In Light of Existence: Islamicate Illuminationism and Existentialism in al-Mahāʾimī (d. 1431)

This paper considers the symbolism of light in Islamicate discourses of spiritual intellectuality, identifying ways that the Sūfī figure ʿAlā al-dīn al-Mahāʾimī (d. 1431CE) made ambivalent use of the earlier metaphysics of light identified with the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) school of Islamicate philosophy, founded by Shihāb al-dīn Yaḥyā al-Suhrawardī (d.1191CE). Within the historiography of Islamicate intellectual thought, Suhrawardī's Illuminationism offers an image of the immediate spiritual knowledge of Sufism and rationalism of Avicennan Scholastic discourse converging in an epistemological synthesis mirrored by that of Ibn ʿArabī's (d.1240CE) school of the Unicity of Being (waḥdat al-wujūd).  Heuristically, both proffer a vision of a singular, gradational reality accessible through spiritual practice and expressible through a technical discourse, while disagreeing on the nature of that reality.  While Mahāʾimī's criticizes Illuminationism from his position within Ibn ʿArabian existentialism, he utilizes a symbolism of light to solve problems where 'existence' is insufficient.