Translating Shiʿite Philosophy: Sanāʾī’s Ḥadīqat- al-ḥaqīqah and its Shiʿite Neoplatonic Foundations

The paper examines the Shiʿite epistemological and psychological foundations of Sanāʾī’s theory of sanctified authority (walāyah) and highlights the role that Sanāʾī played in bringing Shiʿite Neoplatonic philosophy and Sunni mysticism into dialogue, by means of court-patronized mystical poetry. Despite the significance of many of his works as early specimens of court-patronized mystical poetry, Sanāʾī’s poems have been studied by only a handful of scholars (e.g. J.T.P de Bruijn (1983), Franklin Lewis (1995), Nicolas Boylston (2017), Zahiremami (2021)). In this paper, I will focus on Sanāʾī’s magnum opus Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah wa shari’at al-ṭarīqah (‘The Enclosed Garden of Truth and the Law of the Path’, here after Ḥadīqah). Ḥadīqah was a book of Sufi advice which Sanāʾī originally dedicated to his royal patron, the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh (r. 1117–1157). As a result, the book has a strong political dimension and demonstrates Sanāʾī’s systematic way of connecting Islamic, particularly Shiʿite, Neoplatonic psychology and epistemology to his mystical view of walāyah and ideal kingship.