Mulla Sadra, with whom he studied for several years and whose daughter he married; tradition holds that Sadra conferred on him the honorific "Fayd" ("overflowing grace"). He later performed the hajj to Mecca.
Under the patronage of Shah Abbas II he led Friday prayers in Isfahan, though he is reported to have declined the office of Shaykh al-Islam there. He spent his last years in Kashan, where he died in 1090–1091 AH (1679–1680).
He is best known for al-Wafi, which gathers the traditions of the four canonical Shia hadith books. His Akhbari leanings (a school favoring hadith over juristic reasoning) and his mystical, Sufi-tinged thought were admired by some and criticized by others — positions debated among Shia scholars rather than settled facts.
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Kashan
What they did here
Born in Kashan in 1007 AH (1598) into a scholarly family; received his early education there, reportedly from his father Shah Murtada's library. Encyclopaedia Iranica gives Kashan as birthplace.
About Kashan
Kashan is an ancient city in Isfahan province, central Iran, on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with the prehistoric mound of Tepe Sialk nearby. It was famed for medieval lustre ceramics and later for carpets and silk, and it was a retreat for Safavid shahs. The city was also a centre of Shi'i learning: the philosopher and traditionist Mohsen Fayz Kashani (1598-1680), a student of Mulla Sadra, was born and died there. The astronomer Jamshid al-Kashi was born there in 1380. Kashan's long-established Jewish community suffered forced conversion under Shah Abbas II, and in the twentieth century it largely moved to Tehran, Israel and elsewhere.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with al-Fayd al-Kashani’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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