Sohrevardi's Innovative Esoteric Exegeses for the Verse of "light"

Sohrevardi should be regarded as the mediator of illuminationist and peripatetic philosophers and mystics. He deeply mixed mysticism and philosophy, such that philosophy lost its pure strictness and mysticism gained strong argumentative foundations. In other words, such individuals as Ibn Arabi, 'Aziz al-din Nasafi, and even Mulla Sadra emerged as the result of Sohrevardi's influence on philosophy and mysticism. One of the most important commonalities between peripatetic philosophy, illuminationist philosophy and Islamic mysticism is the discussion of existence which is interpreted as "light" by illuminationists and mystics. The most important manifestation of light in the Holy Quran is the verse 35 in the Chapter of "light" for which philosophers and mystics have provided different commentaries and esoteric interpretations. In his esoteric interpretations, Sohrevardi has been influenced by both peripatetic philosophers and mystics. For example, like Avicenna, he interprets "La Sharqiyyah wa La Gharbiyyah (neither eastern nor western)" as something which is neither intellect nor matter; like Ghazali, he interprets "Shajara al-Zeytoonah (olive tree)" as intellectual faculty. However, he interprets "noor ala noor (light upon light)" as returning of a thing to its genus while Ghazali and 'Ayn al-Qozat interpret it as prophetic spirit. The present paper discusses Sohrevardi's esoteric commentaries and interpretations of light (generally) and the verse of light (particularly) and reviews the amount of previous philosophers and mystic's influence on him as well as innovative aspects of his esoteric commentaries.